But denominations have expectations. Degrees and certifications, layered one atop the other, along with a byzantine committee-driven process that...for me, at least...absorbed nearly a decade of my life. "Trial by process," I call it, and it certainly does weed folks out. Including folks who burn with the fire of the Holy Spirit, unfortunately, but so it goes.
One of the collateral blessings of that whole mess was that I had to complete coursework in Biblical languages, in Ancient Hebrew and the Common Greek of the first century. I know just enough to get myself into trouble, but when I encounter a particular scripture that chews at my soul, at least I know where to go.
I've been leading a class on Matthew over the last two months, and this week, we reached a text that I've always wrassled with. It's Matthew 24:40-41, where Jesus lays out what will happen when the end of all things comes to pass. Generally speaking, this is taken as a proof text for the Rapture, that peculiar fundamentalist doctrine that argues that when the going gets tough, the faithful will be miraculously rescued.
"Then two men will be in the field," Jesus says. "One is taken and one is left. Two women will be grinding at the mill, one is taken and one is left. Watch, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming."
I've generally taken this to be part of the larger teaching that fills most of Matthew 24. Meaning, it's primarily a call to stay morally and spiritually prepared. I mean, it straight up says that, right?
But while reading it this time around, I found myself struck by something. The operating assumption of folks who buy into the Rapture is that being "taken" is good, and being "left behind" is bad, right? I mean, that's the entire schtick of those feverish novels and unwatchable movies. It's always struck me as lazy, escapist theology, a theology that assumes the faithful don't have to take up their crosses and bear witness no matter what. Still, it's got appeal.
But...why? How do we know that's what Jesus meant? What in the words of Jesus indicates whether staying or being taken is the desirable state of being? There's an obvious binary here, with a positive outcome and a negative outcome contrasted, but which is the good and which is the bad?
I mean, I'm personally very conservative. I am wary around change, because change isn't always for the better. Like, for completely hypothetical example, when a republic becomes a dictatorship? That's a bad change. Or when a healthy part of your body breaks, or becomes cancerous? That's a bad change. There are variant meanings to saying something was taken and something was left. "My child was taken" is not necessarily a better thing to say than "My child was left."
So which is it?
First, there's narrative context. Jesus was a storyteller, and I think it's fair to say he was a good one. Immediately prior to these verses in Matthew, Jesus reminds his listeners of the story of the Flood, in which oblivious human beings kept on about their lives until the waters swept them away. Who remains after the flood? Noah and his family and all the critters two by two. Who goes? Everyone who wasn't prepared.
I mean, if you're showing one state of being as good and another state of being is bad, that primes the listener to grasp that staying warm and dry is a good thing, eh? That being swept away is a bad thing, right? I mean, this is Jesus here, people. He knows how to tell a story.
But what of the Greek, one might ask? Are there clues in the language Matthew used to indicate what the intent of Jesus may have been? Of course, Jesus would have delivered this whole schpiel in Aramaic, but we don't have that. Instead, we have the koine Greek used by the Gospel writers and by the Apostle Paul.
The word used for "taken" is paralambanetai, and the word used for "left" is aphietai. Neither is a cognate shared with English, and each has a variety of meanings depending on the context and usage.
Assuming those details don't pop to mind, it's generally efficacious to pop open a trusty old Strong's Concordance, and to consider every variant form of the word as it appears in Scripture.
Paralambano is used, in variant forms, fourteen additional times by Matthew. It typically means to "take with," meaning that a person or object is brought along with another. Like Joseph taking Mary with him to Egypt and back, that can be a positive thing in Matthew, but it can also be a negative thing. When the devil twice took Jesus with him to tempt him in the high places, for example, that's the word used. It's also the word used when an evil spirit one has driven out of one's soul takes seven more dark spirits and returns with a demonic posse to make your life even more horrific. When the soldiers took Jesus into custody to be tortured? That's the word Matthew uses.
So "taken" is neutral and contextual, which doesn't help us much.
Aphiemi is the core form of the word meaning left, and in Matthean usage, it has other resonances. In the Gospels and Epistles, the word does often mean to leave something unmoved, to depart from a thing or a place. That's the use in a slight majority of the cases, and that can be positive or negative. But there's another term that rises from that root, one that's nearly as common. Nearly as often, variants of that word mean to "forgive." When Jesus talks tells us to pray that God would forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors? That's from the same root. It can also mean to "suffer," but not in an "experience painfully" kind of way. It's the more archaic meaning of suffer, meaning to accept as it is, to tolerate, to allow, or to endure. Between "forgive" and to "accept," a majority of Matthean usage of the root concept rolls that way.
It is probable, given my limited Greek, that I'm missing or overstating something here, doing the etymological equivalent of assigning numerological values to Hebrew words to come up with a "secret" meaning that the plain text doesn't support. I'm willing to cede that it's likely.
The narrative context, though, seems far clearer.
Somewhere, somehow, proponents of the Rapture may have gotten it exactly backwards.
"One was swept away, and another was allowed to remain" really would put a different spin on things.
Posts
