{"id":557,"date":"2013-09-26T19:20:37","date_gmt":"2013-09-26T23:20:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/isittheendoftheworld\/?p=557"},"modified":"2013-09-26T19:20:37","modified_gmt":"2013-09-26T23:20:37","slug":"jonathan-merritt-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/isittheendoftheworld\/2013\/09\/jonathan-merritt-wrong.html","title":{"rendered":"Jonathan Merritt: Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cFor I know the plans I have for you,\u201d declares the Lord, \u201cplans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dagnabit, he almost had it.<\/p>\n

In Jonathan Merritt\u2019s latest post at Religion News Service (\u201cJeremiah 29:11 is NOT about you!\u201d), the blogger popular with evangelical Millennials rightly observes that Christians often get the iconic verse wrong. <\/p>\n

Usually, pastors and congregants alike feel\u2014somehow\u2014that the verse can be appropriated to mean, primarily, that God intends only good things for us. Us, as in gentile Christians.<\/p>\n

Narcissism is alive and well in 2013.<\/p>\n

Merritt did a great job explaining the context of the verse, which has to do historically with the coming Babylonian invasion of Jerusalem, in the sixth century B.C. The context explains that the prophet Jeremiah was looking ahead to a time when God would restore His people.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
An uncovered wall from the time of the Babylonian invasion, Jerusalem, present day.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And this is where it gets interesting.<\/p>\n

Just when I thought Merritt was going to take it home and help us see that God certainly did do that (70 years after the captivity, a new ruler in the empire, Cyrus, allowed the Jews to return. We can also see a more advanced return, far into the future and looking forward to the restoration of all things)\u2026he veered off into a dismaying, but familiar territory:<\/p>\n

Replacement Theology.<\/p>\n

This worldview sees \u201cthe Church\u201d as having replaced Israel in God\u2019s overall redemptive plan. It has spawned centuries of mistreatment of the Jewish people and, in a broader sense, robbed Christians of a true picture of redemptive history.<\/p>\n

Earlier in his blog, Merritt quotes the authors of \u201cMisreading Scripture With Western Eyes\u201d (you\u2019ll see the greater irony of that title when you realize the mistake Merritt makes), who get it:<\/p>\n

\u201c[Modern Westerners] misunderstand the object of the sentence, you, to mean \u2018each one of you individually.\u2019 We then read Jeremiah 29:11 as, \u2018I know the plans I have for you, Brandon.\u2019 But remember that Israel was a collectivist culture. They understood the object of the sentence, you, to mean \u2018my people, Israel, as a whole.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

My people. Israel.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s pretty simple. The Bible is pretty straightforward most of the time, especially when describing the history and destiny of the Jewish people. Many Christians, however, just can\u2019t see it that way. I suspect many don\u2019t want to. \u201cThey\u201d (the Jews) killed Jesus, after all, they say. The Jews rejected God\u2019s plan for them, so He transferred the promises He made to the Jews\u2026to the Church.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a baffling and sinister perspective, but I believe it is something close to a plague in the American church.<\/p>\n

Quite interestingly, Merritt gives an important clue in his blog, when he shares that he had questions about this growing up:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ministers I asked usually offered a vague affirmation of God\u2019s sovereignty and then changed the subject. So I let it go.\u201d<\/p>\n

He let it go so far that he too misunderstands the main thrust of the passage: <\/p>\n

\u201cIn the Old Testament, \u2018God\u2019s will\u2019 describes a plan for God\u2019s people. It is less about prospering a person who follows God and more about prospering the community of God as a whole. So a better modern application for this verse might be:
\n\u201cGod has always worked to prosper God\u2019s people and God always will. Just as God worked in history to preserve Israel, so he is now working to preserve the Church. Though God\u2019s Church will undoubtedly face challenges and often be co-opted into the unholy agendas of governments and politicians and false teachers, and though the individual parts of the whole may experience the terrible effects of a sin-stained world, God remains committed to seeing that beautiful body of Christ through to the end.\u201d<\/p>\n

Come on, man, you almost had it. God certainly worked through history to preserve Israel, but the key thing is, He still is. Not \u201cworked,\u201d past tense. \u201cWorking,\u201d present tense.<\/p>\n

This is the key concept for understanding that Jeremiah 29:11, a Jewish prophecy given by a Jewish prophet, is thoroughly Jewish in redemptive history.<\/p>\n

This actually helps explain something else I wondered this week, upon reading that Jonathan Merritt will speak at a closed-door meeting of what I call Christian Palestinianists, in Washington D.C.<\/p>\n

\u201cTelos 2013,\u201d a three-day meeting in early October, is sponsored by the Telos Group, whose members work hard to bring the so-called Palestinian narrative into American churches. Merritt\u2019s friends evidently invited him because he is a key communicator with young evangelicals, who often reject the worldviews of their parents.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, October 2, Merritt will host a \u201cMovement Building Roundtable,\u201d and presumably the group will discuss stepping-up efforts to pry Israel support from evangelical churches. Merritt\u2019s view of Jeremiah 29:11 will fit right in.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s too bad young Merritt\u2019s pastors could not answer his questions about the famous passage.<\/p>\n

He could have prospered from right answers, and so could his readers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cFor I know the plans I have for you,\u201d declares the Lord, \u201cplans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.\u201d Dagnabit, he almost had it. In Jonathan Merritt\u2019s latest post at Religion News Service (\u201cJeremiah 29:11 is NOT about you!\u201d), the blogger popular with evangelical…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":392,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nJonathan Merritt: Wrong - Is it the End of the World?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/isittheendoftheworld\/2013\/09\/jonathan-merritt-wrong.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Jonathan Merritt: Wrong - Is it the End of the World?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cFor I know the plans I have for you,\u201d declares the Lord, \u201cplans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.\u201d Dagnabit, he almost had it. 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