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| Portal scene at the battle in "Avengers: Endgame." Image source. |
[content note: spoilers for "Avengers: Infinity War", "Avengers: Endgame", and "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier"]
So I decided to get back to my blog series blogging through the gospel of Matthew. Let's take a look at Matthew 25:1-13, "The Parable of the Ten Virgins."
Go click the link and read it :)
Okay, so, my first reaction to this is that I don't really know what to do with it, because it's about Jesus coming back ("the bridegroom" arriving in the parable). And, even when I was evangelical, I could never understand why we were supposed to care about Jesus coming back. I reasoned that the church has been around for 2000 years, and all throughout that time, anyone who said Jesus was coming back "soon" turned out to be wrong. Odds are, it's not going to happen in my lifetime, little-Perfect-Number said to herself, so the most logical response is to just not care about it at all.
I read in the bible "be ready" and I was like, no, don't think I will.
Or, sometimes I thought, okay, if Christians say I'm supposed to "be ready" because Jesus could come back at any moment, what does that actually mean? What specifically do I need to do? And people gave me answers like "get saved" and "obey God" and "don't get caught in the middle of a sin." And I thought, aren't these things we should all be doing anyway? So I still don't see any reason to be interested in whether or not Jesus is coming back "soon."
Back then I believed in something sort of along the lines of "the rapture." (I believed in the general idea, though my mom always said that it was not cool how Christians think a "Left Behind"-style rapture is from the bible- all the "real Christians" disappear at the same time and leave piles of clothes behind- yeah, indeed, not cool how people think that's from the bible. It's not.) But now, as an ex-evangelical reading this, I ask myself what I believe about Jesus coming back. Sometimes on this blog I mention that I believe the kingdom of heaven will come to the earth, and that I believe there will be resurrection. But is it going to be Jesus suddenly appearing and righting all the wrongs of the world at the same time, magically? No, that doesn't make sense.
See, here's the thing about the rapture, as portrayed in the "Left Behind" books: The suddenness of it, on such a huge global scale, causes all kinds of disasters. Car accidents because drivers suddenly disappeared. Plane crashes because pilots suddenly disappeared. Imagine the effects on the economy/ supply chain, when a significant proportion of the population suddenly disappears. It would be a disaster.
And, well, maybe "Left Behind" isn't a good example, because perhaps the point was that it should be a disaster for those non-Christians who are left behind, but we don't need to care about them because we'll be raptured.
(Though I will say, it's common for evangelical teenagers to worry that Jesus is going to return before they get a chance to have sex. So, there's an example of how, even though being "raptured" is a positive thing, the timing of it will inevitably be bad for some Christians. Just because of the massive scale of it, it's statistically inevitable that Jesus is going to interrupt some good pure virgin couple's wedding night.)
Here's a better example: "Avengers: Endgame." Or, rather, we'll get to "Endgame" in a minute, but first I'll mention the Snap in "Avengers: Infinity War", because it's basically the same as the rapture in "Left Behind"- half the population of the universe suddenly disappears, and there's chaos because those disappeared people were in the middle of doing things which become dangerous if suddenly left unattended. And then in the aftermath of it, the world has to learn how to cope with such a huge change.
But anyway, the Snap in "Infinity War" was performed by Thanos, the villain, so it's not a good comparison to Jesus coming back. Let's talk about how the heroes set things right in "Endgame." In "Endgame", 5 years have passed since all those people disappeared in the Snap. The Avengers are on a mission to collect the infinity stones so they can undo the Snap- but there is a discussion to be had about how exactly to undo it. Do they just erase the past 5 years, go back in time to right before the Snap, and then live in a universe where none of it ever happened? Tony Stark can't accept this idea, because he has a daughter who was born in those 5 years. He insists that they can't change anything about those 5 years. So, in the end, once they gather the infinity stones, they fix the universe by bringing back all the people who had disappeared, but not changing anything else. (I'll point out that this means that people who died in all the car accidents/ other chaos caused by the Snap don't come back.)
