I'm not fond of predictions about when to expect the end of the world. A couple years ago I blogged about people who claimed it was coming in 2012. I could say the same things about the 2011 prediction from Harold Camping and co. What part of "about that day or hour no one knows" do they not understand?
That said, also I'm trying to avoid joining in all the easy jokes about last Saturday's non-event. They're too easy. And they can be callous. As Tiffany Stanley at The New Republic, says,
There’s a cruelty underlying our desire to laugh at this story — a desire to see people humiliated and to revel in our own superiority and rationality — even though the people in question are pretty tragic characters, who either have serious problems themselves or perhaps are being taken advantage of, or both.
Which brings me to one other reason I'm trying to avoid the jokes: because if I spend too much time indulging them, they can tempt me to blend in with the world for while, joining with hip, snarky secularists in the camaraderie of shared mockery. In the back of my mind, there's this little voice that says: Go ahead. Just for a bit, you could sit at the cool kids' lunch table.
Best to ignore that voice. Christians find Camping-style predictions ridiculous because Jesus tells us we can't begin to know such things and are foolish to try. Secularists find them ridiculous because they ridicule the supernatural, period. Two different reasons, two different mindsets. Indulging theirs can only undermine ours.
Jesus is coming, and this world will pass away when He does. We don 't know when. But He told us we won't know not so we could join the world in its complacency. He told us so we'd be ready.
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