Extra-Biblical Stories, Concepts and Their Effects

Over the past year or so, I have spent a considerable amount of time reading the Bible, Christian-oriented literature (e.g. Christianity Today, the Baptist Press News, etc.), and sociological, historical and theological works that relate to evangelical, fundamentalist and emerging church streams of thought and worship. I have benefited and learned much about topics and issues that I was (and still am) largely ignorant of.

This blog, at least in part, is an offshoot of this effort to engage with these religious ideas, traditions and beliefs in a genuine way. In some way, it entails a move, a re-conception of who I think I am. To genuinely engage with a different way of living, entails that one move away from outright disbelief. Disbelief leaves no room for genuine engagement, because it excludes the very possibility of believing something different, of encountering something new. Conversely, genuine engagement and a commitment to understanding entails that I not go into the encounter with an uncritical eye. Thus, I sit somewhere in between, in the gap between belief and disbelief, where I think genuine engagements take unfold. Finally, genuine engagement entails that I reflect on my past and how it will shape the encounter. On this, I basically come to the encounter with little knowledge of the stories and traditions that animate believers. For good and ill, I do not carry the burden of officially sanctioned interpretations and so have fresh eyes with which to see.

Today, I'm going to briefly talk about extra biblical stories and concepts. These are storylines and concepts that are not concretely in the bible itself. They have been added over time, incorporated and disseminated by various preachers and theologians through their churches, publications, and radio and TV broadcasts. Gradually, as the concepts and storlines took hold among believers, the legitimacy and significance of them (compared to other possible storylines and concepts) became commonsense--that is, unquestioned precepts that have concrete consequences for those that question or challenge them.

A particularly salient extra-biblical concept is the rapture. According to BibleGateway, an online multi-lingual-bible search database, the word "rapture" is not actually in the New International Version or the King James Version.

At the same time, the rapture is a much talked about concept among evangelicals and fundamentalists. There are websites, fiction and nonfiction books, sermons, prognostications, and so on that devote a considerable amount of time commenting on the rapture. According to the rapture storyline, at some point and time, Jesus will descend and rapture all saved Christians into Heaven.

So, beyond the fact that the "rapture" concept is not in the Bible, the question is what does its regular use and circulation do? How does the circulation of the "rapture" concept function among believers?

Believers of the rapture concept tend to orient themselves toward the afterlife up in the heavens. Thus, it obscures the here and now and the very earthly and the very real suffering, injustice and cruelty that wrack the world in which we live today.

For believers, telling stories of the rapture concept helps create a sense of warm excitement and insecurity. Some are insecure about their status--saved or unsaved--and others certain of their status and excited about the return of Christ. The rapture concept helps affirm the boundary between saved and unsaved and reinforce the significance of being saved over going to hell for eternity. It helps determine who is a Christian and who is not.

The rapture concept also functions as a commodity that generates billions of dollars. Through products like the Left Behind series of books and movies, the rapture concept has become popularized and sold to audiences around the world. Economically, then, it helps sustain the neoliberal system of trade that materially effects practically every place on earth.

Ideologically, the rapture concept can be seen as part of a broader historical set of processes of western colonization. Through missionary work and world preaching tours of charismatic stars like Benny Hinn, the rapture concept has been implanted in the daily lives and routines of people outside the western world.