by Rod Amis
ESCHATOLOGY - Rod Amis's introductory post for his August project asks why Christians desire the end of the world.
1 August 2006: One has to wonder about Christians.
As a Religion major at a university in Connecticut founded by John Wesley, I studied the topic in order to ascertain why people believe what they believe. Thirty years on, I still don't have a clue.
For example, it concerns me that if most evangelical Christians - as they claim - take the Bible literally, they must know that only 144,000 of the humans living on this planet (of six billion) today - PLUS all the dead of centuries past - are worthy to ascend into Heaven. That's what the book says, literally.
So why recruit more converts who, likely, won't make the cut?
Alright, maybe, just maybe, the roll has not been filled and mister or mizz number one hundred and forty thousand hasn't actually been born yet.
But isn't that a crapshoot?
It seems to me that last worthy person might have been born in 1846 A.D. and all of us born after that particular date are doomed to perdition. Logic would suggest as much or more, since that arbitrary number was put in the Bible by "Divine inspiration" almost two thousand years ago.
Being a literalist myself, but of the agnostic ilk, I have to press the point.
That point being made, and with the "buzz" of the current war in the Middle East inspiring the LeHaye set to believe that we shall soon see Armageddon, the sky cracking open like tin-foil when Jesus comes back on his flaming white chariot, and The Rapture occurring, I mean to talk about "the End Time," the much-vaunted Eschaton.
I have to suppose that we humans are hard-wired to believe that time, our lives, the existence of the Earth, must come to an end. After all, we die.
Psychologists say that suicidals believe that ending themselves also ends the world, much like a child believing that closing his/her eyes makes them invisible.
That childish delusion is, as we all know as adults, untrue.
I would posit that the belief in the eschaton, the "end times," presented by most religions is also untrue and delusional.
While many on the religious right in the United States (remember James Watt, Reagan's Secretary of the Interior, claiming publicly that we did not need to worry about forests because Jesus was coming any day now?) believe that a climactic war in the Middle East will bring their Messiah down from the sky, I doubt that it will.
All another war in the Middle East portends is more poor dead women and children. Women and children always suffer from the policies of great nations. Of this we can be assured.
Just as women and children were the victims of the Clinton "welfare reform," they are always and inevitably the victims of any armed conflict.
Childless Condoleeza Rice, of course, doesn't feel the pain. For her it is as much realpolitik as it was for Henry Kissinger or Madeline Albright, the latter who could publicly proclaim that the deaths of Iraqi children was "worth the price." Heartlessness, it seems, goes with being an American Secretary of State.
But I digress. Let us get back to the "end of history," as Fukayama wanted to put it, or the "end of time," as the Essenes, contemporaries of the Christian lord, would have had it.
It did not happen for either of my references, which leads Your Interlocutor to believe it won't happen for us. Wait for the sun to explode, is my advice. That will happen, inevitably, a few million years from now.
Yes, it is logical that - if we keep along our current path - the planet will be unable to sustain much life, including human life. The blue marble will still be here, possibly browner, and only the cockroaches, that most adaptable of species, will survive.
But I don't think that the eschaton that most religious people are counting on will be our end. No Rapture involved, only simple extinction.
The astute reader might note that the title of this latest project is based on a catechism. I simply chose to exclude the word "Amen."
More will be said about that omission as this project progresses.
IF you have bothered to indulge my other projects, you know by now that I tend to be tricky and jocular. Fasten your seatbelt on this one.
Update: You can see what I mean here. (The Paul Zahn clip is particularly informative.)Again: Good night and good luck.
World Without End Post Two: Other Necros
World Without End Post Three: The Mahdi
World Without End Post Four: The Messiah
World Without End Post Five: End of Days
World Without End Post Six: Dance of Death
World Without End Post Seven: Faith & Reason
G21: The World's Magazine
Rod's First Project at the Huffington Post
Rod's Second Project at the Huffington Post
Rod's Third Project at the Huffington Post
© 2006, Rod Amis.
E-mail your comments to rod@g21.net.
