March/April 2003

Why Pop Theology Should be Left Behind

by G. Jeffrey MacDonald

She can't drive a car or climb a set of stairs by herself, but theologian Marva Dawn has never been one to back down from a challenge.

She grew up playing football in the farmland of Ohio, an experience she now calls "good training to be a theologian in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod," where women can't be ordained. Since then, she's battled back from intestinal cancer, blindness in one eye, deafness in one ear and a misdiagnosis that left one leg crippled for life.

Now, this 54-year-old author of 16 church-niche books is taking on the big boys of pop Christian literature: Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye, whose Left Behind book series has sold a whopping 32 million copies. In Joy in Our Weakness: A Gift of Hope from the Book of Revelation -- a book re-released with new marketing muscle this summer -- Dawn re-interprets the Bible's final book to answer the wildly popular "misinterpretation" that she says indulges sadism, indifference to suffering and "our lust for power."

"When we get all this gruesome stuff, we miss the point," Dawn says. Revelation tells "how God has conquered the powers of evil. The author wrote it to comfort those persecuted by their neighbors. It's an incredibly comforting book. But we get so carried away trying to figure out how it will all end that we don't work for the healing of creation."

By all accounts, Dawn is on to a hot topic. Since September 11, Americans have taken serious interest in biblical predictions for how the world will end. A Time/CNN poll said 59 percent expect the events in Revelation to come true, while more than 33 percent are paying more attention now to possible connections between world events and the end of time.

Cataclysmic events from the attacks of September 11 to bloodshed in the Holy Land have fueled Left Behind sales, giving Christian book publisher Tyndale House reason to hope it will be "the best-selling series of all time in any publishing sector."

"Most people have read it because it's the hot thing to read," said the Rev. Timothy Hartner, pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod) in Weston, Florida. "But most of those folks are not part of the Bible studies I lead."

Enter Marva Dawn, the Regent College theologian who lectures in tennis shoes. Too many get duped, she says, when Left Behind books take scripture verses out of context and string them together with imagination for an electrifying effect. Dawn knows she won't reach the full audience of Left

Behind, but she hopes to reach pastors and inquisitive laity who can make the case to others that Left Behind represents religious titillation rather than religious education.

"We love to see those (unsaved) people writhe," Dawn told an assembly of United Church of Christ pastors and laity. "But the whole tribulation is something we have to caution people against because they bring it to every issue."

Left Behind readers "are getting fiction," said Michael Thompson, sales director for Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. "It's some playful ideas worked out, and they tend to shape world views. To this, a balanced and responsible study can be a bit of a corrective."

Unlike the page-turning narrative in Left Behind, Joy in Our Weakness reads as a personalized study companion for the Bible's final book. Dawn addresses Revelation chapter by chapter, aiming to plant each verse in a multilayered context consisting of her own experience with physical suffering, the historical context for this apocalypse of John and the biblical canon of literature.

"Revelation invites us to learn a theology of weakness," Dawn writes in the preface. "My desire is that all of us in Christ's body could learn that theology better by receiving the wisdom that our suffering brings us and by valuing more thoroughly the contributions that those who suffer bring to our communities."

One of Eerdmans' most popular authors in terms of sales, Dawn has built her career as a free-lance teacher and writer by positioning herself as a corrective for a Christian world she sees as too often beholden to idols of power and money. Worship, for instance, is too often presented as "an easy commodity," meant to please the assembly's tastes rather than please God "through the discipline of worship as work."

At home in Vancouver, Washington, Dawn strives for that countercultural lifestyle she wishes were more emblematic of today's church. She carries no debt, grows much of her own food in a vegetable garden, drives a 1968 Volkswagen Beetle and strives to live with her husband, Myron, on $1,400 per month. Host institutions pay travel costs for a schedule that can include eight or more trips in one month. Book royalties support a network of ministries, such as Christian inner city schools.

If money equals power, Dawn aims to keep herself weak and thereby live consistently with her theology of weakness. Rather than long for power -- in book sales or otherwise -- she prescribes a path of powerlessness that abides, in her view, with the

Bible's parting message for all who wish to follow Jesus Christ.

"Too many Christians persist in using power," Dawn writes in Joy in Our Weakness. "We try to force Christianity on others and make them buy our values. We try to win the success race with other churches. The Revelation will teach us another way.

It will help us discover and understand the victory of weakness, a discipline of willingness to suffer. We can live out the gospel in peaceful, caring ways that manifest the alternative way of life of those who follow Jesus Christ." 

© 2002 Religion News Service

The Problem with Headline Theology What difference does it make if you believe the end is just around the corner? How can that hurt anyone? Here are just a few ways in which "prediction addiction" is harmful and toxic. · Distracts from the central message of the gospel -- that Christ died to save the world. · Discourages Christians from "good works" -- serving other human beings and improving the world around them. · Is based on, and encourages, unsound and speculative interpretation of the Bible. · Discourages responsible stewardship of the environment (the world will end soon, so why bother?). · Focuses on human personalities, who must constantly reinterpret prophecy in light of world events. · Encourages legalism -- what you can do to escape the Tribulation. · Encourages Christian isolationism and escapism. · Motivates based on fear (saving one's self), rather than love. · Produces an unstable faith, focused on changing world events, rather than in Christ. · Burns Christians out. After failed predictions, many lose faith and give up on Christianity.

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