Doom and Gloom
Back in the 1990s I discovered a newspaper that actually brought joy to my heart – it was called Positive News and was jam packed with – surprise, surprise – good news. Mainly, it has to be said, featuring straw bale housing, electric bicycles and communities busily creating their own reed bed sewage systems. I bought subscriptions for friends and family members for some years as it seemed such an original gift idea. One of them eventually begged me to stop the subscription because he found it just too depressing that a newspaper called Positive News was printed only 4 times a year whilst we receive a daily barrage of negative news from so many different newspapers. And these days who can count the ways that news filters through to us: papers still get printed, radios and TVs give us hourly bulletins, we find news websites readily available on our computer and smart phone screens,along with electronic billboards on streets and news screens in shops and banks. And if I had to sum up the main message of the vast majority of this news reporting? Well, it would be something like the title of this address – DOOM AND GLOOM.
I won’t even begin to describe the content of this week’s news reports for you, for sadly I know that you can all do that yourselves. Suffice to say – this world does not seem a particularly happy or peaceful place. And a conversation I’ve had several times this week, without reaching a conclusion, goes something like this. “Are things actually getting worse, as they seem to be doing? Or has it often felt like this in the tumultuous course of human history?” The situation humanity is in seems quite grim, if not for us then for far too many of the world’s inhabitants, and is unlikely to get any better in the foreseeable future.
If we look back in time it does seem that every age and every culture has created myths of catastrophe and destruction, which leads to the question ‘why?’ Why do we humans need to explore, often in gory detail, the end of everything that exists? A psychologist might point out to us a link between our attraction to horror films and crime and thriller writing, scary fairground rides and extreme sports like rock climbing and bungee jumping. They all deliver a bit of an adrenalin rush and we humans can find that quite addictive. A Jungian analyst might explain the importance of myth in keeping our inner and outer worlds in balance. We who are conscious of our own mortality, who know we must die, then explore in the mythical realm the death of everything, the end of the world.
No wonder that so many religions deal with the ‘end times’ as they are called. We heard some verses written by Rabindranath Tagore earlier on in which a god Shiva began his great trance. Hindus believe that the universe has four great ages or Yugas – cycles of creation and destruction, each interspersed with Brahman entering a deep, blissful trance – Brahman the deity that encompasses everything – both animate and inanimate. The three Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam have quite distinctive imagery of the end times, distinctive and shared imagery, which is hardly surprising because the writers of their scriptures had the texts written by earlier generations before them. No wonder then that the Hebrew and Christian holy texts and the Qur’an seem at times to echo one another – no wonder either that some people reading these texts will regard the repetition as a proof that it must be true – because, for example, some of the language used by the prophet Isaiah in the 6th century BC is similar to that used by John the evangelist or whoever actually wrote the last book of the Bible – the Book of Revelation in perhaps 90AD.
And it is the Book of Revelation that we have to thank for much of the imagery that fuels modern day eschatology – as the musing on the end times is known. The Last Judgement when the righteous and the unrighteous shall reap their just rewards, the four horsemen of the apocalypse, the seven seals opened, the seven trumpets sounded, the seven bowls poured out, the seven headed beast – the anti-Christ, the destruction of Babylon, Armageddon. This is powerful stuff, not for the faint hearted. It’s understandable that so much of this imagery has found its way into aspects of our culture, both popular and profound. It is a disturbed and disturbing piece of writing, quite bewildering to read and interpret. Inconsistent, repetitious, with many loose ends – it is supposedly the result of a vision and indeed it has a dreamlike, or nightmare-like quality. Endlessly open to interpretation – and interpreted it has been – pored over by humans who want to prove their own beliefs to be correct. Both Seventh Day Adventists’ and Jehovah’s Witnesses’ faiths are based on this strange biblical text as are the beliefs of many other Christian communities. Yet it is a most unchristlike and unchristian book – none of the gentle ‘love your neighbour and turn the other cheek’ message here. Indeed D H Lawrence described the Book of Revelation as the ‘Judas Iscariot of the New Testament’ (Apocalypse, 1931) perhaps because we can’t help but be fascinated by it yet it sets itself apart, eluding understanding. But what is clear to most Biblical scholars is that the Book of Revelation was written in a specific time for a specific purpose (towards the end of the first century AD and written as a letter to 7 churches in Asia) and that it cannot be regarded as a literal prediction of the future (Oxford Companion to the Bible, John Sweet, pp 653-655) or even taken allegorically.
