The End of the World

According to Harold Camping, in Oakland, the world was scheduled to end today.  But it appears the the sun will rise on a new day tomorrow and I will wake up with the same worries and concerns, blessings and joys, frustrations and stresses, commitments and obligations that I have today.  On the surface of his fanatical pronouncement I want so badly to deride him and his followers, lay ridicule at their feet, and allow my cynicism and sarcasm to land firmly on their fanatical devotion to an event that is impossible to predict.  As I prepare my barrage I find that I can not bring myself to make fun, in fact, I can hardly bring myself to dignify them with a response of any sort except a measure of pity at their desperation.  I can only believe that people would succumb to such madness out of a desperate need to escape lives of poverty, shallowness, or lies and therein we, who believe to have our feet a little more firmly on the ground, should show a little grace and ask ourselves the last time we acted on devotion and principal contrary to popular wisdom of our culture and peers.

For me it is easy to see where blind devotion comes from, the rise of fanatics and idealists.  I feel that people are desperate for peace in their lives, blindly devoted to literal readings of scripture and eager for judgment and vindication for their beliefs and lives of devotion.  Look out the window the next time you are driving through a urban sprawl, the freeway is littered with lewd posters and promises of vice.  T.V. is ripe with sex and violence and messages of self-indulgence.  The world around us is an anything goes world and is contrary to nearly everything a person like Camping or his devotees would believe.

To the mockers and doubters and cynics, myself included, is there anything wrong with believing something so deeply?  How about us, Christians, doesn't this compel you so look a little deeper at your beliefs?  These people are devoted, how ever misguided, to what they believe, whole heatedly.  Their devotion is misplaced and their focus on the the end is contrary to the call, I believe, of Christ.  However, their devotion has to be admired to some degree and their longing for a better life can not be overlooked.

Our culture is a collage of lies and empty promises and we lead lives of compromise and fear.  We travel through life alternately believing in peace and hate and love and war and darkness and light and at some point we are confronted by our demons and comforted by our angels.

I don't believe in Camping's prediction and I pity his followers, to place so much hope in something so obviously flawed is the epitome and desperation and ignorance.  Tomorrow will bring a new day and I fully expect to wake up in my bed, next to my wife, by my children to rise again to the challenges of life and to do the best I can with what I have at hand.  That is all any of us can do.  There is no predicting the end of the world, there is living today, living tomorrow, living the day after that and so on.