An update – things are going really well here in Milwaukee. I actually quit the car dealership job a few days after I posted about it. It was the best choice. I actually started another job only two days later as a corporate receptionist downtown. I have a great view of the lake from my posh desk on the 19th floor welcoming executives into their meetings. It’s only a temporary position and after next Friday I will be moving on. Their HR director has recommended I work at one of their hotels for another similar assignment. We’ll see.
Nick graduated with his Master’s in Business Administration on Sunday. (Yup, he’s intelligent and motivated, as well as thoughtful, funny and really, really ridiculously good looking). I am surprised by how at home I feel in Milwaukee - but it’s pretty safe to attribute that to Nick and his family’s willingness to welcome me into their lives. I feel like the luckiest person in the world.
I just finished reading The Secret Message of Jesus (which I highly recommend) because Brian McLaren emphasized that the kingdom of God is here – it’s now.
Am I the only one who feels like Christians often treat heaven (in the afterlife sense) as a bribe? It’s like dangling the ultimate candy in front of a kid – “If you do this, and don’t do that… then look what you get!”
In many ways it makes sense why religious leaders would use such tactics – think of the power harnessed by such claims. In the West, we criticize Islamic fundamentalist terrorists for believing they’ll be rewarded for suicide bombings, but I get the feeling the West is also quite guilty of tapping into those same fears/hopes/beliefs in fundamentalist Christianity.
There is a preoccupation with getting to heaven, rather than bringing heaven here – but Jesus prayed, “On earth as it is in heaven”. I wonder if premillennialism is the handmaiden of continued conflict, poverty, hunger and desecration of the environment. I grew up singing, “this world is not my home/I’m just passing through/my treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue” and it took me several years to unpack all that I had been taught in order to 1) quit fearing the rapture, and 2) quit being complacent about important global issues that aren’t going to change until people make them change.