But it has been taken literally and has been interpreted again and again. The latest efforts to make the sums work came from Harold Camping – leader of Radio Family Worldwide who, as we heard earlier on, in that delightful extract from my colleague Art Lester’s Coffee Table Book of Doom, (which can be borrowed from our church library) predicted that the world would end last October. We laugh and yet might also feel perturbed that thousands of his followers believed Harold Camper and duly sold their possessions. Bookmakers do well out of such predictions. Bookies William Hill had said it would accept bets of any amount at any odds for those wanting to wager on the end of the world.
“We often take bets on the end of the world and we always allow customers to choose their own odds – after all, we don’t have to worry about paying them out,” said Hill’s spokesman Graham Sharpe. “Unless it transpires that there are bookies in the hereafter.”
And it’s perhaps not so surprising that many Christian sects have apocalyptic beliefs because the early Christians gathering together soon after Jesus’ death did believe they were living in the end times. They too sold many of their possessions, they lived communally, they expected Jesus to return in their lifetime. Much of the New Testament we have today was written by the next generation – and this ‘end times’ fervour can still be heard, echoing through the millennia, as they wrote down the words of Jesus’ original followers.
And so here we are in 2012, still alive, but perhaps for not much longer if the Mayans are to be believed. You may have heard of the Mayan Long Count Calendar found carved on the wall of an ancient Mayan building in Mexico. The Mayan culture, which spanned from about 250AD to around 900AD, was in many ways a glorious culture as well as a cruel one. They built elaborate stone buildings and had written texts. They also created sophisticated calendars incorporating the movements of the planets – and to cut a long story short – this Mayan calendar seemingly ends on the winter solstice of the year 2012 – so there’s 9 months to go.
And who knows? Friends who are more environmentally aware than I am seem to be saying that we have already reached and gone beyond a tipping point – that we cannot recover from the environmental degradation we have already inflicted upon our planet earth home. An article I read this week described our current economic approach as ‘disaster capitalism’ – obsessed with growth at the cost of sustainability. Others point out that the planet has perhaps far greater capacity for renewal than humanity has as a species.
I’m particularly impressed with the writings of Joanna Macy, environmental campaigner and Buddhist, writer of many important books and courses. I especially recommend her most recent work on despair and empowerment called The Work That Reconnects. Here are some words of Joanna Macy’s from an online interview.
“Yes, it looks bleak. But you are still alive now. You are alive with all the others, in this present moment. And because the truth is speaking in the work, it unlocks the heart. And there’s such a feeling and experience of adventure. It’s like a trumpet call to a great adventure. In all great adventures there comes a time when the little band of heroes feels totally outnumbered and bleak, like Frodo in Lord of the Rings or Pilgrim in Pilgrim’s Progress. You learn to say “It looks bleak. Big deal, it looks bleak.”
Our little minds think it must be over, but the very fact that we are seeing it is enlivening. And we know we can’t possibly see the whole thing, because we are just one part of a vast interdependent whole–one cell in a larger body. So we don’t take our own perceptions as the ultimate.
This may be the last gasp of life on Earth, and what a great last gasp, if we realize we have fallen in love with each other. If you are really in the moment of experiencing our reality, you don’t say “Oh I won’t experience this because it’s not going to last forever!” You’ve got this moment. It’s true for now.”
So what is a religious liberal to make of all this doom and gloom? Well after a whole week of immersion in this topic this is the best advice I can come up with so far:
• accept that we’re powerless and face our despair about the state of our world.
• don’t allow that despair to paralyse us into doing nothing. Let’s get up and do something, however small, to make this world a better place, every single day.
• let’s monitor our news intake and not allow the media giants to bring us down. Let’s be informed but not stultified.
• take out a subscription to Positive News and visit their website regularly.
• fall in love again with life, here and now, and remember that nothing, literally nothing, lasts forever.
Despite everything this is indeed a wonderful world; despite everything love can warm the coldest of places; despite everything life goes on – fired by passion, inspired by commitment, guided by kindness and quirkiness and all that is human and humane – making life worth living in this sometimes painful, sometimes poignant, sometimes confusing – but still often wonderful world. Amen, go well and blessed be.
Rev. Sarah Tinker
Sermon – 11th March 2012