In all of the hub-bub surrounding the Mayan apocalypse that came and went without incident, it was tough to resist the funny one-liner on Facebook and Twitter. We have become so calloused against the doomsday predictions that have fueled the religious airwaves, TV broadcasts and book sales of the last 30 years.
I get that. I came to faith during the cold-war in the heyday of characters like Hal Lidsay, Harold Camping and the Left-Behind phenomenon. Y2K was a bust and everyone was holding on for the December 2012 end of the Mayan calendar. But I’m afraid that in our hurry to make funny quips we may have missed something important:
This actually could be the end of time.
It is similar the snark-fest regarding the Hostess bankruptcy and the end of Ding-Dongs and Twinkies. Lost in all of the jokes was the reality of unjust labor practices by the cooperate execs of Hostess who, even at the end when massive layoffs could have been averted, continued to pay themselves ridiculous salaries and bonuses.
Hostess stole money from it’s workers pensions to use for things like operations – the whole while paying millions of dollars in bonuses to it’s 19 executives who were leading it into bankruptcy.
We didn’t address the illegal, and unjust practices of the mis-management, I suspect, because there were just too many jokes to be made about Twinkies.
It appears that a similar scenario has blinded us to the reality of the Mayan calendar.
Never mind that the Mayans didn’t predict an end-of-the-world on the actual day – only that the calendar ended. 
Never mind how the ancient people may have conceived of the cyclical nature of time.
Never mind the odd fascination that descendants of European colonist have with indigenous artifacts from a genocidally exterminated people.
Jokes about the Mayans provided too many punchlines.
The Mayans were made a joke.
But, like the Hostess bankruptcy, I wonder if a much bigger issue was ignored in the flurry of Facebook snark and apocalyptic themed parties.
What was lost in all the end-of-the-world banter was a sobering look at the realties that we face as humanity and that, if one had ears to hear, would sound an alarming warning signal that the world as we know is in real crisis.
I fear that like the proverbial frog in a kettle, that we have slowly adjusted and grown comfortable in rising temperature of the water and have failed to acknowledge that things might soon boil over.
Just take three areas
- Economy
- Environment
- Military Tensions
Long ago, I left-behind the reading of Revelation that causes so many to live in fear of an impending catastrophe. But I’m not sure that people of faith can afford to grow comfortable thinking that the world we see is in it’s final form. Capitalism, Democracy and Nation-States are assumed to be the as-is realities on the planet.
Zizek is oft-quoted as saying Christians are fascinated with the end of the world because it is easier to imagine life ceasing to exist on planet earth than it is for Christians to imagine an economy after capitalism.
Global capitalism has bankrupted itself. The European Union (with countries like Greece and Spain) is in real trouble. The American economy is being exposed with its massive debts and downgraded dollar. China has mixed capitalism in with a form of communism – and a massive population – in a way that leaves most experts baffled.
The environment is being degridated. It is conceivable that our ground water could be toxified, our warming oceans could cause extinction of the seafood we eat, and our thirst for easy energy (what the Frack are we doing?) could have repercussions that would make the planet uninhabitable for the human species.*
That is all before nuclear fallout. Tensions is the middle east, America’s admittedly endless war on terror, and desperate global disparity are now more consequential than ever.**
It one takes the failing global economy, the toxification of the environment and the realities of perpetual war – maybe the Mayans weren’t wrong after all.
Maybe we have moved into the end of time.
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* The practice of ‘mountian-top’ removal in places like West Virginia coal is instructive about environmental impacts.
** The Isreal-Palestine conflict and America’s role are especially illuminating.
Bo Sanders: Public Theology 
January 16, 2013 at 9:59 pm
Well said, Friend. Unfortunately, humans have often proved that it takes truly catastrophic events to convince us to change. In the absence of such calamity, we have also repeatedly demonstrated our faith that things will continue as they are, so long as we continue to plod along with business as usual.
There is a lot of talk about sustainable growth these days, usually in terms of economics (but not always), but what many people have failed to realize is that, given a finite pool of resources, there simply is no such thing as “sustainable growth” on a long enough timeline. And yet, our response (thus far) seems to be a posture of racing to deplete and destroy those resources as fast as we can, lest one of our corporate, economic, national (or religious?) rivals beat us to the bottom of the barrel first. Perhaps our forefathers would refer to the way we are prostituting future generations as “taxation without representation.” Maybe we need a new revolution?
In addition to the truism that “Jesus is the answer,” a key to our survival is simply learning to tell ourselves “no.” Do we need that sports car, second home, another electronic do-dad? Do we need another assault rifle or the world’s “best” military and a higher standard of living as well as lower taxes? As I see it, we must be able to deny ourselves for the sake of others (and ourselves). Ironically enough, this isn’t so different than what Jesus asks of us. It remains my hope that we wake up before our apathy writes us into (being) history.
Thanks for another great blogpost.
-CL