For most of my life, from time to time, I have seen cartoons in
magazines satirizing street corner prophets of an apocalypse. The usual
caricature is of a scruffy man, in a shabby robe with a long scraggly beard
carrying a sign which reads "The End is Near" or some such.
Well, it's early morning and I am not carrying a placard as I
start this piece. I am in a robe (bath) but I don't have a long beard although
I am as of yet unshaven. I don't have a placard but I do have a blog and a
computer. However, I have just read a piece on the web from the morning New
York Times by Thomas Friedman,
and so here's my message: "The End is Near."
Four years ago I began work on my book The Coming of the Quantum Christ. At the very end of my introduction,
I described Science as being both Christ and Anti-Christ and raised the
question of whether the scientific study of the Shroud of Turin could be the
"Coming of a Quantum Christ." It was a rhetorical question. By the
time I got to Chapter 17 of the book in the spring of 2014, the question was no
longer rhetorical because there was in 2014 a flood of scientific reports from
a wide variety of sources that climate change was real and its devastating
effects were already being felt in a multitude of places. Time is running out.
Today, as I read Friedman's article my conclusion is that while
time may not have completely run out, the end is fast approaching. I crammed a
great deal into Chapter 17 because the principal focus of the Quantum Christ is the authenticity of the Shroud and,
if authentic, its meaning. One of the items I touched on in that chapter was
the claim that climate change was causing war. Some are dubious. Be dubious no
more.
Friedman's Time's piece is dealing with the
unprecedented heat wave that has struck the Middle
East this year with a
heat index as high as 163°. Millennia old sources of water are drying-up and
disappearing. Governments in Iraq and Iran,
among others, seem to be powerless. Electricity, and thus air conditioning, is
rationed.
I am not a fundamentalist Christian. If anything, I guess I am a
disciple of paleontologist and Jesuit priest Peirre Teilhard de Chardin. To a
certain extent so too is Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and, I surmise, Francis,
the first Jesuit Pope.
Michelle Bachman is a former member of Congress, briefly a 2012
candidate for President, and professed fundamentalist Christian. In a radio
interview last April, she rejoiced that Obama was actually bringing on the
"End of Times" [the Apocalypse] and what a privilege it was to be
alive at this moment.
Needless to say, I am not as "rapturous" as Ms. Bachman
about the onset of the Apocalypse. I do believe that Pope Francis is a prophet
of apocalypse and is endeavoring to avoid it. His prophecy Laudato Si is
addressed not only to Roman Catholics but to all humanity. His message has
reached, and been embraced by some fundamentalists, Jewish rabbis, Buddhists
and humanists. On Tuesday, August 18, Islamic leaders from 20 countries
after a two day symposium issued an Islamic
Declaration on Global Climate Change.
Echoing Pope Francis prophetic Laudato Si but
placing it in an Islamic context it began:
"God
– Whom we know as Allah – has created the universe in all its diversity,
richness and vitality: the stars, the sun and moon, the earth and all its
communities of living beings. All these reflect and manifest the boundless
glory and mercy of their Creator. All created beings by nature serve and
glorify their Maker, all bow to their Lord’s will. We human beings are created
to serve the Lord of all beings, to work the greatest good we can for all the
species, individuals, and generations of God’s creatures."
To my fundamentalist brothers and sisters in Christianity: Do not
rejoice in "End of Times" but continue to ameliorate the miseries
visited on humanity with the self sacrifices that so many of you have
demonstrated. The message of our Gospel is that ultimately we will be judged
not by what we do for ourselves but what we do for our neighbors who are in
need. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Christ made clear that helping
those in need was not limited to co-religionists. Our "neighbor" is
all humanity.
JFK said in 1961 "on this Earth, God's work must truly be our
own." Shakespeare wrote in Julius
Caesar some 400 years before:
"The fault lies not in our stars but in ourselves." I take my
prophets and prophecies where I find them.
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