As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted

It's 6:00 p.m. on Doomsday, and I'm still here. As far as I know, the local cemetery is intact--no bodies missing or spilled messily on the ground. I checked the CTV news website around 5:00 p.m. just to see if we were the only time zone still standing. I was reassured to find that only Pastor Camping seems to be missing.

In the comments section that followed the CTV news article, two submissions in particular made me laugh:

1. Can someone explain this to me? [1] All of the religious fanatics disappear up into the sky. [2] The world then becomes... a WORSE place? I don't follow.

2. I guess it's safe for Sarah Palin to come out of her shelter now.

Well now that the distraction of the alleged Rapture has passed, and the 200 million of the world's inhabitants that were supposed to lift off are still with us (along with the six billion plus that God was presumably leaving behind for later punishment), I'll get back to the topic at hand.

As I have said in previous posts, I am no theologian. Not that there is a consensus among theologians about everything. It is said that where there are ten economists there are twelve opinions. The same could be said of theologians. And philosophers. And political pundits. But I digress.

I am taking the plain person's approach to all this. I posted earlier that I do theology from the ground up. So I am avoiding establishing some overarching ideology into which I must somehow fit all the loose ends. It is not clear to me that God's various revelations of himself are like puzzle pieces that all fit together into a nice rectangle with no pieces missing. If his thoughts are greater than our thoughts; if we look through a glass darkly; if God's ways are far beyond anything one could imagine; if we know in part; if what will be has not yet been made known--how in the world does anyone think that they can write a definitive theology on every point of Christian doctrine without there being room for discussion, if not debate.

So I'm going to push on with my evaluation of another view of salvation that does not assume a) that certain knowledge is necessary for salvation as Pastor Camping seems to believe; and b) that Hell is the default destination for the human race. And my plan is to appeal as best I can to Scripture, which I trust, not to the assured results of systematic theology (Which one?, I heard you say), which I don't trust.

So next we'll tackle the wonderful biblical subject of justice.