And in the End…

Imagine a Thanksgiving dinner where the dish that received the most attention was the cranberry sauce. It’s funny how we set priorities. We all know the turkey is the main dish, but the other side dishes are important too. But we spend all our time before Thanksgiving telling turkey jokes and reading turkey cartoons. Nobody much tells cranberry jokes. That’s just attaching too much importance to something that isn’t that central to the event. As a matter of fact, I don’t even like cranberries, so I don’t even eat the damn stuff. We do focus on some weird things in politics. A few years ago Howard Dean ran a pretty good campaign, but people chose to focus on one primary where he was a little over-enthusiastic and that was the end of his presidential run. Sometimes some people focus on some weird stuff.

The whole purpose of religion is to answer some of those universal questions for us, like why we’re here and from whence we came, which they all do a terrible job of doing, and to help us learn how to live in harmony with the universe and nature, which they are pretty good at doing, but to which few people pay much attention. I can certainly understand why a lot people might say we don’t need religions at all. It’s just that religions DO have some very good advice for how to live in unity with the creative spirit in them, hidden among all the bullshit, and without them you end up inventing the wheel over again. It’s good to take advantage of several thousand years of human experience with the search for God, or whatever you want to call that energy. Some people like to use religion like a Magic Eight Ball to tell them what to do when they would rather not think about things. Others want to turn the Bible into their daily horoscope to tell them the future, like some multi-thousand-page fortune out of a fortune cookie. Which brings us to the end of the world.

There has been a good deal of talk lately all about 2012.  Even NASA recently felt obliged to address the issue.  Most credible scientists have officially gone on the record to say that the world will NOT come to an end in 2012.  Of course, they don’t know.  I mean, it could.  But then, it could come to an end before you finish reading this little bit of wisdom also.  You can’t turn on the various science and history channels without coming upon some documentary about Nostradamus.  And when times are as bad as these, I guess it’s natural to feel as though the world, or at least the world as we know it, is coming to an end.  I mean, how long can it go on like this?  I guess that’s why a lot of religious fundamentalists are thumping their bibles and telling us the end is near.

Yes, the Bible, Old and New Testament alike talk about the apocalypse. Most notably, the prophet Daniel and John, the writer of the New Testament book of Revelations, wrote at some length on the subject. One read of either of these books will convince you that those guys must have had some good drugs, or something. Maybe they did have visions. Daniel was able to accurately predict the fall of the Babylonians and mentioned their King, Xerxes, by name, hundreds of years before the event actually happened.

But then, Edgar Cayce was quite accurate in his predictions in the early twentieth century also. Nobody ever compiled his predictions and made a holy book out of them. And Edgar Cayce predicted the end of the world, too. But, more to the point, Christianity does look to a day when Jesus is supposed to return to the earth and set up a kingdom here. It points to an ultimate day of judgment and the creation of a new earth.

This is not uncommon in religions. Naturally, all stemming from the same roots, Judaism and Islam also have this image. The ancient Mayan civilization spoke about the same event. Many Native American Indians made the same predictions. So did Nostradamus and Edgar Cayce, among other famous psychics. And I suppose we all know that there has to be some end to the world as we know it. Science tells us that. If it doesn’t end in a meteor strike or from climactic change, it will end when the sun becomes a red giant having exhausted its supply of hydrogen just before it becomes a white dwarf. Maybe we would just prefer that the end come in some kind of organized way, instead of some random happening or eventual deterioration. Jesus himself did not speak a great deal about the end of the world as such, although he did mention it.

One day when Jesus and his homies were leaving the temple area his disciples looked around and started talking about the impressive temple buildings. Jesus told them to remember that one day these buildings will be in ruins, nothing but a bunch of overturned stones. What he was doing here was reminding them that everything on earth changes and to not be too impressed by artificial things. But they got wrapped up in this end of the world talk, as we all do. Who DOESN’T watch those documentaries about the end of the world on the Discovery channel? Anyway, they go up on the Mount of Olives to hang out and the disciples start asking Jesus about the end of the world.

Jesus tells them that when the end of the world comes, it will be a nasty event indeed. He tells them things will be worse than the earth has ever seen, and he sets about to describe the moon and sun no longer shining (sort of like a nuclear winter, I mention in passing). He tells them that before the end come there will be earthquakes and wars and rumors of wars, but that they should not pay much attention to those things because those things just happen and always will. His primary warning is over what is going to become of them. He tells them that they will be persecuted. He says that the government will go after them because of what they preach. He says family members will turn on other family members. Fathers will hand over their sons. He says they will be beaten and killed all because of the message they are teaching. And he tells them that if they hang in there to the end, everything will be okay. And he makes a special point of telling them that nobody knows, or WILL know when this is going to happen, so don’t dwell on it.

