Raptured from Credit Card Debt
“Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man.” — Luke 21:36
On Saturday, there was an article in the LA Times by Christopher Goffard called Father, Son and Holy Rift. It talks about Chuck Smith, the pastor and founder of the Jesus People and the Calvary Chapel movement. Goffard writes that, “He denounces homosexuality as a ‘perverted lifestyle,’ finds divine wrath in earthquakes and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and promises imminent Armageddon in a deep, sure voice.”
His son, Chuck Smith, Jr., is the pastor of a church 25 miles away and preaches a message that is more inclusive. “Without a trace of fire and brimstone, he speaks of Christianity as a ‘conversation’ rather than a dogma, plumbs such TV shows as ‘The Simpsons’ for messages, and aims to reach ‘generations of the post-modern age’ that distrust blind faith and ironclad authority.” The article continues on about their clashing theology.
What does this have to do with personal finance? Read on… religion always seems to circle back to money. Goffard continues, “He (the Jr. pastor) also grew disillusioned with the Rapture, the notion that believers in Jesus will be whisked to God’s side during Armageddon. His father had predicted the end of the world would arrive in the 1980s, based on his reading of the Book of Revelation. He has continued, year after year, to announce its imminence with absolute confidence.”
The father: “Every year I believe this could be the year. We’re one year closer than we were.”
The son: “To use [the Book of Revelation] for prognostication, to me, is just ridiculous…. I knew of a guy who was racking up debt because he just assumed he was going to get raptured and wouldn’t have to pay for it.”
For me personally, the article was interesting, especially since I grew up in the Pentecostal movement and remember vividly the Rapture messages. Is it possible that a person could actually use the Rapture as an excuse to run up credit card debt?
Arianna Huffington says it best in her “Apocalypse Later” post. She writes, “Near the beginning of Saturday Night Fever, John Travolta’s Tony Manero, frustrated that his boss thinks he should save his salary instead of spending it on a new disco shirt, cries out, ‘Fuck the future!’ To which his boss replies: ‘No, Tony, you can’t fuck the future. The future fucks you! It catches up with you and it fucks you if you ain’t prepared for it!'”
Whether you’re a born-again anticipating the Rapture or Tony Manero just trying to justify the purchase of a shirt… you can’t dismiss the future. The money you spend today will catch up with you. Here are five articles to help you get out debt:
1. Got Debt? Here’s Help By Dayana Yochim
2. Set the Foundation By Dayana Yochim
3. 9 Ways to Pay It Off By David Braze
4. What Debt to Pay Off First By Lucy Lazarony
5. Breaking the Cycle of Bad Credit By Sonja Ryst
The world isn’t ending any time soon… instead the day of reckoning arrives every month at the end of the billing cycle when more debt is racked up on a MasterCard. Feel free to keep on loving Jesus and / or dancing the night away in new clothes… but remember carrying a balance on your credit card only hurts you in the future.
This article so reminds me of a patient I had years ago in the hospital. He had no health insurance, no”job”- other than defining himself as a preacher. Meanwhile, he had a wife who was homeschooling their 5 kids. His “congregation” was a few families who followed his very conservative belief system, but he had no real income to speak of. They lived practically off the grid and grew their own food, scrounged for free clothes, etc. but needed lots from local community resources like the neighborhood Food Pantries, etc. to make it month to month.
He ascertained that “God would provide” in terms of their food needs, their health care needs, etc. I had to interject that God was only providing thru those around him- giving us an opportunity to show our love of mankind and in following His Word. If the food they ate came from the Community Food Cupboards, it was fellow humans- maybe in conjunction w/ God- who were providing. His hospital bills, as astronomical as they eventually became, had to be written off- which then impacted the community at large who would have less free care thru the hospital.
The really sad part of it was, this crazy man was diagnosed with end stage cancer- and his family was really going to be suffering without his meager monies thru the “church.” My job as a discharge planner was to work with social services and help get them hooked up with the resources and supports they would need- Hospice care, food stamps, anything. But then someone in his “church” recognized me as a “practicing homosexual”- and they all refused ANYTHING I would offer in support. The hospital where I worked at the time was more supportive of me and reassigned someone else to work with them, however, they refused everything, since after all, God would provide- not some social programs that some dyke recommended for them.
Please don’t confuse me with people who are overly critical of the religious- as my family has deep held belief in God and is very active in the Lutheran Church. I just found that this article struck home in reminding me about someone who also used their religious belief to allow complete & utter irresponibility in regards to financial well being towards his family. My pastor had a great saying I’ll never forget in regards to my story- “Trust in God and the Rapture but save for retirement & have good insurance, just in case.”
I’ve read this with interest and hope you will in no way be offended by my comments. I have to say you won’t find the word “rapture” anywhere in the bible. And the verse you used above is not correct one, either, in regard to the believer being whisked away to join the Lord. The correct verses would be I Thessalonians 4:13:18, which are very comforting to the bible believer given by the apostle Paul. The believer is taken out of the world long before Armageddon begins, but we are not to obsess about this one way or the other, we are not involved in prophecy, the prophecy is for Israel. I call myself a bible reader and believer in contrast to the pentecostal tongue-talking “annointed” lying TBS bunch you mention above, who are a total embarrassment to the body of Christ. They teach their people absolute crap and make them slaves to the “tithe” and other aspects of Jewish OT law, more’s the pity. Bible believing Christianity ain’t got a thing in the world to do with big buildings/bucks, faith healing or “Jesus people.” The believer today is NOT under the law but under grace when it comes to giving financially. The OT law requires 30%, not the 10% most tithers today claim you must give, but try showing that out of the bible to those clowns; most preachers don’t even understand that, don’t want to and even if a few do, they sure don’t want the folks sitting in front of them to know that. The crowd you mention know nothing of “rightly dividing” the word of truth (II Timothy 3:15) and the fact that the bible believing Christian is NOT Israel, never has been and never will be. The bible believer today is a totally separate group in the divine plan and our “marching orders,” if you will, come from the books of Paul, not out of MML or John. Paul tells us if a man “would not work, neither should he eat,” in I Timothy 3:10, to cite just one excellent verse. Okay, enough out of me. (For straightforward bible study, I’d recommend a good nightly Paltalk group to listen to, Discerning the Times, 7 p.m. eastern time).