Sunday, May 22, 2011

If You're Reading This, Harold Camping Is Having A Really Bad Day

Since this is published on Sunday morning the 23rd, by the time you read this a whole lot of comedians will have made some serious joke mileage off Family Radio folks still sitting in their billboard-covered vans, waiting for a Rapture that didn't happen.

Our temptation is going to be to join in... to mock them for their stupidity and/or arrogance. It'll be easy to pile on. There's that sweet/bitter taste of being right... and rubbing it in.

But Jesus calls us to show the same kind of grace to the Family Radio followers as He showed us... to:
Proclaim good news to the poor... bind up the brokenhearted... proclaim freedom for the captives &release from darkness for the prisoners. (Isaiah 61:1, NIV)
Not pity, not pious looking down our nose, not patting ourselves on the back for our theological brilliance... but instead grace.

And lots of it.

2 comments:

Jonathan Degann said...

Word is that Harold Camping is having an excellent day, courtesy of the followers who gave many of their wordly possessions to him.

Matthew Frederick said...

Agreed, Mark, grace indeed.

Especially from those of us on the planet who have been wrong before, we small band.

And, too, those of us who have ever found foolishness or ignorance in our former convictions. It must be a terrible burden for those who sit high upon their perfect wisdom horses and look down on those of us who lack such perfection.

That said, while we too must do all we can to look upon Camping with grace, this should also be a wake-up call to accept the responsibility to keep intentional frauds from profiting so greatly off of that foolishness.