millennialism
October 27, 2011 at 10:35 pm
(This post was last modified: October 27, 2011 at 10:39 pm by Ziploc Surprise.)
millennialism, defined as "a doctrine that Christ will make a second Advent and that the prophecy in the book of Revelation will be fulfilled with an earthly millennium of peace and righteousness. " - taken from The Online Dictionary.
I don't know if I would call this doctrine a foundation stone of Fundamentalist Christianity (fc for short) but it does a lot to color the religion so to speak. It effects how they behave and it effects their decision making.
As I understand it religions that arn't millennialistic often incorporate a concept of cycles into their theology. Cycles in nature, reincarnation etc. Please correct me if I'm wrong on this but I don't think they believe that their religion will one day rule the world therefore it is prudent not to be complete assholes to your nonbelieveing neighbors. Again I could be wrong on this. Also if you believe that the human race is going to be here a while it would not make sense to destroy the environment.
though fundamentalists religions are similar in their millennialistic beliefs (from what I understand) I am only intimately familiar with the cf religion so I will refer to it here. Cf's believe that "every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of.....well I think you have heard this all before. Anyway, the point is they believe that if they just hang on they will win.
Believing that you will win if you just hang on for only a short time encourages religious zeal. zeal, of any kind, is a hard thing to maintain over time. It's a fire that most be stoked on a regular basis in order to keep burning. Anyone can be zealous for a short time but it is almost impossible to do so over a long period of time without help. Millennalism provides the help. It provides a logical end, kind of like a finish line. They can see about how far they need to go and they can hang on until then.
Zeal: Zealous people are generally assholes unless they are zelous for a particularly harmless thing like a Football team. Millennialists can burn through relationships because they believe they will not have to suffer the consequences. Some of them get themselves in quite a lot of credit card debt. After all Jesus is coming and this will give them their get out of shit card.
The environment: Though some cf's believe that Christians ought to be good stewards of the environment, others believe that the Earth ought to be strip mined and after that strip mine the moon. Burn it up now because it's only going to burn later. Vrroooommm, Vrroooom!
I don't know if I would call this doctrine a foundation stone of Fundamentalist Christianity (fc for short) but it does a lot to color the religion so to speak. It effects how they behave and it effects their decision making.
As I understand it religions that arn't millennialistic often incorporate a concept of cycles into their theology. Cycles in nature, reincarnation etc. Please correct me if I'm wrong on this but I don't think they believe that their religion will one day rule the world therefore it is prudent not to be complete assholes to your nonbelieveing neighbors. Again I could be wrong on this. Also if you believe that the human race is going to be here a while it would not make sense to destroy the environment.
though fundamentalists religions are similar in their millennialistic beliefs (from what I understand) I am only intimately familiar with the cf religion so I will refer to it here. Cf's believe that "every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of.....well I think you have heard this all before. Anyway, the point is they believe that if they just hang on they will win.
Believing that you will win if you just hang on for only a short time encourages religious zeal. zeal, of any kind, is a hard thing to maintain over time. It's a fire that most be stoked on a regular basis in order to keep burning. Anyone can be zealous for a short time but it is almost impossible to do so over a long period of time without help. Millennalism provides the help. It provides a logical end, kind of like a finish line. They can see about how far they need to go and they can hang on until then.
Zeal: Zealous people are generally assholes unless they are zelous for a particularly harmless thing like a Football team. Millennialists can burn through relationships because they believe they will not have to suffer the consequences. Some of them get themselves in quite a lot of credit card debt. After all Jesus is coming and this will give them their get out of shit card.
The environment: Though some cf's believe that Christians ought to be good stewards of the environment, others believe that the Earth ought to be strip mined and after that strip mine the moon. Burn it up now because it's only going to burn later. Vrroooommm, Vrroooom!
