Hmm...Ike and I just watched "Reign of Fire," a movie based in post-apocalyptic England--an apocalypse brought about by dragons. Okay, not my kind of movie, but oddly riveting (and not just because of Matthew McConaughey. Although he didn't HURT the movie, either.). So I stayed up for it, and it's led me to my most recent revelation for a blog entry.
And speaking of revelations, that's what I'm talking about. Living in a small town that's mostly comprised of Conservative Christians, it seems that I am always surrounded by people who believe the end of the world is imminent. And that this end is coming because the Son of God is returning (apparently to Asheboro first, actually, so I'll be sure to post when I meet him) and his people will go with him while everyone else fights it out in the streets with tattoos on their foreheads...blah, blah, blah.
It's starting to really get to me. This week alone: Ike's client who has calculated the end as coming next year stopped by (incidentally, his math is all wrong); a friend I met for coffee mentioned (when I made fun of aforementioned client) that, "well, you know it IS coming soon..."; and...a woman who works with me in the YMCA nursery told me that she doesn't think we should save the rainforests or be kind to animals because (and I swear to you I'm quoting verbatim when I write this) "the Lord is coming back soon anyway and we won't have to worry about it."
And it's always in these casual conversations I hear. Right after the Sept. 11th attacks, I overheard, "Well, there are signs everywhere, aren't there?" I read about it on church signs. (If you've never been to Asheboro, I should tell you that there's a church on every street corner. First Prebyterian here lost members back in the Spring when a tornado hit town. It only destroyed parts of the mall and the STEEPLE of First Pres toppled. That, of course, was a SIGN of the END. First Baptist had a sudden rise in membership.) It's everywhere.
Okay. Okay, am I alone in thinking that these people are wacko? Is it because I haven't read that damn Left Behind series? Maybe I just don't get it.
I certainly don't want to insult someone's faith, but as this is MY blog, I'll say what I think. I think this need to believe the end is nigh comes from a lack of lust for life. I think it comes from a need to believe that while your life might be terrible, you don't need to fix it because Jesus will. I think it comes from a place of fear. I also think it comes from laziness: like my co-worker pointed out, if the world is ending anyway, we can do whatever the hell we want to the environment--it won't matter. Hmm, someone should point that out to the President, since he has such moral issues over drilling in wilderness reserves...('at's a joke, there)
Why be afraid of living a full life? Why be afraid that you might be wrong? (As may I, of course, in which case the sooner the end comes, the sooner we can stop paying off credit card debt. Hey...I have this friend named Tyler who thinks that we could level the playing field of life if we got rid of credit card companies and blew up...oh, that's a different post.
At any rate, I can't quite articulate it, but I am troubled by this insistence that the end is coming. This obsession with when, where, why and how.
The Left Behind series currently has 11 novels. There's a movie and a children's series. When I look up "Left Behind" on Yahoo!, I find tons and tons of end-of-times web sites.
But I take heart. When all those crazy people leave with their "rapture," the rest of us can finally stop hearing about it.
Posted by Becky at July 11, 2003 01:25 AM