Don’t we all love a good apocalypse?
In our conversations, our movies, our news, and our shopping, so many of us are captivated by doomsdays. During the 2020 pandemic, how many of us shuttered ourselves in our homes, purchased far more toilet paper and canned goods than we could reasonably consume, and talked about little else?
Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson recently interviewed a historian about “world-ending narratives” and the “global doomsday ethos.” The historian, Niall Ferguson, said anticipating an impending end of the world as we know it “is part of a long tradition” and “exciting to people.”
Peterson called it an adventure, terrifying but thrilling like a science fiction film.
The latest “incarnation” of this doomsday narrative, said Ferguson, is the “catastrophic climate scenario” – in which activists and politicians are trying to convince us the world will end if we don’t all recycle, drive electric cars, and stop eating meat.
In recent years I’ve sensed an increase in people talking about the end of the world. I’ve never before heard so much talk about dumpster fires and seen so many cartoon images of the earth falling apart. Politics. Pandemics. Crime. War. Economics. Climate. It’s all bad news.
The common story we are telling ourselves is that things are world-endingly awful right now. But are they?
Before COVID-19 hit, before firearms were invented, and before Russia or the Middle East were drawn on maps – sin existed. Before any animal went extinct, before double homicides left children orphaned, before drug addiction marred Vancouver streets – human life had been plodding through the mud.
Thanks to Adam and Eve, we have inherited a planet that is already broken. Already on fire. Already populated by sinful people and good people who will all die one day.
Imagine reading the news in Noah’s time. Genesis tells us “the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. So God said to Noah, ‘I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them.’”
Literally only a handful of good people – just Noah and his immediate family – lived on earth. So God told Noah to build a boat, then flooded the planet.
Thankfully, God promised he would never do that again, and as we admire rainbows we can be grateful there is likely more than just one boatful of good people on earth today!
We lament the prevalence of euthanasia, abortion, and the other ways our society justifies throwing away vulnerable people. In many ways the current state of affairs is tragic. Yet what about Herod? He had all boys under 2 years old slaughtered.
We know about Daniel in the lions’ den and Jesus’ crucifixion, but how often have we stopped to think – that was acceptable punishment at the time? Whose sick mind invented that?
Those who lived during world wars, the Holocaust, and other horrific moments may have also considered that their times were truly the worst and close to the end. Nothing has changed. In some ways, this planet has always had an active dumpster fire going. We’ve been at the end of the world since sin entered it.
But the good news is we are Easter people. We have hope. We are celebrating a Jubilee year dedicated to hope. And we have a God who does not leave us on a broken planet.
Lately I’ve been inspired by Joni Eareckson Tada, a woman who was paralyzed from the shoulders down after a diving accident at age 17. In a book called Heaven: Your Real Home, published in 1995, she shares her excitement, wonder, and anticipation of heaven and thoughts on what it could be like. “I’ve been thinking about my heavenly home for years. Naturally, you can understand why. My earthly body doesn’t work. That’s one reason I dream about heaven all the time.”
But a new body is not the only reason she, now 75 years old and having fought Stage 3 breast cancer, looks forward to heaven with overwhelming anticipation.
“The primary reason is far bigger and more cosmic. Someday soon, this present age will pass away. No more will it look as though evil is winning,” she wrote on her blog recently. “When that time comes, the matchless name of Jesus will no longer be maligned or trampled on. Every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. Jesus will destroy sin, death, the devil, and all his hoards. He will judge all evil and obliterate it.”
Tada’s excitement for heaven is contagious.
The drama on earth is heavy and we all have a part to play in it before the curtain closes. Yet, whatever evil we see around us can’t take away our reason for hope. Even when surrounded with sin and tragedy, we can look gleefully toward heaven like children waiting for their birthdays.
Our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ,” writes St. Paul to the Philippians. We’re not called to a slow, sombre march; we are called to eagerness.
This quote is often attributed to Mother Teresa: “In light of heaven, the worst suffering on earth, a life full of the most atrocious tortures on earth, will be seen to be no more serious than one night in an inconvenient hotel.”
We spend a lot of time reading, talking, shopping, and worrying about the end of this earth. How little time we spend thinking about our ultimate end.
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