Love Affairs With The Apocalypse
One memorable declaration from a terrorist evidently as yet uncaptured and perhaps still living was "You love life; we love death." It makes a kind of perverse sense of that for which he and his cohort labor night and day, i.e. the effective end of human life on Earth -- a life that has seldom brought them glory and fulfillment in any form. They have therefore set out to create it for themselves.
One could read recently of ISIS-sponsored terrorists poking around the under-secured nuclear power plants in Belgium looking for a way to blow them up or to steal radioactive materials to make their own dirty bombs. The sooner the better, they say, to ignite the tinder that, once ablaze, will bring end to the world.
If you watch religious programs on American television or pick them up late at night on the high end of the AM radio waves, it should sound familiar to you. Apocalyptic has infected fundamentalist Christianity even as it has infected fundamentalist Islam.
To those who embrace apocalyptic, the hoped-for blessing seems to be the surety that God or Allah will grant them permanent residence posthumously in an unsullied paradise where grinding poverty, disrespect, disappointment and unrequited desire to be taken seriously will never touch them.
Scratch the psychological surface of some number of those who crowd into megachurches in which preachers call down hellfire on all manner of heathens and heretics, and one can see cataracts of resentment overflowing the banks of sanity. The "Amens"and "hallelujahs" are thinly veiled shouts of hatred. The SOB landlords, the gouging bastards at the payday check-cashing emporia and the bosses who won't grant enough work hours so his workers can qualify for benefits, etc. etc.
Wouldn't it be better if the world just blew up and the put-upon could go home to be with God whilst the evildoers are left behind left to stagger through the ruination of the planet until they starve or go mad?
Now head for neighborhoods in London, Paris and Brussels that have been home to Muslim immigrants for years and multiply to the 10th power such justified complaints and abuses, and you are witnessing the making of terrorists. Somehow a twisted and out-of-context reading of Qu'ranic passages grants permission to the oppressed to act on their own in achieving paradise.
In fundamentalist Christianity, that business is left with God and deliverance is hoped for in God's good time. The resentment is worked out, not in blowing up airports and train stations, but in giving the Heil Hitler salute to the likes of Donald Trump, or embracing the political fascism of a Ted Cruz. Meanwhile, trust in God and the four horsemen of the apocalypse to loose the bonds that tie the unfortunate to a life that cheats them right and left, and you've got apocalyptic American-style.
The question may be not if but when will come the revolt of the oppressed economic and social classes who, Sisyphus-like, keep trying to push the boulder to the top of the mountain only to have it roll over them on the way down yet again. We saw what happened among African-Americans in the mid-1960s, whose centuries of patience had worn thin. We saw American cities set afire just as we now see angry Muslims setting off incendiary bombs here and there across the world.
The cry is: "CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?" And the answer is, "We can hear you and we can talk to you even though we don't understand a word you're saying." Let's convene a commission to determine how under the sun you people could riot in your own streets. Let's get a committee of Congress to go through the political charade of investigating the genesis of it all when the revelation is clear as plate glass.
In the end, you cannot blame people for drifting into apocalyptic. It may be their best bet. And though I cannot imagine such a paradise as they envision, more power to them for envisioning it themselves. In that regard, I do not think so-called terrorism is anywhere near being contained. That dam has been broken, and the on-rush of what has been pent up behind us is almost sure to wash away much of what we relatively secure middle-class folk have ever depended.
"The horse and its rider he hath thrown into the sea," as the ancient Hebrew poet wrote of the destruction of Pharaoh's armies.
I very much hope I am wrong in this pessimistic assessment, but I don't think I am.
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Copyright 2016 Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.
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Readers Write
Re essay of 3/25/16 How The Fruits of Research Spoiled Easter
Philip Power, Ann Arbor, Michigan:
Good and challenging column.
Rod Hill, Allegan, Michigan:
Let me come to the defense of the lady in your essay. The pulpit is a position of power. We who use it have all "the say." And we who listen can do only that. To use the power of the pulpit to display our superior intellect is to misuse it. Speaker and listener are not equal, except that the speaker enters into the world of the listener. Teaching, changing conceptions, requires dialog. The lady may not understand or appreciate what is being said from the pulpit, as her tears indicate. However, the preacher has taken no risk. The preacher only shows off his/her research. The preacher has only confounded. The preacher needs to humble, not humiliate. There is a time and a place for challenging ideas, but that time and place is not from the pulpit.
Fred Fenton, Concord, California:
You were brave to probe and question from the pulpit when most worshipers come for comfort and reassurance, not to be confronted with uncertainty. "The truth will make you free" only if you have an open mind and a sense of adventure about the deeper meaning of life. Something like "Easter triumph, Easter joy" can arise from living in the present, being alive to the opportunity to experience life more fully here and now.
