If you knew the world would end in six months, how would you spend your time? (Serendipity Bible 10th Anniversary Edition, page 659).
I
would first like to expand this question so that it's not only me who
knows the world will end in six months, but that everyone on earth
knows it. And they know it with complete certainty. This necessitates
some huge impending catastrophic event – say, a fast approaching
cloud of space debris. The key element here is total and complete
credibility – there is absolutely no question raised by anyone that
any other possibility exists.
With
this in mind the impact upon the congregate human psyche is awesome
to contemplate. Much in our economy, for example, presumes
continuance. I guard my credit score because I assume that sometime
in the future I might need it. An institution is willing to extend me
credit because it presumes continuance. All of our schools and
educational facilities presume long-term continuance. Our system of
justice and criminal law assumes long-term continuance – without it
a minor infraction will have the same practical result in terms of
jail time as a capital offense. No sentence will be longer than six
months. In the story of the grasshopper and ants, the ants work to
store up food for the winter. If there is no winter to store up for,
will we all become pleasure-seeking grasshoppers? And what would
become of ancient rivalries such as the Arab-Israeli conflict?
Clearly,
the basic question is - will such an inevitable catastrophe function
to ennoble humanity or debase it? Will the disciplines of love and
light (patience, kindness, goodness, self-control, carefulness,
generosity, lawfulness, virtue, focus on the eternal) predominate or
with the disciplines of hate and darkness (impatience, meanness,
carelessness, selfishness, lawlessness, reductionism,
shortsightedness)? When the unthinkable becomes thinkable and
perception thereby profoundly changed, will the better angels of our
nature outnumber the demons? Will we live up or live down to the
inexorable approach of the last moment? I suppose the best place to
start in answering such questions is to look to our own homes and our
own hearts. But in the end I greatly fear some likely consequences –
rioting, looting, violence. Doomsday could well tear us apart and not
bring us together. There will be great temptation to focus on the
moment and not the eternal – which, unlike the approaching
catastrophe, is not guaranteed except by faith.
