FAYETTEVILLE — Editor’s Note: Doug Thompson’s column will return next Sunday.
If you are reading this, the world did not end Saturday as Family Radio preacher Harold Camping predicted. He is only the most recent end-time soothsayer trying to persuade the gullible about things that are beyond our kin.
We are humans, not gods. We cannot know what will happen in the future. Wisdom humbly accepts our mortal limitations. We really don’t know very much.
We know nothing about things like when the world will end or what happens to us when we die. We can hope, or trust, or believe various things. But humility and reverence demand that we not claim certainties beyond our human grasp.
Personally, I have no interest in speculations about apocalyptic “end times” or about what might or might not happen to us when we die. I’ve got plenty on my hands simply trying to live today in this life as authentically as I can.
Life after death is not what motivates my religious faith. I trust God for the afterlife. Whatever God wants is fine with me.
My experience of God in this life is so full of divine love, so full of wonder, that I’m OK with whatever God wants. After all, God is so creative. Everything may be better than I could ever imagine. Or even if death is simply a return into the“All,” and if some separate personality of someone named Lowell were to be absorbed into the “Ultimate,” I’ve been close enough to that experience in contemplative prayer that it seems simply exquisite, wonderful, transcendent peace.
Religious faith and practice is about living authentically here and now. The past is gone and cannot be changed. Yes, we can learn from the past, heal some of its wounds, celebrate memories and grow from our experience.
But the past is gone; the future is not yet. If we behave responsibly in the present we might influence a more fruitful future.
But we can only really live in the present - the eternal now. If we are to be truly alive, if we are to experience God’s presence, we must be alive and alert in the present moment.
In the Bible, the word “heaven” usually does not refer to a place where we go when we die. The vast majority of the 675 scripture references to “heaven” speak of something that comes to us in the here and now.
Heaven is the in-breaking reign of God, radically contrasting with that which is “passing away.”
In his book “The Difference Heaven Makes,” scholar Christopher Morse says that from a biblical perspective, heaven is “less about a place we go to than one that comes to us, less about a postmortem afterlife than about life here and now, and less about a timeless, static state than about a timely taking-place.”
In the Lord’s Prayer, when we pray “thy kingdom come, thy will be done,” we pray for God’s heavenly activity coming to us here and now.
Jesus taught his disciples to seek first this kingdom- the inbreaking reign of God - which is “at hand” but not under our control.
We are to be alert, awake, alive to the moment.
How is the divine being presented to us within the embodied reality of the present moment?
Watch for that. How is heaven breaking in here and now? Sense it. Our ethical responsibility is to respond to and cooperate with whatever God may be doing right here, right now.
Religious speculation about “end times” seems to me to be a waste of real time - a distraction, an amusing fiction. The sillystuff that Hal Lindsay and Tim LaHaye write, or the occasional apocalyptic preaching series about the “Last Days” have a quaint comic-book quality to them. They can be entertaining, but Jesus told us not to pay attention to such speculation. (Matt 24:36; Acts 1:7)
Where does compassion, love and justice call us here and now? That is the inbreaking of heaven in our midst. Respond now with vigor and experience heavenly grace.
I have a prophecy. Since the world did not end Saturday, I’ll bet PastorCamping will go back to his calculations and find some other silly arithmetic to continue in his religious distractions. But what a waste of life and time.
What if he woke up to see heaven breaking in all around us? The breath of air, the dawn of light, the joy of love, the sacrifice of suffering, the gift of friendship, the exercise of justice, the intuition of the divine. Right here! Right now!
Heavenly.
LOWELL GRISHAM IS AN EPISCOPAL PRIEST WHO LIVES IN FAYETTEVILLE.
Opinion, Pages 18 on 05/22/2011