So, hooray it's a happy ending, but there are A LOT of problems caused by all these people suddenly appearing. I like the Marvel movies and shows that explore these problems, rather than acting like the Blip (that's what they call the Snap + everyone reappearing 5 years later) is just an isolated thing that doesn't matter anymore after the "Endgame" credits roll.
The Marvel tv series "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" is all about this. In this series, we learn that people who had been poor and/or refugees (before the Snap happened) benefitted from the Snap because countries opened their borders and it became easier to find jobs, due to half the population disappearing. But when all the disappeared people suddenly reappeared, countries started to kick out those people who had come in during those 5 years. A group called "the Flag Smashers" formed to fight back; the Flag Smashers are the main villains that Sam (the Falcon) and Bucky (the Winter Soldier) are fighting. At the end of the show, when they defeat the Flag Smashers, Sam gives a whole speech about how he actually agrees with their cause, and everyone should stop calling them "terrorists."
In other words, all around the world, there is tension between people who just popped back into existence after 5 years, and need help integrating into society, and people whose lives improved during those 5 years, and now are seeing those lifelines taken away. What happens if someone reappears in the house they owned 5 years ago, but now a different family is living in it?
I say all of this to make the point that it's not possible for Jesus to come back and just suddenly fix all the problems. Bruce Banner couldn't do it with all 6 infinity stones. Anything you do at that kind of scale is going to cause a whole bunch of other problems.
I mean, the only way it could work is if you magically mind-control everyone to agree "ah, when you look at the big picture and weigh everyone's needs in a fair way, XYZ is the best course of action." But I don't think Jesus does that mind-control stuff.
During the Shanghai lockdown, we saw the same idea at work. All the normal supply chains were cut off, and the government had to scramble to come up with systems to deliver food to people. And because it was thrown together with little time to plan, and on the scale of 25 million people, we saw a lot of things go wrong. There were videos on WeChat about meat that was supposed to be delivered to residents in lockdown, but the meat sat outside in the heat for too long and went bad. Or trucks full of donated food, arriving from other provinces, but delays on the roads entering Shanghai meant that the vegetables rotted, and lots and lots had to be thrown away. We all received free bags of a random assortment of vegetables- inevitably some of these vegetables ended up being wasted if people didn't know how to cook them, or didn't have enough space in their fridge, or just didn't want to eat so much cabbage all the time.
I think that happens in every kind of disaster-relief situation (and yes, I do think we should view the Shanghai lockdown as a disaster-relief situation... I would say the initial disaster was covid, but then the lockdown itself was a bigger disaster). Some of the efforts that are sent in to help actually don't help.
My point is, if you're like "oh no, 25 million people need help" and then you try to help them, well, you can't just solve all their problems all at once.
I'm not saying you shouldn't help- certainly there are society-wide policies that can be implemented to address society-wide problems, and there will be a benefit in the long-term. I'm not saying "well don't even try to make the world better, because you'll cause other problems no matter what you do." I'm saying it's complicated and there is no way to magically make the world perfect all at once, without destroying people's capacity to have an emotional reaction to change- which is an essential part of human nature, I would say.
All this is to say, I don't believe in a literal "Jesus coming back." I don't believe that at some specific day and hour, Jesus is going to appear in the sky all over the world and right all the wrongs at the same time, Endgame-style. It just doesn't make sense.
The world can't be fixed so fast. It has to be gradual.
As I think about this "sudden change vs gradual change" idea, I'm reminded of what Martin Luther King Jr. wrote:
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."
He was pushing back against the idea that black people should "wait" and accept that changes will be gradual.
Just a moment ago, I said change had to be "gradual" because it's not *literally* possible to fix every single problem in the world at the same time. But King is talking about "wait" and "justice too long delayed" in a different sense- prioritizing the comfort of those already in power, rather than taking the steps that will truly make society more equal and just.
In other words, King was fighting to bring justice and the kingdom of heaven to this earth, and "white moderates" told him they didn't agree with his methods because they weren't ready.
