John Smith, Ebola and the Rapture

When I was in college, I knew a guy named John Smith.  He was a chemical engineering student from Hoboken.  He was hilarious!  While he had the exact same name as the explorer who came to Jamestown from England in 1607, they were, I am completely convinced, two completely different people.  I tell you that because sometimes people use the names "Christianity", "God" and "Jesus" in ways that I am completely convinced are referring to an entirely different and often opposing thing that what I mean when I use those names.  The names may be the same, but it seems like we must be talking about something completely and totally unrelated to one another.  

The most recent example of this comes with the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.  I read a story today about a person who self identifies themselves as a Christian but who is suggesting that Ebola is a plague sent by God to cleanse the world of a variety of people including, but not limited to gay people, atheists and the sexually promiscuous. While I too self identify as a Christian, my concept of Christianity is literally opposite of this person's.  The God I know would indeed like all of humanity to be in relationship with God and in our relationships with others treat one another with self sacrificial love, dignity, respect and compassion in all aspects of life including in our sexual relations.  However, the God I know doesn't care who we love but would prefer we love with respect, dignity and compassion.  Also, the God I know would NEVER kill people in ANY way (natural disaster, disease, violence, accident etc.) for ANY reason including using a virus that makes people vomit and bleed to death.  The God I know wants us to be in healthy relationships with God and each other not out of fear of some Divine violence but simply because God knows we'll all have a better, abundant, more enjoyable life when we do!  If the God you know makes anybody vomit and bleed to death because they don't believe a certain way or act a certain way or really, for any reason, you frankly have a horrible God and one who is completely different than the God I know.  For any of you who want to point to the Old Testament for examples of a God who was clearly into smiting, I would just say that I do see that in God's story but I also see that in Christ God did a new thing and part of what made that new thing "new" was God giving up the smiting thing in favor of love.  Now, onto some factual information about Ebola...

These days I'm a pastor, but when I knew John Smith (the engineer, not the 17th century explorer) I was studying to be a biochemist.  It was in the late 1980's during the AIDS crisis so as a result I know a bit more about fear-fueled viruses than your average pastor.  Ebola is certainly scary, but it is even harder to get than HIV.  Like HIV, it is NOT airborne and can only be contracted through the bodily fluids of someone both infected AND showing symptoms.  Unlike HIV, you will know a person is able to transmit Ebola when they are showing symptoms... fever, vomiting, diarrhea and bleeding. To be deliberately blunt and crass in order to make a point, you would need to get the blood, vomit, diarrhea or other bodily fluids of a person infected with Ebola into your mouth, nose, rectum, vagina or in your eyes in order to transfer the virus to yourself.

The reason ebola spreads more readily in West Africa is because the culturally normal way to care for a loved one's body after they have died is for the extended family to join together and personally clean the body, including removing all the virus laden blood, vomit and feces without anything like protective gloves or masks.  It is also the cultural norm to often kiss the body prior to burial.  The health care and educational systems in those countries have trouble getting that information out to the rural public, and often tradition has a stronger influence than the advice of government and health officials, so people do what they have always done when a loved one dies and the infection unfortunately spreads.  As to what to expect from the case in Texas, we should expect it to be handled at least as well as a nearly identical situation that happened in Nigeria.  Someone flew into Nigeria who was infected.  That country, with a better government and health care system than Liberia was able to quickly quarantine the person and then contain a potential outbreak.  I am confident our country will be able to address the case in Texas at least as well as the case was handled in Nigeria.   

The other thing that the Ebola fear has brought out recently is a renewed obsession by some folks about the "end times" and a non-biblical concept known as the rapture.  Ebola has become for some people a "sign" that the end is near.  Link that fear with a new "Left Behind" movie hitting theaters and you have an added reason for some to use Ebola to promote a movie with panic and fear.  Just as a review of the paragraph above, the God I know simply doesn't send plagues for any reason.  We do, however, live with the natural consequences of our world and many frightening things are indeed a part of our world including violence, death, hate, climate change, political unrest and infectious disease.  The God I know, however, doesn't send those things, but rather has enveloped all of creation… the good, the bad, the evil, and the ugly… in God's infinite and unconditional love which for me is something shown most clearly in Jesus' life, death and resurrection.  There is nothing, including the most frightening evils of this world, which is beyond God's love and control.  

As for the idea of the rapture (that the "good Christians" would be vacuumed up off the earth to someplace else before a time of tribulation on earth for those "left behind" and then the eventual destruction of the earth), it is completely made up and non-biblical.  To the contrary, the Bible is clear that first, not even Jesus has any idea when the end times would be, but second it is God's intention not to remove us from the earth and destroy it but to transform the earth into the creation God wanted it to be from the beginning for all of us to enjoy together… right here!  

To sum up, the God I know has this entire, seemingly out of control world fully under control and wrapped in God's infinite and unconditional love.  While I don't understand the process God is using all the time and it seems like there is a LONG way to go sometimes, I do hold onto the promise that the world is being transformed from what it is, into what God wants it to be.  What God wants it to be is a place where everyone has value, dignity and worth; a place where everyone has enough and a place where violence, disease and death itself is no more.  That process, which I understand to be in some way both complete and at the same time still in the works (I don't fully get it either) I believe began with Jesus and is not something anyone or anything can stop.  God will get God's way and God's way is love.  So, when you hear someone talking about "God," "Jesus," or "Christianity" in a way that sounds anything besides loving, compassionate and inclusive then they must be talking about something as different as John Smith from Hoboken is from John Smith the explorer!