Vestibule of the Apocalypse

To the same degree that conspiracy theories, gaslighting propaganda, and political spin dominates our cultural discourse – a proportional disenchantment and distrust begins to settle over every cultural institution. This is because people have become convinced that the whole thing has gone off the rails, imagining it to be in a state of free fall, plummeting towards some unavoidable calamitous appointment with destiny. So even though T.S. Elliot already told us that the world does not end with a bang, but a whimper – we all seem eager to try our hand at apocalyptic prognostication . . . truly a first world obsession.

It would seem, if cultural anxiety and hysteria is to be believed, that I have spent my entire life waiting in the vestibule of the Apocalypse – where we’re all waiting to make our final descent into our last moments before judgement day, where the shame of our folly and arrogance await us. Well, except for those who tried to warn us all of the impending doom – they get the smug satisfaction of being prophetically astute as they too are lowered into the abyss with the rest of us. But given that we’re awash in thousands of doomsday scenarios – it’s hard to say which one of them will actually win the soothsayers lottery of cataclysmic events.

One of the benefits of growing as old as I have, is you live long enough to pick-up on all of the reoccurring patterns in the cultural narrative – like how every generation seems eager to tell its own story of how the world will end. All that’s needed is a half plausible threat as a prompt, and anxious fear will take it from there – finding every reason to extrapolate the least bit of evidence into a full blown crisis. In my day it was over-population, nuclear annihilation, and an imminent ice age – since then, it’s been global warming, emerging viral pathogens, and economic collapse. So it’s no surprise that we incessantly rehearse our fear of the future in the dystopic fiction of the books and movies we consume.

It’s important to note that there’s always a religious fervor associated with such phobic predictions – because suspended disbelief is required if their dark foretelling of the future is to be accepted as inevitable. In this way religious cults and progressive social movements share the same ethos, language, and expectation that our unbridled fears should be allowed to write the story of our future demise. Because the agreed upon assumption here is that we are all at odds with our own existence, and that we can somehow create the illusion of controlling the outcome of this alienation if we’re willing to anticipate the worst. This is beyond pessimism – this is like buying stock in hell, because the fire insurance premium was discounted to half price.

Interestingly enough, the meaning of the word apocalypse has nothing to do with some world ending cataclysm – but rather, an apocalypse is a revealing of what’s been hidden, of what is true about what already exists. And the truth is that Christ is already “ . . . the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” (Revelation 22:13). It is this very timelessness of Jesus that defines the Christian understanding of the future. Our hope isn’t found in the tedious details of how we think it all ends – our hope is in the God who transcends time, and holds our future in his hand.

It’s always best to remember — it will only be this way a little longer

A Political Apocalypse

Having crossed over the tipping point of our post-modern dystopia, where rational thought is currently being held hostage to the existential pronouncements of the culturally enlightened – the reinvention of the world has begun in earnest. Having already expelled every notion of the transcendent, the new religious zealots of the politically motivated, are now regularly found worshipping at the altar of self-existence, where the manipulation of language is the liturgy, and the insinuation of violence is a sacrament.

This is because political dogma has been reimagined as faith confession, where the faithful have been called to denounce everything that fails to measure up to the ever moving target of partisan conformity. This is clearly a political apocalypse, as we watch the mask of pretense fall, revealing the sinister intent of those seeking to control our cultural narrative. And whereas this has always been the ugly truth about politics, our current post-modern malaise has exposed just how dark the vain imaginings of men can be—making these political power struggles even more palpable, until the noxious fumes of unscrupulous fear-mongering has overtaken every public discourse.

The two most conspicuous political philosophies competing for our allegiance are individualism and collectivism – each assuming it should have unquestioned moral authority . . . and each one imagines the image of man to be self-defining. Individualism declares that all that I am, all that I have, and all that I do — belongs to me. Collectivism declares that all that I am, all that I have, and all that I do — belongs to the collective. And while both of these are clearly at odds with each other – they are also in direct opposition to the native ethos of the Christian faith, which declares that all that I am, all that I have, and all that I do — belongs to God.

No doubt this is why I have always felt uneasy with political rhetoric – as such rhetoric invariably assumes an ownership that I simply can’t agree with . . . because ownership is essentially at the very core of every political debate. In this way, ownership and authority go hand in hand – because you don’t actually own what you can’t control. So when we entertain political ideas that obfuscate God’s ownership of us, then we are actually practicing a form of idolatry – worshipping a god of our own making . . . one we have made in our own image.

When Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10: 25-37) I am struck by four things – (1) My love for God finds its best expression in my love of my neighbor (see also 1 John 4:19-21). (2) He does not use a collectivist’s example for how the needy among us are to be addressed, (3) but neither does he give the Samaritan the individualist’s option of ignoring his obligation to care for (love) his neighbor. And (4) Jesus deliberately uses a Samaritan while speaking to a Jewish audience knowing that the Jews looked down on Samaritans, seeing them as both religious and political rivals. This last point for me illustrates just how easily we can become contentious with one another, keeping us from loving God and each other as we should . . . which, of course, is why Jesus tells this story in the first place.

. . . so let us pray God’s Kingdom come.