January 22 2023
THE END OF THE WORLD.
I have a book by that name, written by Otto Friedrich, a former senior writer at TIME weekly. It was published in 1986, and I bought it that same year
on December 24, perhaps a Xmas present to myself. The subtitle was, not surprisingly, A History, as, evidently, the world did not end.
I have no idea why “The End of the World” fascinates me. Perhaps my upbringing has something to do with it, memorizing the Apostles’ Creed, which ends with: “(I believe) in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting”. Perhaps Noah’s Flood influenced me, and the implication, that next time ‘we’ would be the instigators of the End.
Even though there are books hinting at The End, such as Elizabeth Kolbert’s, “The Sixth Extinction”, and Bill McKibben’s, “The End of Nature”, I don’t know of any recent church publications that prepare us for THE END which surely will come.
A subtle change.
It was different centuries ago. The historian, Johan Huizinga, in his “In the Shadows of Tomorrow”, wrote that, (and I translate): “It would be useful to place our notion of crises in a historical perspective, considering the immense internal commotions of centuries past. There is an essential spiritual difference between then and today. Then there was a consciousness expressing: Our world, however big or small, is imperiled, is on the verge of dissolution. That particular position was very prevalent in people’s minds, and fed into the feeling of the approaching End of the World.”
This was plain already in the year 410, when the Sack of Rome took place. The theologians of those days, relying on Revelation 18, equated the Fall of Rome with the Fall of Babylon, the End of the World, as described in that chapter.
Throughout history, horrendous events, such as the Black Death – 1347-50, when about half the European population died – were seen as God’s judgement. Then everybody was a church member, so, yes, in their minds, the ‘End of their World’ was a correct assumption, which proved to be true for their place and time.
How people’s religious motivations have changed!
In 1983 on November 10, exactly 500 years after Martin Luther was born, and in 1517 openly defied the world’s all-powerful institution, the Church of Rome, my brother, my wife and I visited Wittenberg, and the church where Luther had affixed his 95 theses. On the concrete steps of that now empty and neglected edifice, two teenagers were shooting dope. That, to me, signified the religious State of the World today, where the church no longer is the penetrating force 5 centuries ago. The world-shaking events Otto Friedrich described which, by and large, were regarded as religious-significant happenings, no longer are connected to biblical givens. Society at large has undergone a seismic change in faith-matters. Where even a century ago churches were thriving, today religion has become redundant. The End of the World has been decoupled from the human mind.
Back to In the Shadows of Tomorrow.
Dr. Huizinga writes – and I agree – “We know that much in the past has been better than today. But we also know that, in general, there is no way back. There only is an ‘ahead’, even though the unknown future fills us with dread”.
That ‘ahead’ is eerily outlined by Dr. Nouriel Roubini in his address to the World Economic Forum in Davos this past week. He said,
“What I have called mega-threats others have called a “poly-crisis. We are therefore facing not only the worst of the 1970s (repeated negative aggregate supply shocks), but also the worst of the 2007-08 period (dangerously high debt ratios) and the worst of the 1930s. A new “geopolitical depression” is increasing the likelihood of cold and hot wars that could all too easily overlap and spin out of control.” The managing director of the International Monetary Fund calls it a “confluence of calamities”. The world economy, she warned last year, is facing “perhaps its biggest test since the second world war”. Similarly, the former US secretary of the Treasury, Lawrence H. Summers, argues that we are facing the most acute economic and financial challenges since the 2008 financial crisis. And in its latest global risks report – released just before elites gathered in Davos this month to discuss “cooperation in a fragmented world” – the World Economic Forum warns of “a unique, uncertain and turbulent decade to come”.
Arctic News writes, “A huge temperature rise threatens to unfold, as the already dire situation threatens to turn catastrophic due to the combined impact of a number of developments and feedback, such as La Nina to El Nino.
The convergence of these events could well result in THE END OF THE WORLD as we have fashioned it.