“NASA Predicts Collapse of Civilization”
This story went viral and so will continue to go viral via Facebook repackaged by the Facebook targeted virus makers. It gets hosed by more careful and less ambitious sources but the dynamic is instructive.
Who Do We Believe?
If NASA puts out a report like this, we listen. Contrary to rumors of its demise authority is not dead. We have an implicit and instinctive sense of who to listen to, who to pay attention to in many of our different social contexts. We have an active and hierarchical relational economy regardless of our egalitarian posings.
If NASA says that civilization will collapse in 15 years based on “scientific” models we pay attention. Their circle of influence is far broader than Harold Camping’s.
I first saw the Facebook viral piece via an atheist friend on Facebook. How did she read it? I can guess how she received Harold Camping’s warning a few years ago.
The End of the World As We Know It
When I was young I remember hearing older Christians say things like “I think Jesus will come again soon. I don’t imagine how much longer the world can go on.”
This was during the Cold War. As a boy I didn’t feel the same. I felt that things could keep going, they seemed to be going OK. I knew about the Cold War. I read stories on the US and Soviet stockpiles. I remember some dreams I had as a kid about “the bomb” hitting NYC and me figuring out (in my boyish imagination) how I’d respond to such a catastrophe. On the whole, however, apart from worrying that Jesus might come while I’m in the bath and having to meet him “in the air” in my birthday suit I was pretty relaxed about it. I even remember praying fervently for his return before book report due dates at school because I was so desperately behind.
I do wonder, however, if our contemporary angst, not so much over nuclear war but over environmental catastrophe isn’t just as great? Or is it because I’m not older?
Movies, TV shows, all seem to imagine Zombie apocalypse, robot apocalypse, invasion from outer space, but mostly the fear that we’re cooking the planet and we won’t have the political will or consensus to avoid destroying the fragile biological systems that our personal and social biological systems rely upon. While NASA hasn’t really forecast the collapse of civilization within 15 years NASA and other governmental organizations have highlighted how the impact of global warming and future shortages of fresh water and petroleum will likely cause crises and political instabilities that will only exacerbate our natural tendency for the strong to live at the expense of the weak and the poor. Even if THIS report is inaccurate or overblown the long term picture is worrisome and the facile hope that “we’ll discover some new technology to save our butts from _____________” is a secular-faith-based hope.
“Apocalypse” in Isaiah
I have a personal beef with how we use the word “Apocalypse” because in the secular vernacular it has come to mean “the end of civilization as we know it”. It is borrowed from the biblical book named “Apocalypse” which is of course the book of Revelation which is the revelation of Jesus Christ. Jesus fails to get mentioned and the word simply means a dark and horrible future which is of course not how the book of Revelation ends.
I spent 75 weeks in the book of Revelation in my Sunday School class a few years ago. It is really an amazing book. It is too quickly embraced and dismissed as a “future telling” book. What it is, in my opinion, is John’s attempt to update the book of Old Testament prophesy in the light of the revelation of Jesus Christ. As my Sunday School class now studies the book of Isaiah, which has a far less flashy reputation, they often express how similar Isaiah really is to Revelation.
Isaiah 34
Isaiah 34 isn’t atypical from a lot of what you will find in the book. It is a passage that mostly speaks judgment against “the nations”. Isaiah does a lot of this, and Israel and Judah are by no means spared.
Christians can sometimes get touchy and defensive about atheist complaints regarding the blood thirsty god of the Old Testament but if you’re a secular person reading this you might agree they have a point.
Edom gets called out in this passage. A commentary will note that Edom sided with Assyria against Judah’s king Hezekiah making her a target of this oracle. The history between Edom and Israel was never smooth as understood in the stories of Isaac, Jacob and Esau.
An Offensive Personal God verses Distributed Blame
God’s hostility and destruction even in Isaiah is universalized.
The LORD is angry with all nations; his wrath is on all their armies. He will totally destroy them, he will give them over to slaughter. Their slain will be thrown out, their dead bodies will stink; the mountains will be soaked with blood.
Isaiah 34:2-3 (NIV)
This offense us because Yhwh is a person. He chooses to do this. We judge him for it.
If, however, the earth is laid bare and destroyed because WE have squandered her resources for our pleasure and security. We have used our military might to insure the elite, the wealthy and the powerful have food and entertainments to spare while the poor are sold for less then a pair of shoes.
