I’m blaming Bill Kinnon for this post, since he’s the one who sent me the YouTube video below. At first I was concerned that a Larry Norman song might be parodied, but then I realized that it was a commentary on the times, which as anyone who was there will recall, were oh-so-Hal-Lindsay. And that about sums it up. My eschatology has changed somewhat, and I no longer consider it very loving to attempt to scare the hell out of people. You can get people to pray anything if they’re terrified enough. Anyway. I was thinking back to some *coughh4ck$plUttergh* years ago when I was working at summer camp (yes, it’s disturbing but true). Another guy and I were doing double-duty as “wranglers” in the stable and also  policing  counseling a cabin of younger boys. One evening after the scheduled activities, we had to send the kids back to get ready for bed on their own (normally you supervise everything) and they did fairly well. Except for one thing… when we got back to the cabin, we discovered the kids had been talking about this movie, A Thief in the Night. Yeah, you remember.

One kid in particular couldn’t sleep after that… he was awake long after the others had drifted off to sleep. What to do? One petrified kid and a cabin full of sleeping kids… So I did the most logical thing I could think of: I took him to raid the kitchen. Now, anyone who’s worked at summer camp will tell you that kitchen-raiding is rather frowned upon, and some of the most otherwise-trusting of places will invest in padlocks. As I recall, we were sitting in the dining hall munching on something-or-other (I forget what) with a chart depicting the end times spread out on the table in front of us when the camp director came over to see what we were doing there long after the official “lights-out.” Maybe it was the eschatology chart, but he never said a thing about the kitchen raiding. Man, did that kid have questions… and every answer provoked some new one. Gradually the fear left as I explained how he could know that he really had nothing to worry about. I led him in the sinners’ prayer and answered a zillion questions before taking him back to the cabin where he was promptly in bed and out like a light. That was the first time I tried to explain the trinity to an 8-year-old. I didn’t mention eggs, that analogy has always bugged me for some reason.

In any event, I have different ideas not just about eschatology, but about how we handle the doctrine. And that’s what the video is all about…

Update: Okay, I fixed the video — sorry about that! Also, I was doing the math this morning and realized that this kid from camp is now older than my twentysomething blogfriends, and may have an 8-year-old of his own by now… I hope he can still explain the trinity! Other than that, I’m feeling old. ;^)