The End of the World
Updated to add links and a corrective footnote.
As I sit here in the Starbucks in Chinatown, drinking my latte and listening to Madonna sing, “Like a Prayer,” the rapture that was predicted to happen on the 21st seems like a blip on the radar of our collective consciousness. What we are dealing with in our post-rapture world is the continuing realization that the bodily ascension of the faithful and the destruction of the wicked is not going to happen, and the tragic aftermath for those faithful who poured their lives into the eschatology of a self-styled prophet. There are thousands out there who believed, and they fueled the incredible advertising campaign that reached not just across the United States, but globally. When I was in Bangkok I saw men carrying those signs around preaching about the end of days. It blows my mind that one man, a nobody really, could have such a profound and personally devastating impact upon the world.
But this end-times scenario is not the first and not the last that has come out. People have been predicting the return of Jesus Christ since the resurrection. IO9 (of all places) even put together a little list of 10 people who have predicted the apocalypse, and these are just the most recent ones.
I remember the last time someone predicted the end of the world. I didn’t know who it was at the time, but I believe it was probably Harold Camping as it was this time. When I was in middle school, it had to be about 6th grade, all of the other students were freaking out on this one particular day. They were worried, deeply worried. The world was going to end at 2:45. There was nothing that our teachers could do to stop them from worrying. Someone important had said that Jesus was going to return and everything was going to end. I joined them in praying, and I became one more in this group of freaked out kids. Holy shit, seriously? Why not pray? So we did. The minute passed and nothing happened. And then just as quickly as it passed, the memory of that experience just flew out of my mind. I never gave it a second thought until this week. I read online that Harold Camping had predicted the end before, and that was when I started connecting the dots to this strange experience I had as a young person.*
Someone asked me if I sympathize with these people. I said no. They’re adults, and they should have known better. And I remember what it was like to be among those freaked out teens. I fell in line with it and I wasn’t even a Christian per se. Though my last minute prayer was just that, a last minute attempt to get a word in before it all blew up. It was like being a part of a chain letter gone live around the world. That’s the feeling I get now. Everyone knows chain letters are bullshit, but we keep sending them. People keep forwarding those emails that say Microsoft is going to give you a thousand dollars for everyone who forwards an email. And sometimes someone will say that Jesus is returning and they know the day and the hour. How can people fall for this?
It’s a meme, and like most memes it resurfaces again from time to time. But why? What is it that drives us as people to desire to fall in with an end-times scenario?
We all will die at some point. No matter what science does to improve the length of life, and quality of living we will inevitably die. We are surrounded by death. Wars, plagues, species extinctions, and we have been living in this situation for eons. We can look at the geological record and see mass extinction events, loads of them. Science also tells us that some day five billion years from now our own sun will expand into a red giant and burn the earth to bits. There is a real threat of death, and every one of us will have to face it.
There is something in us, deep in our lizard brain that fears the death of all things, and religion, giving us the promise of life after death, turns that fear into a hope. A hope for a life better than the one we have here in our physical world. One where we will be free of fear, strife, violence, loss, death, and everything else that causes us pain. It will be a glimmering beautiful place of peace and harmony. And that place is not here. It can never be here, because it is an impossible dream. It is a dream that touches the infinite, but like all infinite things it is only something that can be approximated. Like Zeno’s Arrow, we never quite reach the target.
This has always been a nagging question with me about sects who are deep into eschatology: do we forsake this world in its entirety for the prospect of an easy afterlife? Do we just hand over the keys to our homes, spend all of our money on advertisements for the end of the world, and just walk into the street expecting ascension? Do you sell your cow for magic beans?
The dichotomy we see in Christianity is one between those whose focus is the life and teachings of Jesus and those whose focus is the crucified and resurrected Christ. The life-of-Jesus people are those who believe in charitable works, forgiveness, and turning the other cheek (Quakers, Unitarians, Catholics). The crucifixion-of-Christ people are focused on the end game, what happens to the soul upon death, and the work toward a reward in heaven (Baptists, non-denominational Evangelicals). Of course all religions have both of these, but there is a difference in emphasis between denominations. These deeper religious memes create a lasting impression upon the minds of their followers and this leads to larger social policies that reinforce their beliefs.
People whose lives are lived from salvation and denial of the flesh have already given up on the world that they live in. They believe they have already done all the necessary work and they simply wait for the phone to ring like an expectant date. They don’t care about sustainable living, the future of the economy or their children’s prospects for future work. They are not looking at a worldly future. They feel they can be reckless with their lives and the lives of others because they don’t believe there will be a tomorrow. It is a life of intensely personal focus, because salvation is an individual act.
