The End of Days is predicted for tomorrow. Given all of the earthquakes, floods, wars, one could certainly understand that many people are afraid of life ending as we have known it. I first heard about the prediction on NPR. The NPR story was problematic for me because my hope that morning was to catch up on world news not religious fanaticism. The particular story was about people selling homes and quitting jobs to get prepared for the end.
Since that report, my feelings have alternated between a joking stance and one looking at my own fears as we watch the world rumble, tumble and flood out of control. As I listen to friends joke about it and read others who take this particular prediction of doom seriously, my mind begins to think of the problems with the uproar.
For years, one of the problems I've had with the rapture predictions is that if Jesus could not predict the day, why would any one of us be above that? Jesus even said we will "...not know the day or hour..." Matthew 25:13. St. Paul states that when Christ returns, it will be quietly. Even called it "coming like a thief in the night" (1 Thessalonians 5:2). There are entire studies (in many religions) dedicated to understanding the "end times" and that is called eschatology. No matter how much one calculates, studies, theorizes, there are some things we are not meant to know. As Christians, we are called to live a holy life in faith and faith means more often than not, that we don't know. When we live our days in love and forgiveness, the day nor the hour will not matter.
"Not knowing is what makes today a holy mystery as every day is a holy mystery." ~Frederick Beuchner
Another problem for me when doomsayers shout their predictions, goes back to my more fundamental upbringing. After I had been baptized, our church had us go through a study much like the Methodist and Lutheran catechism. I loved most of the study, but the section on Revelation (at age 9) was almost traumatizing for me. Even though the woman teaching it was loving and kind, the concept was too threatening for me. Every day I was afraid the world would end. I think rapture destruction was too adult of a topic for a nine-year old. Maybe it was only too traumatic for a nine-year old who could not watch or listen to ANYTHING scary and I took everything seriously. I still can't do scary or horror and it shows up in my dreams if something is in a movie that is an unexpected horror. As a nine-year old, new Christian, I didn't know what to do. My new faith could not process the information.
At the time, I was in fact more worried about end of trees, the flowers and the fields than if I would be taken into heaven. My baptism was so powerful that at that time I could not associate the God from my baptism with the one who would destroy the earth. My mama got mad at me during this time because I was always taking pictures of flowers, trees and the rolling hills of Stanly County. Mama kept saying, "Why are you taking pictures of trees and flowers and not getting any people in them?" I didn't know how to tell her and she couldn't see that I was afraid. From then on if I asked to take pictures she always told me, "Now make sure you get some people in them." The fear of the end of the world followed me for years. Every flower was precious, each hill a pathway to goodness. All my poems during that time focused on the sadness of the obliteration of the earth. Through the years, my views changed about God and yet, I still often grieve the loss of the environment, but I see that the destroyer is not so often God, but humanity.
It's odd how fearful I was for the earth but did not worry so much about others. I simply trusted that my family were Christian because they were Baptized and went to church. Everybody I knew was a good person who also went to church and was baptized. There was a time when I worried about my deddy. I don't remember why because he was always a good man. The only thing I can think that might have worried me was that he was the only one I knew who cussed. He sometimes said "shit" and that was only if he hurt himself, hurt another or broke something. Of course as I got older and began to read some of the things in my teenage years, I became fearful for us all because what do we know really? How many of us can walk a godly path without failing?
These annhilistical interpretations of the end times and of Revelation in particular made me afraid of God for a long time. When I first started working as a choir director at St. John's Lutheran Church the concept that swept me off of my feet was grace. As I learned more about the theology of "justification by faith" and grace, I thought, this sounds more like a God I wish to worship. We are "saved" by grace through the love of God in Christ Jesus. There is nothing, n-o-t-h-i-n-g we can do to be "saved" because we are all human and prone to error. We are "saved" because we are loved by God...ALL of us are loved. The salvation event was God sending Christ to save us and Christ's dying on the cross. NOTHING that we do, nothing that we did saves us. The salvation event is God's act out of supreme love for us. The more I read the Bible from there on out, the more I saw divine love and not divine destruction.
The talk about rapture is also problematic because it further separates us into an "us" or "them" and we are all the same. There are sociological and psychological implications for all humans. Nature or nurture is a question often asked by psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists and scientists. We want to pinpoint the place where humanity becomes imperfect in order to fix it. In this aspect, St. Augustine's concept of original sin has blinded us all to the fact that we were created to be less than God. We are imperfect. If we were perfect, then we would be God or at the very least a higher, more soulful being. The irony in the predictions of the doomsayers is that they are always the winner, never the sinner. Yet, when we read the prophets closer and even the apocalyptic writings, it is often those most religious who miss the point entirely. Sadly, I've been wrong so many times before and may be wrong again. We can never forget however that Jesus' harshest words were for those who thought themselves most holy and Jesus' harshest criticisms was that he "eats with sinners." So where does the kingdom of God lay? Not in your hands and thank goodness not in mine either.
Rabbi Harold Kushner calls scripture "God's love letter to humanity." Destruction happens because there is freewill in all of creation. There is an argument that Adam and Eve's eating of the apple was not a transgression but rather a gift from God called "free will."* God did not want us to be puppets but to have a choice. God gives this freewill to all of creation. The Mississippi floods because nature has freewill. Homes are lost because we have the freewill to build our homes, towns and cities in floodplains. God is not visiting destruction upon a people. Nature happens. We often contribute to the downfall of our creation and each other. We may become careless as we are absorbed into the worries of daily life. Why is my husband mad at me? What happened to my daughter who was once so loving and why is she involved with drugs? How am I going to pay my doctors' bills now that I've lost my job? My mother, father, brother, sister, child is dying. Life is hard. We become so absorbed in our personal pain and challenge that sometimes we miss seeing each other. To talk of a "rapture" that includes you but not another denies the humanity that clothes your soul. There is a river of denial that runs rampant in our humanity but that is another story on another day. What matters is today.
Whether or not the earth ended today or tomorrow, it does not matter. The loving Creator is in charge and no one on this planet has any say so over that. You were created in love as a gift and blessing. Live your best today. Love your best today. Be kind to your neighbor, your family, your friends, the pets who great you. Let your worries go for just today and be kind to yourself. Smell a flower, look at the sky. Life is precious and you are doing the best that you can. While humanity may not see your struggle, your belief, your faith, God does.
"Whether you are going to sleep or waking up, choose to do it in gratitude. You lived a today. You get a today. You are so lucky!" ~Tricia Huffman
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* God Was in This Place & I, I Did Not Know: Finding Self, Spirituality, and Ultimate Meaning (The Kushner series) by Lawrence Kushner
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