The End of Time

Turn on any religious programming in this country and you'll hear about the fact that we're supposedly in the End Times.  For a long time I kind of agreed with the whole concept, because if we're attuned to the general mood of the planet, it seems like we're definitely hitting a critical point.  But then I thought about it some more and realized there have got to be many, many other times in human history when people thought The End was near....World Wars I and II, the time of The Plague, and when the Christians were being hunted and exterminated by the Romans (in that sense, they were the original End Times believers).  There were people in all of these eras who were just as positive as your average Texas Evangelical that God was about to call the game and bring everybody home.


But I have this theory that our belief about the end of the world ties in directly to how livable our current environment is.  As an example, one pretty well-known and well-educated pastor who believes in End Time theology -- Pastor Steve Hadley -- runs a ministry based out of Reno, Nevada.  I just got back from Reno and I'm telling you, if I lived there, I'd be convinced the world was ending soon, too.  It's a hard town to exist in, and there's a dark undercurrent that seems to pulsate through the entire place.


I felt a little that way in my former home in the San Joaquin Valley.  Most days in the year, the air is dirty and not healthy to breathe.  Gangs are gaining ground rapidly, and unemployment,  poverty, bad health and poor health habits are the norm.  It is truly the appalachia of the west in many ways.  And when you live in a place like that, the idea that at any moment you're going to be plucked up and deposited in Heaven is extremely appealing.  Just like it is in Reno, in the midst of WWII, or watching your village be wiped out by the plague back in the 1300s.


But now I live in an area where the air is clean and healthy to breathe, where people take pride in keeping their community a place people will want to come to, and where the population tends to have a higher level of education.  It's not a perfect place, but it's at least a place where there's plenty of hope and reasons to be optimistic. And the idea that we're at the end of everything is not one which seems to have much traction.  I live in a place that's pretty unspoiled -- God's Country, so to speak -- so instead of feeling the fingers of the apocalypse grasping my surroundings, instead I see the reflection of heaven, and it gives me hope.


Yet the sad thing is, in spite of, or perhaps because of all the beauty and loveliness that surrounds us, people seem to be less involved in their faith here (whatever form that faith takes).  I don't notice that people are any kinder, any more relaxed, or more caring of their fellow man here than where I came from.  In fact in some ways people here are more self-involved and less likely to greet a stranger or offer a simple kindness.  


And I wonder:  Do they appreciate the tremendous gift they've been given in being allowed to live among such loveliness?  Or can they literally not see it because they're so used to it?  This place is a lot like the one most End Times believers want most desperately to see, but feel they need to get beamed up in order to do so. No, this is not Heaven.  It's just a lovely, lovely place to live on earth.  


But that should generate as much faith and gratitude as anything I can imagine, and it's curious that among many who dwell here, it does not.


Kinda sad.