Those listening to radio one morning last week might have picked up a conversation on local Christian radio station Sonshine FM in Perth about signs of the end. Sort of.
Fires, floods, cyclones and earthquakes have all been prominent in the news lately in Australia and it appears that the rapid succession of natural disasters in Australia’s backyard and close to us has some wondering whether there might not be something more to the natural phenomena which have grabbed our collective attention in the last eight weeks. Given the number and size of nature’s demonstrations, and the fact that they have affected thousands here in Australia and New Zealand (often tragically), it is in a certain way understandable that some people begin to add two and two, only to conclude that these potentially equal Signs of The End.
The conversation was not only quite interesting, it was exactly the kind of discussion you might hear on any normal mainstream morning drive-time radio broadcast anywhere in the world at this time in history. It was also interesting insofar as it discussed what some people, especially some Christians, may be wondering in the community.
Although Australia is, on the surface, a rapidly secularising post-Christian society, numerous Australians of no particular faith still vaguely remember somewhere deep in their consciences that Christianity is a religion that also talks about something called the End Times. Many people are still vaguely conscious that Christianity is something to do with a time that will come involving some kind of Judgement, a lot of suffering and the return of Christ to the Earth. Somewhere in there, they also recall, there is mention of fires, floods, earthquakes and famines. One suspects that the rush of recent natural disasters has even got some in society looking slightly more nervously over their shoulders than they normally might when it comes to the issue of God’s existence.
It was, in the opinion of this editorial, also a good on-air interview. Neither interviewer nor subject showed any inclination to favour or take advantage of the interpretation of natural-phenomena-as-signs-that-God-is-around-the-corner; the conclusion of the interview was that the really important thing for people to understand is that God is always in control. Worrying about the end of the world serves no purpose at all. Some Christians and pseudo-Christians, however, have certainly been tempted by the idea that the end of the world is nigh. There really is a tendency among some to look nervously at natural disaster and see the hand of God. Numerous sects have confidently predicted The End of Life as We Know It on the basis of their own particular interpretations of various scriptural passages and have even given times and dates for when this would occur. But, as this editorial was being written, none of these had, as yet, come true.
Some Catholics have also, at times, been just as susceptible as their non-Catholic Christian brothers and sisters to this outlook but those who have worried about the end of the world have tended to do it in a typically Catholic way, introducing the Blessed Virgin Mary, the antichrist, the Rosary, blessed medals, holy water, statues, guardian angels and a constellation of other Catholic devotional practices into their attempts at End Times calculus. Catholics are good at being distinctive. But what this general picture points to is a real potential weakness among some who try to follow Christ, which is to ignore what He said so that they can begin worrying solidly about things such as the end of the world.
Patient readers are requested to forgive the following paraphrase. “Don’t worry about tomorrow,” Jesus told His listeners once. “Tomorrow has enough problems for itself. Instead, concern yourself with the problems of today – these are enough for you.”
The words of the Son of God indicate that Christianity is a faith, above all other things, of the present moment. What has happened in the past must, for the Catholic and for the Christian, ultimately be given to the mercy and forgiveness of God. What will happen in the future is always to be confided to our Father’s will for each of us in a spirit of faith, hope, love and (admittedly often difficult but so, so important), trust. What matters for now is who and what we are called to be and the things we are meant to address in our daily lives. There are a thousand details awaiting our attention there and the process of addressing these is the real path to sanctity. Living in the ‘now,’ one might say, is really all that matters.
The end of the world, of course, is certainly coming for each of us. It is the moment when we die. That moment, Jesus said quite explicitly, we cannot predict but it will be unexpected, coming like a thief in the night. Preparing ourselves for our own personal end of the world is the goal of our life. It’s nothing to worry about and we should think of it more as the great Nobel laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn suggested, a process of becoming lighter with each passing day, rising closer and closer to God.
Those who worry about the end of the world (with or without Holy Water) are really wasting their time and, to the extent that they worry about such matters, they become a burden in the lives of those around them. Fixation on end times may also be an indicator of a lack of mental stability and character but, hopefully, one that can be jettisoned. Floods, earthquakes, cyclones and bushfires may or may not be signs of the imminent end of the world but they should not distract us from the daily process of finding intimacy and friendship with God, especially an outlook of hope and complete trust in Christ.
This process will transform our own personal ends of the world into occasions of peaceful, joyful meetings with the One our hearts have always yearned for – and all those who have gone before us marked with the sign of Faith. Peter, writing to the early Christians, succinctly summed up the true Christian attitude to daily life, reminding his listeners that God is a Father. “Place all your worries on Him,” he wrote. “He cares about you.” Are natural disasters in quick succession signs of the imminent end? They could be but, actually, it doesn’t matter all that much. Floods and other natural phenomena are certainly signs, but ones that call us to love and help the other rather than frittering our lives away in worry.