In contrast, those whose lives are lived from the standpoint of good works are deeply involved in the world. They run soup kitchens for the homeless and health clinics for the poor, mediate violence between rival gangs, and petition for the cessation of war. They believe that this world can be that perfect place, a heaven on earth. It is a life of external focus, and denial of the self in place of the greater good.
I think it’s pretty clear which side of this debate I fall. I am a deeply material person, and I strongly believe in the improvement of this world, and the struggle to be more than who we are. I am not Christian and I do not believe in the end of days with the return of Jesus. I am Pagan, and believe that when we die something may happen to our soul. If our life left an impact on people we will be remembered, if not we will fade into obscurity unless our families continue to remember us after our death. I make no claims to eternal life, nor to eternal fame. I am just one man, with a mind, a heart and hope to do something important with my life. I believe this world will end one day, but it will be a purely human, geological or astronomical phenomenon that does it. It could be nuclear war, plate tectonics, asteroids, global warming; any number of things could wipe us all out. We don’t need to invent a supernatural ending when there are so many natural ones that are just as equally devastating.
But I also believe we could probably even survive them, perhaps even unto the end of the universe, with forethought and progressive action. In Octavia Butler’s amazing science-fiction series “Parable of the Sower” she creates a new religious tradition based on empathy and a struggle to leave Earth behind, go colonize the rest of the universe and become the seed of this planet blown to the stars. I think that it is much more powerful to go forth into the future with power and purpose singing the songs of our forefathers, than to wish for death and hope that we end up in paradise.
In the synoptic gospels, the Devil tempts Jesus in the desert by taking him up to a high place and telling him to throw himself off a tower. He says that if he were truly the Son of God that God would spare him and angels would break his fall. Jesus says no, “You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.” That’s both a call for rational behavior, and also an affirmation of the sacredness of the physical. There is work to do in this world, and you need to be here to do it.
* Edited to add: I looked it up and it was in fact Harold Camping, who predicted the return of Jesus in 1994. It was the first link in the IO9 article cited above. That was my Senior year of high school, not 6th grade. Yes, I was 18, but got sucked into it.
As I sit here in the Starbucks in Chinatown, drinking my latte and listening to Madonna sing, “Like a Prayer,” the rapture that was predicted to happen on the 21st seems like a blip on the radar of our collective consciousness. What we are dealing with in our post-rapture world is the continuing realization that the bodily ascension of the faithful and the destruction of the wicked is not going to happen, and the tragic aftermath for those faithful who poured their lives into the eschatology of a self-styled prophet. There are thousands out there who believed, and they fueled the incredible advertising campaign that reached not just across the United States, but globally. When I was in Bangkok I saw men carrying those signs around preaching about the end of days. It blows my mind that one man, a nobody really, could have such a profound and personally devastating impact upon the world.
But this end-times scenario is not the first and not the last that has come out. People have been predicting the return of Jesus Christ since the resurrection. IO9 (of all places) even put together a little list of 10 people who have predicted the apocalypse, and these are just the most recent ones.
I remember the last time someone predicted the end of the world. I didn’t know who it was at the time, but I believe it was probably Harold Camping as it was this time. When I was in middle school, it had to be about 6th grade, all of the other students were freaking out on this one particular day. They were worried, deeply worried. The world was going to end at 2:45. There was nothing that our teachers could do to stop them from worrying. Someone important had said that Jesus was going to return and everything was going to end. I joined them in praying, and I became one more in this group of freaked out kids. Holy shit, seriously? Why not pray? So we did. The minute passed and nothing happened. And then just as quickly as it passed, the memory of that experience just flew out of my mind. I never gave it a second thought until this week. I read online that Harold Camping had predicted the end before, and that was when I started connecting the dots to this strange experience I had as a young person.*
Someone asked me if I sympathize with these people. I said no. They’re adults, and they should have known better. And I remember what it was like to be among those freaked out teens. I fell in line with it and I wasn’t even a Christian per se. Though my last minute prayer was just that, a last minute attempt to get a word in before it all blew up. It was like being a part of a chain letter gone live around the world. That’s the feeling I get now. Everyone knows chain letters are bullshit, but we keep sending them. People keep forwarding those emails that say Microsoft is going to give you a thousand dollars for everyone who forwards an email. And sometimes someone will say that Jesus is returning and they know the day and the hour. How can people fall for this?
