Although in Australia and New Zealand, church attendance has been falling, plenty of smaller religious groups have stepped into the gap. Their proclamation of these same sentiments has grown louder and shriller.
When I was around nine or ten years old, I wanted to go to picture shows. These Hollywood spectaculars screened in a local hall on Saturday nights. My very religious stepmother forbade it. “Jesus is coming back soon. How would it be if when He came back you were in the hall watching a film?” I had a smart answer for this. “How would it be if I was sitting on the toilet?” Clever, but such comments just made my troubles worse.
I now understand that it is not just fundamentalist Christians who believe Jesus will soon burst through the clouds. Some Moslems, maybe most Moslems or all Moslems (not sure) believe that Jesus will appear in the skies on horseback to signal the end of the age. I have read that some Moslem leaders predict it will happen at any moment now – that is, soon!
Surprisingly, this end of the world thing is getting some of my non-religious friends twitchy. I’ve heard a couple of them mutter that middle-east conflicts will spread. They seem to be suggesting this expanded conflict will/could engulf the world. I’ve even seen tucked away in some corners of the internet, mention of a third world war. Wow! This raises anxiety a notch above what Greta Thornburg has been telling us.
Central in many of the Christian end-of-the-world scenarios are two predictions. One is the great judgement. Everything you ever did in secret will be revealed – not just revealed but shouted from the roof tops. I know that religious teens like me thought this had something to do with sex – masturbation and sexual experimentation, looking at dirty books etc. The main point was that everyone in your family, in your street, your town would hear the sneaky things you have been up to. Yuk!
The second of the ‘end of the world’ predictions was that if you made it through the great judgement, you would live forever in a perfect world.
Moslems believe in a similar scenario – first the judgement, then for those who get through this examination, the perfect world. However, for the Moslems the perfect world would be more pleasurable, especially for males, than the Christian heaven. Mormons also have very pleasant next world scenarios – especially for pious men.
My generally fundamentalist dad had a couple of reservations about heaven. One was to do with what it would ‘look’ like. He told me, “The Bible says that the holy city will have streets of gold, gold clear as crystal. What’s the point of gold you can see through”?
I really agreed with him about his second reservation.
“The Bible says we will sing praises to the Lamb for a thousand years”. Almost under his breath, he would mutter “That doesn’t sound like great fun”. My dad liked singing but singing the same song forever was something he could not grasp. It certainly did not appeal to me. However, despite this, my dad was enthusiastic about heaven. The main reason for this is that he would be re-united again with his first wife, my mum. I gained the impression that he wouldn’t mind the marathon sing-along if he could stand next to her.
Moslems I have lived with seem to have little appreciation of natural beauty. I remember bussing with a Moslem friend along the waterfront from St Heliers to the city. It was a perfect morning. The sea sparkled and the Pohutakawas were in full bloom.
I said to him, “Isn’t this beautiful!” He replied, “Not really”. It was later that I realised that in his understanding, nothing on this world was beautiful compared to what will be revealed in the next. To gush over a seascape or a flower was to be trapped by this world. ‘Real’ beauty could only be experienced beyond the grave or after the end of the world, which he believed was very close.
I’ve just perused the world news. Troubles everywhere, but thankfully, as yet no declaration of war – conventional or nuclear. Who knows what the next five minutes will bring!
Imagine that to get away from it all you did take a cruise. In fantasy I imagine the captain saying over the PA, “War has been declared and we are now heading for Patagonia. I hope you like fish.”
