Needing an Apocalypse

I have a hunch that we humans need to have an apocalypse on our radars at all times. You know some of the past ones: mutually assured destruction as a nuclear arms policy, the Y2K scare, the ongoing quest by many Christians to know the date of the Second Coming which is always in the foreseeable future.

There was one I found going on the other day dealing with the power grid that supplies our electricity. It seems like the grid has grown so large and complex that it is now vulnerable to a major magnetic storm from the sun. The grid could act like a huge electromagnetic antenna (my simple understanding) and if the magnetic storm is big enough it could cripple the whole system, burning out transformers and plunging the world into a potential disaster. Catastrophe. Apocalypse.

I guess a small version of this has happened the last time the sun's electromgnetic storms were at their height. The way the story was spun out this is not a completely distant possibility. It could happen sometime soon (relatively) unlike the stray asteroid or super-hurricane.

Then along came another apocalyptic-type story- some foreign hackers may have gotten into the software that guides the electricity grid. Some think it could have come from China or the like who have set it up in case they want to cripple us in a cyber- (or worse) war.

This of course trumps the apocalyptic language surrounding the financial meltdown.

Or the apocalyptic language the conservatives are using to describe what is happening because Obama got elected.

Or the apocalyptic language the liberals used to describe the Bush administration.

Or...

Well, you get the idea.

I wonder if we need to have these multi-apocalyptic scenarios in order to keep us on the edge of our seats and on our toes and whatever metaphor or image you want to use. It feels like we need to have something that we REALLY feel powerless about. We need to have something that can really bring us down into the depths of despair and make us head out and eat drink and be merry for tomorrow- who knows!

And the worse the real news, the bigger the apocalypse we are looking at.

In the good-old-days of the Biblical apocalyptic writings it was a way to keep people in the faith or bring them in. It was more about giving hope that in the end WE will make it and THEY won't. All you have to do is keep the faith.

These post-modern apocalyptics have no hope. We are all lost. In the end we will be like the father and son in Cormac McCarthy's The Road traveling across a lost and scary landscape. Even the strong will have trouble surviving.

In the end it is a loss of hope and perhaps a loss of trust. It is an incarnation of life sucks and then you die (or something like that) or he who dies with the most toys- still dies.

But maybe it is a wrestling with a loss of meaning- as I have posted before- why bother if it all ends in death and destruction?

Where then is hope and purpose? Where then is meaning? Where can we find something or someone to trust?

I am afraid that to give easy sounding answers to these questions is to make them sound trite. It can become cliched and muddled. But we are not the first generation to fear the apocalypse. We may be the first that knows enough to make it happen, but that doesn't mean we are in a new place. We are in the eternal human struggle.

Historically we humans have dealt with this through issues of faith, and God, and the hereafter. We have done this in many, many different ways. I fear that we may have lost some of that sense of mystery and hope and awe that faith has given us by insulating ourselves from nature and the world. With Earth Day coming up next week, I am reminded of the place that the "natural world" can have in introducing us to the power of God. I fear that the more we destroy our world's natural power, we will lose the opportunities to meet God in the ways many people have had to deepen their spiritual connections.

Perhaps that is even at the heart of the apocalypse we most fear- and feel powerless to do anything about. But with God, I know there is hope. I have no idea what that means for you, but I know it is real. And points to that power greater than myself that helps me live and move and be filled with grace.