We might say “this is wrong” but we don’t do much about it as individuals partly knowing that most of the moral gestures like posting a picture on Facebook or Twitter, choosing a brand of coffee with a frog on it, or voting for one party of the other isn’t doing much to change the long, downward spiral we are anxious about.
We imagine if we (and our friends and frenemies) were more anxious we would do enough to save ourselves but the truth is we are so used to soothing our anxieties with the very things destroying the planet that pumping up anxiety really just makes things worse. Uh oh.
So we more easily turn to blame. Blame the religious. Blame the irreligious. Blame the Democrats. Blame the Republicans. Blame the Russians. Blame the Muslims. Blame God. Blame the gods. Blame the neglect or absence of God or the gods.
We seriously believe that if I, and people who agree with me were in charge, had enough power, had control, then we would make things turn out OK.
Isaiah 35
As is true, however of Isaiah (and Revelation) “Apocalypse” is both destruction and restoration in the same movement.
The desert thrives, the weak are strengthened, the hurts are tended to and justice is done.
This is the part we like of course. If we’re going to have a god this is what we want him or her to do.
Anxious About the Good Bits Too
Marx and others might of course be anxious about this as well. Does finding solace in Isaiah 35 blunt the religious from the activism needed to save the world? I hear this subtext often in blogs, tweets, books and sermons from the religious and irreligious. If passages like Isaiah 34 are offensive and dangerous because they encourage violent and religious tribalism by encouraging people to mirror a violent god, then chapter 35 is dangerous because it makes the religious complacent and lazy and keeps them from contributing what they might be able to do if wisely directly by, again, the likes of me and those who agree with my solutions. What we rally need is good old fashioned guilting and “consciousness raising” and … you know the drill.
Misery
So this week the mainstream media and social networking pleas were finally heard by the Government in who we both trust and distrust. Obama will send in a team to help find the Nigerian girls. I imagine ourselves as some great benevolent eye of Sauron that has now turned its gaze to Nigeria to rescue. We are animated by an imaginative narrative, variated by a thousand different movie of some nice American-English speaking capable person descending into Africa (darkest Africa…) to connect with the dark, oh I mean the poor, to bring light, to rescue, to save, to illuminate… Oh, I thought we put colonialism and “the white man’s burden” behind us…
The situation in Nigeria will of course be found to be far more complex than the hashtagged signs of celebrities that we’ve been posting. Some girls will be saved. Some girls will be lost. These will only be the most celebrated crimes of this particular group but there will be more groups, more crimes, more killings, etc. At some levels improvements will be made. At other levels achievements will be lost. The larger narratives and forces that make Nigeria how it is, Africa how it is, Asia how it is, Europe and America how they are will continue. It will all be far too large and complex to be seen by our great eye and far too large and complex to be governed by the power we imagine we frustratingly wield.
Am I being pessimistic? Escapist? Realistic?
While there is no doubt that humanity governs the fate of the world to a degree far larger than at any time before, we cannot even govern ourselves. This is seems strangely familiar to any astute Bible reader.
Deliverance
A very abridged summary of the Biblical story is that God rescues the world and the apocalypse of Jesus is a great conclusion and the beginning of greater glory. This glory comes from heaven, into our story and it works through our story.
Is this story true? People of course take different positions on it. The message of the church says it is.
In the resurrected body of Jesus Christ the world sees its future flesh.
Gratitude
The church says that the Christian life begins here, after the new beginning of the world in Easter’s empty tomb, presently still sharing the stage with environmental devastation and the ongoing abuse of the weak and the innocent. These were the kinds of sins that provoked Yhwh to threatening to lay waste to the world, perhaps to beat us to the punch. These apocalyptic visions were always paired with visions of restoration through resurrection. In Jesus’ pierced undecaying hands the church finds motivation to hope.
Fear breeds anxiety and anxiety induces escapism as much as action. Gratitude inspires optimism and optimism can also motivate action.
Gratitude in the age of decay is not naive. It knows that most of what we do will fall short but it doesn’t then slide into escapism and self-indulgence. I think I prefer grateful trying over anxious striving.
Gratitude also implies freedom. I can freely “follow the frog” and ask the governments of the world to do their job better. Their failures also won’t crush me or drive me to despair.
I can also find solace in Isaiah 35 when my frog following attempts fall short or are revealed to be some kind of manipulative environmental marketing scheme by multi-nationals that only really care about the profits reported to their share holders.
Even in this moment in my newsy world I will continue to hope and trust and pray and believe.
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