Another end-of-the-world prediction is upon us. Supposedly a 2.5-mile-wide comet will smash into the earth in the next few weeks, thus marking "the beginning of the end." Don't worry: I've got my Spam hoard ready.
With all the recent baloney going on in the world these days - Syrian refugees, cops versus blacks, gay marriage, and the subsequent inability to have a public opinion unless it's the same as the majority - people all over my Facebook are begging God to come soon. (Since, you know, God doesn't take requests and professions of faith seriously unless they show up on His News Feed.) You would think by the time my generation came along that we'd be past all of these shenanigans of intolerance and petty argument. But with each new generation comes old wounds, passed down from parents, ready to be rehashed fresh again.
Old debates, new debaters. The same damn result.
I don't buy into the idea that "the end is near": I'm pretty sure we're closer than we've ever been, but I'm inclined to agree with the words of God Almighty that nobody can know the exact date. And while we're taking Biblical hints and turning them into predictions of worldwide destruction, let's flip to the end of the book and look at what is explicitly said. We have the "man of sin" to look forward to (and no, I do not think it's Obama. I don't like him but I'm not about to turn him into the Antichrist. Some people think it's the Pope but I don't have the authority or the energy to say one way or the other), and I'm particularly interested in the mass animal deaths (polar bears and honeybees, anyone?). The point of all this, though, is not for followers of Christ to panic and hole up in bunkers with crackers and Tang. A woman asked my mom the other day if her pastor was doing his part to prepare his congregation for the end times.
Be aware, sure; but fear isn't the right response to something like this.
If we're supposed to be different - and that is the essence of true Christianity: to be different from our natural tendencies and the world around us - then the proper reaction is not to throw our closed-minded, dogmatic opinions into the chaos, only to have it lost in the social media battle that's more focused on who has it loudest than who has it right. We should be doing what we can to ease the worries of those focused on the perils of the unknown. Talk is cheap, and at this stage in our history, talk is expendable: the more there is, the less potent it is. Try doing something instead. Quit panicking about the end of days and try using that energy instead to love people while we still have time. That "repent, the end is near" schmaltz doesn't work. It never has. So how about we try a new tactic and make the way we believe a little more appealing by focusing on the love part that was so emphasized by our God on earth and leave the spreading of fear and gloom to those who hold man's religion in higher esteem than genuine faith?
It's a novel concept, but it might fucking work.
