Ian McEwan and Revelation

Bit late, but last Sunday Ian McEwan, the novelist, wrote a very long article in the Guardian on prophets of doom, those who predict the end of the world.

Naturally, I had a lot of issues with the article! Not least, that it associates Christianity with people that regularly predict the end of the world. Now at first sight, that might seem a little obvious: of course that's what Christians do, isn't it? Well, just the week before, I listened to this sermon given by Julian Bidgood at St Ebbes church, and if you listen, you'll actually hear him mocking those that make such predictions, notably a chap called Michael Drosnin, who has apparently made numerous predictions about when the end will happen.

The issue is that Jesus explicitly tells Christians not to bother predicting. In Matthew 24 and 25 Jesus goes into great lengths on this, with a number of parables, not least that of the Ten Virgins, where the punchline is (25:13): "Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour". So Christians, at least those following the teachings of Jesus (which is a fairly good description of a Christian really), should not be going about making apocalyptic predictions.

Another thing that bugged me about McEwan's article is the description of the God of Old Testament in the following way: "slave-owning, ethnic cleansing, infanticide, and genocide urged at various times by the jealous God of the Old Testament". I suspect infanticide comes from the bit about Isaac in Genesis 22, which is undoubtedly quite shocking, but the point is that the infanticide doesn't actually happen, and that God was testing Abraham. Slave-owning? There's little doubt that happened in the Old Testament, as it did in the New Testament (see the search here for all references in the Bible to slavery). Yet does that mean God urged it?

The other issue is that of the God of the Old Testament somehow being the angry vengeful God, but the New Testament God being one of love, peace, happiness etc. But that just doesn't stack up. The God of the Old Testament is the same God as the God of the New Testament, and in fact, one wouldn't make sense without the other. Jesus' death and resurrection can only be made sense of by looking at the Old Testament and reading that Jesus was long predicted, to be the savour of God's people. I've heard people say that basically the Bible is the Old Testament with the answers in the back.

But enough for now, I'm not a bible scholar, and in fact I need to get on with preparing a bible study right now....