Rapture-avoidance

A friend of mine has begun reading the "Left Behind" series. She says, "Do you know that there are some Christians that don't even believe in the Rapture! I mean, I wanna say to them, "You're a Christian, aren't you? You've got to believe in the Rapture!'"

Was it a teaching moment? Maybe, but I thought it best to keep silent, nodding my head quietly and letting the conversation drift in a new direction. Jared at The Thinklings said it best a while back: The Rapture, a relatively new doctrine, has become the "default position" of most Christians. Yup. By "default position" I suppose he meant something like, a thought process or concept that is activated automatically and accepted without question. Skepticism concerning a default position would be considered, I suppose, a lack of faith! I am convinced that my friend, like many others, has never really thought about the Rapture in a careful way, nor has she searched the Scriptures. The funny thing is, I happen to know that her own pastor does not accept the doctrine.

What all this tells me is that we need to do a better job teaching about the end times. At the very least, people should know that there are options here, multiple understandings, and that the "Left Behind" version is not only a relative upstart in church history, but that its basis in Scripture is tenuous at best.