The Eagles sang ‘I’ve got a peaceful, easy feeling’. I often experience the opposite. ‘ You woke up this morning (writes the American writer Brian McLaren) with that unpeaceful, uneasy, unwanted feeling.’ He goes on : ‘Even as we go about our normal routines as normal people, we can’t shake off this sense that we’re in trouble. It’s the feeling that our civilisation’s Jenga tower is about to crumble, our inner sanctum of normality is about to be breached, our global status status quo is about to blow, our scariest worse case scenarios are about to stop being imaginary.’ Over the past few years I have experienced this feeling intermittently, sometimes (At the start of the Covid crisis and for a few weeks following the outbreak of the Ukraine War) quite acutely, but it’s always there rumbling under the surface.
This is all the more marked since retirement, because (to be honest) life, for me, at the moment is good. I have settled into retirement well, my health and finances are OK and I have enough worthwhile and enjoyable projects on the go to keep me happy. ‘What’s the problem?’ (You might ask) ‘Stop your moaning, do what you can for others and enjoy life!’ Yet my whole life and ministry has involved consideration of both the big picture (sin, salvation, The Bible, life death and wellbeing, articulated through preaching) and the little one (people’s situations, joys , blessings, suffering and grief, acted out through pastoral care) both from which I am temporarily barred (No alarms here: it’s a purely bureaucratic delay) .
Closing my eyes and burying my head in the sand has not been part of my make-up. Yet of late I have cut back my news consumption, preferring to listen to Radio 3 (classical music) in the morning rather than Radio 4 {News) (along with around 60,000 others apparently) justifying the decision with the poet’s words. ‘Humankind’ wrote TS Eliot, ‘cannot bear much reality.’
This can only go on for so long. The sense of living on a little island of happiness in a vast sea of misery, with worse to come, is not a psychologically nor spiritually healthy one. So, like a person who decides to investigate that smell under the floorboards instead of masking it with a variety of air fresheners, I bought that book by Brian McLaren whose opening words I quoted at the start of this post. The book is entitled ‘Life after doom: Wisdom and courage for a world falling apart.’ It’s not an easy read, something of which McLaren is fully aware. As a former church pastor, he holds your hand throughout as he delivers the searingly bad news about the future of our planet and climate change, ranging from Scenario 1 (Collapse Avoidance, where humanity manages to adjust to the new situation with the help of technology) to Scenario 4 (Collapse Extinction- you can guess what this means). McLaren refuses to opt for either of these scenarios, preferring to ‘Dance with doom.’ It’s a strange phrase but I’m prepared to follow him in the dance. It’s got to be better than putting up with that smell, that uneasy feeling.
Of course, some Christians will tell you either that ‘This will never happen, o ye of little faith The whole world’s in his hands!’ or ‘yes, it will, but WE’ll be OK). McLaren relates the extraordinary fundamentalist teaching he was exposed to as a child of the Plymouth Brethren, including a ‘Chart of the ages’ on Sunday nights, cataloguing the future horrors instore for most, and the Rapture of the Elect for the few. Reading this, I do wonder whether he has (psychologically) swapped one future horror story for another, but his doom scenarios are based on science. Despite its theme, it’s a rather beautiful book, elegiac even, in relation to a world that’s been lost (whatever happens in the final end).
So am I one of those Christians who believe it will never happen, that God will step in to prevent human destruction, either through climate chaos or more conventional means of human destruction (like war)? I am rather sad that McLaren doesn’t seem, so far, (and I’m only up to p 120 of 350) consider other eschatologies (views of the future and end-time) than the one he was presented with as a child, but no, I don’t believe that God will necessarily ‘step in’ (whatever that means) to stop these things. I say this based on a conventional, historical reading of the Bible. For about 700 years the Hebrew prophets, such as Amos, Joel, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, did their own version of ‘dancing with doom’. Mainly related to threats from foreign powers (Assyria, Babylon), but sometimes relating to natural phenomena (Joel’s plague of locusts), the prophets attacked the Hebrews’ complacency, especially their leaders, priests, kings and business people. They were often faced with complacent people who spoke of ‘peace, peace, when there is no peace.’ (Jeremiah 6:14) Yet the various disasters prophesied did happen, including the ultimate one of the invasion of Judaea by Babylonian armies, destruction of Jerusalem and deportation of Jews to Babylon, starting in 597 BC. The Jews did survive, though changed, and the Temple eventually was rebuilt. A great deal of what we call the Old Testament was written in the wake of this calamity.
Then, in the New Testament, we can easily forget that the whole of the Christian faith is based on a calamity (in human terms). Jesus’ disciples, including Peter, try to remonstrate with him about his eventual fate, but Jesus is adamant that the ‘Son of Man must die’ (Luke 9:22). Crucifixion was the most ignominious (and cruellest) death of its time and a sign of a curse upon the person to whom it befell. Yet Jesus was crucified and the whole church developed in the wake of the resurrection. We can say that this was all part of God’s plan but that is in retrospect with the benefit of the theological hindsight developed by St Paul and other theologians. There is also a great deal of ‘doom talk’ in the New Testament (probably relating to the second destruction of Jerusalem by Romans in AD 70) detailing the various horrors that will come upon humanity (Let those who are in Judaea flee to the hills Matthew 24:16)
So looking at reality and staring into the face of doom is not something to be necessarily avoided by people of faith, though we do it in company with God (not unlike McLaren’s holding of our hands at the end of every chapter). It’s also very appropriate, and necessary, for the believers to consider the ruin we are in the process of bringing upon the beautiful world God has given to us and looking at ways that, even now, this can be mitigated.
So this is a book I would recommend (risky, I accept, when I’m only halfway through), genuinely profound and full of wisdom. But what about the ‘unpeaceful uneasy feeling?’ It’s still there, though more related to the present military of our world than future environmental calamities. Yet life goes on which, for me, means enjoying retirement and making best use of my time. When the 16th Century German Reformer Martin Luther) was asked what he would do if the world were to come to an end tomorrow, he answered, ‘I would still plant my apple tree.’ This is an illogical but utterly human and rather wonderful response. At the moment the landscaping of our new garden has just about reached the point where all the plants at present in pots are ready to be put in the soil, which is a lovely one. Maybe that’s one response to that ‘unpeaceful, uneasy feeling’ though I must emphasise that I have done and am doing nothing towards this, merely paying our gardener’s bills.
Two doors down from us on our new estate is a family from Ukraine, including a mother, her son and her parents. The mother has been in the country for some time (her husband is a lorry driver in the USA), but her parents came to the UK on day one of the War. Neither of them have much English (except that mediated through Google Translate) but their daughter and grandson’s English is good. They are delightful. We lent them our wheelbarrow and they gave us a pie (as well as a new wheel for the barrow) At the same time as our garden work is being done, Volodymyr is building his summer house. Last weekend I sat in the garden listening to the banging of tools on wood, the talk in Ukrainian and the classical music he was playing while sitting out in the sunshine in our half-finished garden. It was a beautiful moment.
I don’t know exactly what led to the construction of this Summer House but maybe, as they look at the ruin being meted out on their country by Putin’s Russia, it is an appropriate response. Maybe that Summer House is their Apple Tree.
Hugh's Views 