Mark Bendure, Grosse Pointe Park, Michigan:
Perhaps there was something to the thoughts of your tearful parishioner. It seems to me with little recent experience with any church that the role of the local priest/minister is largely to comfort congregants in times of woe or celebrate joyful occasions, like a child's religious milestone, in general to make them feel better. As part of the process, one assumes, the cleric encourages followers to become better people. However that is defined. Presenting a thought-provoking homily seems to be a lost art. To be sure, a little thinking is okay, as it makes one happy to be sentient, but having to question core beliefs is not necessarily the best way to spend a leisurely Sunday morning. Your scholarship is admirable and your message is necessary, but I can certainly understand how you and organized religion didn't always get along so well.
Alicia Potts, Ottawa, Ontario:
Dear Sir: You speak for me. You show me that I can be a Christian without having to swallow whole so much of the impossible doctrine. Thank you. Thank you.
Donald Worrell, Troy, Michigan:
I'm among the many who think your "stuff" is terrific!
Gloria Rivera, IHM, Detroit, Michigan:
Thanks for your essay this week. Thanks for your commitment to research as it opens avenues, possibilities, more questions and leads us to ongoing search for meaning in our lives in the midst of the myriad possibilities. Had you chosen the avenue of "comforting" without "questioning"lots would have been lost for many. Carry on and continue to share.
Peter Lawson, Petaluma, California:
The last two sentences of your essay today brought me up short. My experience during the last 47 years of my ministry was different. I don't know whether or not this applies, but my practice was to stand outside the church after the service so that people could escape the wretched necessity of either lying about how good the sermon was, or feeling compelled to express gratitude for my ministry, or greet me with perfunctory graciousness. It seemed to me that just under the surface of their loyalty to the creeds and the church was a strain of doubt and questioning. My strategy was to tell the folks that every question, and hence every doubt, was to be honored and attended to. That meant that every article of the creeds and every chapter of the Bible was under continuing scrutiny. Some people left when they couldn't stand the search for a relevant and empowering religion. Almost every one of them had difficulties with their fear of certainty and death that comes with honestly facing the stark exigencies and ambiguities of daily life. Those who remained loved the openness and freedom to be truly alive to an honest spirituality. Newcomers thought it was refreshingly different and joined us. Every congregation I served grew in average Sunday attendance (which is the only significant number in measuring the health of a parish). There is one possibly significant difference in our congregations; mine were in the Bay Area and yours in Michigan. I may have said it in this conversation before my conclusion about congregational life is theology or doctrine has no significance in folks loyalty to their church or it's creeds. It does have everything to with whether or not there is a primary commitment to building a community of love, acceptance, self-disclosure and affirmation. I cherish our friendship and your ability to stimulate my thinking.
Franklin George, Idaho Falls, Idaho:
You should have been fired and defrocked on the spot after that sermon you wrote about. Your parishioner was right. Your church was not a university, and your job was to comfort her and your congregation. Yours, sir, was a dereliction of duty. In the military, you'd be in the stockade or the brig by now.
John Bennison, Walnut Creek , California:
In-depth research of the resurrection stories in the canonical texts can be edifying; particularly with regard to what all the accounts don't include, but folks are all too ready to presume. But after perennially preaching Easter sermons for over a quarter century, certainly the most memorable one for my congregation was when I literally performed a card trick with a willing volunteer from the pews. Everyone was first flabbergasted by the trick, until they discovered how easily they had been duped. I'm inclined to think all the gospel accounts were deliberately vague; except to say they were clearly not about either resuscitation, or the notion of riding the coattails of Jesus' co-eternality. Your former congregant who only wanted to be comforted with the illusory assurance of certainty and self-immortality typifies the dual tasks clergy are expected to fulfill as both pastor and prophet; but not as some divine magician's assistant. To those plentiful crowds of literal believers to such trickery, I'd say wake up, and arise.
Rabbi Larry Mahrer, Parrish, Florida:
Amen, AMEN!! Almost every pulpit clergyperson would say the same.
Karen Davis, Royal Oak, Michigan:
Do please remember that there are many of us for whom the teaching was/is very helpful. I like knowing "what lies beneath" in order to bring reason into things.
Joseph Fisher, Elk Rapids, Michigan:
Just a quick note to let you know how much I enjoy the thought-provoking essays.
Jean Long, Oakwood, Ohio: A dear minister friend of mine -- one who deeply questions some of the "accepted" interpretations of Biblical passages, once said to me -- I had asked him -- How can you offer communion to people here, when you clearly do not believe in many of these actions anymore? His answer was correct: "Jean, I try to meet these people where they are, not where I am. That is my job as their minister." Wise. But, you know, I was also disappointed. He is in a position to help these good people begin to realize reality -- and doesn't quite do it. Hard decisions. But I was disappointed. Keep up your attempts to answer the need, and the question as well.
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