Jesus understood that the message wasn’t about how the world was going to die, or even how we, individually, or going to die. The message is about how to live. Yes, there is going to be an end of the world. There is going to be an end of the world for all of us. Because when we finally take that terminal breath, it’s the end of the world for us. Each of us has our own, personalized end of the world. We call it death. And few of us know when that is going to happen.

This is what Jesus has to say about it in the Gospel According to Mark:

Jesus said to his disciples:
“In those days after that tribulation
the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light,
and the stars will be falling from the sky,
and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.

“And then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in the clouds’
with great power and glory,
and then he will send out the angels
and gather his elect from the four winds,
from the end of the earth to the end of the sky.

“Learn a lesson from the fig tree.
When its branch becomes tender and sprouts leaves,
you know that summer is near.
In the same way, when you see these things happening,
know that he is near, at the gates.
Amen, I say to you,
this generation will not pass away
until all these things have taken place.
Heaven and earth will pass away,
but my words will not pass away.

“But of that day or hour, no one knows,
neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” (Mark, Chapter 13)

Now of course, these gospels were all written when Christians were going through periods of great persecution.  The writers were clearly trying to comfort people who were going through tough times and assure them that everything is going to be okay if they just hold onto their faith.  But then, there is the gentle reminder from Jesus.  Don’t spend too much time dwelling on when that end of the world is coming because nobody, not even he, knows when it is coming.  In other words, go about your life.  It’ll happen when it happens.

The message of John the Baptist (who is also worshiped by some folks) and Jesus was to repent—literally, to change our way of thinking, to change the way we see the world.  Life isn’t about following rules and worrying about death.  Jesus came to prove that death wasn’t something to fear.  Life is about loving and sharing and serving and giving.  Life is about being the hands of God on earth, reaching out to one another.  Jesus called upon us to stop our worrying about getting by and that the key to true happiness was in seeing the divine in one another and loving one another.

Because of the message of repentance, the idea that it is never too late to change your life, that you can always bring your life into harmony with the Tao, some people seem to think that if they could just figure out when the end is coming, they can live their lives ignoring spiritual issues until that last minute, and then change their lives just before the end. That’s like thinking that if only I knew which French fry was going to give me that heart attack I can continue to eat them until just before that happens and then change my eating habits. So people kind of want to know when the end is coming. And Jesus kept telling them that that just wasn’t the point. Nobody knows when the end is coming so quit dwelling on it. Spend your time thinking about how you live. Live out the message of love and faith and live it out until the end of YOUR world and you’ll be all right.

What is sad is that some of the evangelical fundamentalists (and I do mean some-not all) don’t seem to trust the good Lord to be able to pull off the apocalypse on His own, so they want to try to help it along it little. I get the feeling sometimes that is what some people in our government are trying to do. I remember when I was a kid I got a fortune in a fortune cookie that predicted I was going to receive a gift. And I nagged my parents endlessly until they got it for me. Then I marveled over how the fortune came true. Let’s hope our leaders are not trying to make their understanding of those ancient prophecies come true. After all, theirs is only ONE interpretation of those prophecies. Many scholars believe those prophesies already came to pass in ancient Rome.

I don’t even think that Jesus was giving us a prophecy about the end times. I think Jesus just knew that if you go about preaching his message of love, faith, and forgiveness that people are going to come down on you. He knew they were going to come down on him and he expected nothing less for his followers. And by and large, he was right. People who preach that message inevitably end up being persecuted. Look at Ghandi. Look at Martin Luther King, Jr. The Quakers have been persecuted terribly during times of war. And people don’t like it when you’re non-materialistic. They think there is something weird about you. Let’s face it, people admire Holy Men, but they don’t get invited out much. We admire them; we don’t want to hang around them. He was simply telling his followers what they could expect from society, and that just because they saw a bunch of wars and famines and bad shit, that didn’t mean the world was about to end because nobody knows when that’s going to happen, not even himself.

So we shouldn’t spend too much time dwelling on the end of the world. Yes, Jesus does talk about it, and it is a part of the Bible. But to focus on the apocalypse is to miss the point of the teachings. Jesus didn’t come to teach us about how our lives will end. He came to teach us how to begin to live.