A few years ago in the town where I lived a man predicted the end of the world. He had a time and date in October that year when Jesus was going to come back and end history. He put leaflets on people's cars to warn us all to be ready. The day after the big date one of the local clergy went around to chat with him about the follies of prophecy. The guy's response? He did his sums again, concluded that he was out by exactly one year and told us all that the world would end at the same time, same date, one year later...
As we head for the year 2000 I see two kinds of expectations. Some people are getting ready for the 'party of the millennium' or booking seats at the spots with the best view of 1 January 2000. Others have started getting ready for the Y2K disaster. In the church we have a bit of experience with the 'get ready for disaster' crowd and I want to write about that here. I have been listening to people like that guy predict the end of it all for nearly twenty years now. Sooner or later maybe one of them is accidentally going to be right.
In the church the 'get ready for disaster people' are both provoked and constrained by Scripture. Apocalyptic1 texts like Matthew 24 promise the return of the Christ and describe the signs that can be expected to precede that return; the desecration and then destruction of the holy place and disorder in the cosmos. This text claims that the intractable chaos of the world as we know it ('wars and rumours of wars') is a 'sign' that the world is temporary, that it will be started again by Christ. The text instructs the reader to 'read' these signs but also warns that the final event is unpredictable ('of that day and hour no one knows').
In the church the 'get ready for disaster people' are both provoked and constrained by Scripture. Apocalyptic1 texts like Matthew 24 promise the return of the Christ and describe the signs that can be expected to precede that return; the desecration and then destruction of the holy place and disorder in the cosmos. This text claims that the intractable chaos of the world as we know it ('wars and rumours of wars') is a 'sign' that the world is temporary, that it will be started again by Christ. The text instructs the reader to 'read' these signs but also warns that the final event is unpredictable ('of that day and hour no one knows').
People have been constrained by texts like this, because Jesus is quoted as saying "of that day and hour no one knows" which I would read as saying that no-one knows when the end of the world will come. The Late Great Planet Earth actually had a time-line of expected events before the end based upon reading the 'signs'. That author was wrong. Most of us have taken Jesus's word for it and not said anything falsifiable.
People have found hope in texts like this because it is the intractably chaotic things in life (wars, disasters and betrayals) that turn out to be the signs of hope (they are called "the beginnings of birth pangs"). When faced with problems like environmental damage, violence in East Timor or increasing state incursions upon personal liberty we have a couple of options. Most people ignore them most of the time. When they do pay attention they want someone to fix them, that's what we pay taxes for, so that stuff can be fixed. A few people actually work on solutions themselves. Maybe it's just me, but I don't see the list of stuff that needs fixing getting any shorter. The apocalyptic tradition says that the intractability of this stuff is the sign of hope for the world to be reborn.
The apocalyptic tradition is not the only way the church has faced 'the end of the world'. Implicit in it is the view that the world is so broken that the only solution is the final solution. Others within the churches have been more positive2. Friends of mine believe that they can live the life of Christ in unresolved tension with the needs of modern life (so for example believing in an ethic of compassion but still maybe sacking a non-performing employee). Others believe they can see signs of Christ's presence in the renewal of society (South American Liberation theologians of the 70s and 80s often believed they could see renewal happening despite the brutality of their regimes). This reading of Matthew 24 then has not produced something called "the church's belief about the end of the world", just one strand which those of us who are involved in church have to take into account, live with and learn from.
What can be learned from this way of looking at the world about getting on with the 'get ready for disaster' approach to Y2K? I think there is a realism in the acknowledgment that all our attempts at 'solutions' fail to deliver the final answers. Some things can be improved, but the list of stuff to fix will just go on growing. It's OK to be humble about the real value of the solutions we work on. The apocalyptic tradition says there is a way to live in hope anyway.
We can learn to hold in tension different models of reality and different expectations for the future. In my religious view of the world the key to holding it all together is God.
We can learn to live with focus now. If the apocalyptic view is right in hoping for a future beyond the end of it all then our personal future depends on being on task now. A secular take on this might be the old advice to 'live each day as if it could be your last'. The world probably won't end on 31 December but if it does...
Live with dignity.