It’s a meme, and like most memes it resurfaces again from time to time. But why? What is it that drives us as people to desire to fall in with an end-times scenario?
We all will die at some point. No matter what science does to improve the length of life, and quality of living we will inevitably die. We are surrounded by death. Wars, plagues, species extinctions, and we have been living in this situation for eons. We can look at the geological record and see mass extinction events, loads of them. Science also tells us that some day five billion years from now our own sun will expand into a red giant and burn the earth to bits. There is a real threat of death, and every one of us will have to face it.
There is something in us, deep in our lizard brain that fears the death of all things, and religion, giving us the promise of life after death, turns that fear into a hope. A hope for a life better than the one we have here in our physical world. One where we will be free of fear, strife, violence, loss, death, and everything else that causes us pain. It will be a glimmering beautiful place of peace and harmony. And that place is not here. It can never be here, because it is an impossible dream. It is a dream that touches the infinite, but like all infinite things it is only something that can be approximated. Like Zeno’s Arrow, we never quite reach the target.
This has always been a nagging question with me about sects who are deep into eschatology: do we forsake this world in its entirety for the prospect of an easy afterlife? Do we just hand over the keys to our homes, spend all of our money on advertisements for the end of the world, and just walk into the street expecting ascension? Do you sell your cow for magic beans?
The dichotomy we see in Christianity is one between those whose focus is the life and teachings of Jesus and those whose focus is the crucified and resurrected Christ. The life-of-Jesus people are those who believe in charitable works, forgiveness, and turning the other cheek (Quakers, Unitarians, Catholics). The crucifixion-of-Christ people are focused on the end game, what happens to the soul upon death, and the work toward a reward in heaven (Baptists, non-denominational Evangelicals). Of course all religions have both of these, but there is a difference in emphasis between denominations. These deeper religious memes create a lasting impression upon the minds of their followers and this leads to larger social policies that reinforce their beliefs.
People whose lives are lived from salvation and denial of the flesh have already given up on the world that they live in. They believe they have already done all the necessary work and they simply wait for the phone to ring like an expectant date. They don’t care about sustainable living, the future of the economy or their children’s prospects for future work. They are not looking at a worldly future. They feel they can be reckless with their lives and the lives of others because they don’t believe there will be a tomorrow. It is a life of intensely personal focus, because salvation is an individual act.
In contrast, those whose lives are lived from the standpoint of good works are deeply involved in the world. They run soup kitchens for the homeless and health clinics for the poor, mediate violence between rival gangs, and petition for the cessation of war. They believe that this world can be that perfect place, a heaven on earth. It is a life of external focus, and denial of the self in place of the greater good.
I think it’s pretty clear which side of this debate I fall. I am a deeply material person, and I strongly believe in the improvement of this world, and the struggle to be more than who we are. I am not Christian and I do not believe in the end of days with the return of Jesus. I am Pagan, and believe that when we die something may happen to our soul. If our life left an impact on people we will be remembered, if not we will fade into obscurity unless our families continue to remember us after our death. I make no claims to eternal life, nor to eternal fame. I am just one man, with a mind, a heart and hope to do something important with my life. I believe this world will end one day, but it will be a purely human, geological or astronomical phenomenon that does it. It could be nuclear war, plate tectonics, asteroids, global warming; any number of things could wipe us all out. We don’t need to invent a supernatural ending when there are so many natural ones that are just as equally devastating.
But I also believe we could probably even survive them, perhaps even unto the end of the universe, with forethought and progressive action. In Octavia Butler’s amazing science-fiction series “Parable of the Sower” she creates a new religious tradition based on empathy and a struggle to leave Earth behind, go colonize the rest of the universe and become the seed of this planet blown to the stars. I think that it is much more powerful to go forth into the future with power and purpose singing the songs of our forefathers, than to wish for death and hope that we end up in paradise.
In the synoptic gospels, the Devil tempts Jesus in the desert by taking him up to a high place and telling him to throw himself off a tower. He says that if he were truly the Son of God that God would spare him and angels would break his fall. Jesus says no, “You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.” That’s both a call for rational behavior, and also an affirmation of the sacredness of the physical. There is work to do in this world, and you need to be here to do it.
* Edited to add: I looked it up and it was in fact Harold Camping, who predicted the return of Jesus in 1994. It was the first link in the IO9 article cited above. That was my Senior year of high school, not 6th grade. Yes, I was 18, but got sucked into it.