They weren't ready.
And now we've come back around to the parable of the ten virgins- 5 were ready, 5 were not ready. What if we read it like this: It's not about a specific day and a specific hour when a literal Jesus will literally appear and literally make the whole literal world literally perfect- it's about being ready when you see the kingdom of heaven coming to earth in whatever little ways it comes in your local area in your time in history.
What if "keep watch" isn't about a "newspaper clippings thumbtacked to the wall and criss-crossed with red thread"-style of obsessive theorizing about when "the rapture" will be, but about looking for Jesus in your own life when you see people in need, and looking for the kingdom of heaven in your own society when you see large-scale trends or policy changes?
For example: Student loan forgiveness. This was in the news recently. People who have student loan debt can get $10,000 of that debt cancelled (or $20,000 in some cases). So many people are struggling with huge student loans with predatory interest rates, and now the kingdom of heaven is coming, in a small way. This can't solve everything (I think it's much more important to do something about the cost of college tuition, and teenagers being pressured to take out loans when they have no understanding of how money works in reality) but it's a start.
But some people are mad about it. At its worst, this anger is an ugly us-vs-them "these people are inferior to me because [reasons] but now the government is giving them $10,000 and not giving me anything!" But some of that anger may come from a more legitimate place, perhaps from someone struggling financially for reasons unrelated to student loans, and they want to know why they didn't get money for their financial needs. And yes, like I said, it's not possible to fix all the problems on such a massive scale, in just 1 move. So we should keep going, listen to people's concerns, and figure out what other policies should be put in place to help more people.
I'm also thinking of the immigrants who were sent on buses or planes from Florida and Texas and dropped off in blue states without any communication beforehand. Residents of Martha's Vineyard (and other places where immigrants were randomly dropped off) came together to help. When Jesus comes, will you be ready? When Jesus comes, will you help him find a place to sleep, give him food, give him new clothes?
Not that we literally have to be ready- ie, you don't have to literally have an emergency shelter set up and waiting at all times, as if you actually expect to use it immediately. That's just silly. (You can see in the parable that all 10 of the "virgins" [honestly we should read this as "young women" but I won't get into that] fell asleep while waiting, which was fine- it's not saying you have to literally be about to spring into action at any little sign of anything. It's more about the overall attitude.) But you should have a mindset where you can see that something is an overall good for society, even if it inconveniences you in the short-term, and accept it. Keep watch and be ready for the kingdom of heaven, not just focused on your own little life and what benefits you.
So in summary, I don't believe in a literal "Jesus coming back" because we can see how that worked in "Endgame" and in any situation where there's a sudden massive policy change- even though it's a good change, it causes other problems that society has to deal with. But keep watch, and when you see the kingdom of heaven coming in some small way in your life, be there to support it.
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One more thing I want to say about this parable: It has always bothered me how the 5 "foolish" women asked the 5 "wise" women to give them some oil, and they said no. Weren't we taught to share in Sunday School class? I asked this question as a child in church, and the answer was "It's a parable- that means it's a metaphor, and in a metaphor, it's not like every single part means something- there are places where the metaphor breaks down. For the purposes of this parable, it's not possible for the wise virgins to give oil to the foolish ones- just leave it at that. In reality we are supposed to share, but that wasn't what this parable is about."
I basically agree with this answer, but I feel like it's important to point that out, whenever we talk about this parable. There's a "don't share with those in need" message here, glaring at us as we read this parable, and I feel I have to point it out and address it.
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Related:
Why Does the Kingdom of Heaven Belong to Children?
Ending Slavery Didn't Address the Real Problem
If Thanos Tells You To Build An Ark, You Say No
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This post is part of a series on the gospel of Matthew.
Previous post: "For Pregnant Women and Nursing Mothers" (Matthew 24)
Next post: The Parable of the Talents: Risk and Return in Building the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 25:14-30)
Click here to go to the beginning of the series.
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