An End Is Nigh

Staring into our modern apocalypse

For the past year and a half, I’ve been using the theme of “apocalypse” in my intro to literature college class. The idea first came to me in 2020, when I heard people half-jokingly refer to the “2020 apocalypse” as one terrible thing after another just kept snowballing (wildfires, the pandemic, murder hornets, race riots, a contentious election, you name it). Of course, it wasn’t the Apocalypse (although I’m sure some wild internet/TV preachers were peddling that idea back then), but it sure felt like it.

Perhaps the most key thing that came out of that year for me was realizing the double-meaning of apocalypse. In common parlance we associate it with all our entertainment-soaked imaginings of “the end of the world” via zombies, rising oceans, asteroids, nuclear warfare, (insert your favorite catastrophe here). Or if you grew up in dispensationalism-soaked American evangelicalism, perhaps it was the end-times stories of the Left Behind series. But in the original Greek from whence it came, apokalypsis simply means “revelation, disclosure, unveiling”. Apocalyptic literature emerged as a form of Jewish writing following the Babylonian exile, and in it writers would use cosmic imagery and supernatural symbolism to “reveal” the heavenly reality going on behind human events. The most famous Jewish example of this we’d probably recognize is the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament with its visions of giant statues and beasts, but the example that most people would recognize is John the Apostle’s Book of the Apocalypse, or as it’s simply known, Revelation. However you might interpret this book, its purpose is to pull back the curtain and unveil the supernatural realities going on behind world events.

This original meaning emerged for me in 2020 because the clusterf**k¹ of crises that year—and how people responded to them—was truly quite revelatory. The thing about an apocalyptic crisis is that it reveals who you truly are. Whether it was shutdowns, masks, vaccines, racism, Trump vs. Biden, many of us learned surprising or even startling truths about ourselves, friends, family members, co-workers, and neighbors, that we had not otherwise known before.

The thing about such apocalyptic revelations is, once that Pandora’s box of truth is opened, it can never be closed again. There’s no rewinding the tape.

And this is where apocalypse gets interesting.

See, when the truths about ourselves and others are unveiled, we are faced with a choice: do we want to continue to be the person we have been revealed as? Can we continue to be in relationship with who the other person has been revealed as?

This is one of the key questions I’ve been grappling with in class with my students over the past year and a half. Who are people revealed to be in an apocalyptic moment, and who do they then choose to be?

Some hear the words of the prophets, embrace their faults, and change. They are willing to tear down what’s corrupt and build something better. Instead of just taking care of number one, they help others in the moment of crisis.

Some cling desperately to the dying old ways. They try to block their ears and cover their eyes. They would rather murder the prophets than face the truth. They grasp and hoard in a desperate bid to survive.

In every apocalyptic crisis, as the Italian writer Antonio Gramschi observed, “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born.” The catch is, what kind of new world emerges depends on who we choose to be in the crisis of birth. Think for example, about what the film Oppenheimer reveals about the crisis of World War II. The Allies feared that Adolf Hitler and the Nazis were building an atomic bomb. The prospect of Hitler having nuclear weapons was horrific, so the Allies felt their only option was to create their own bomb first, and thus the race was on. There is a moment in the film where, before the Trinity Test, Oppenheimer reveals to the general in charge of the Manhattan Project that there is the slightest mathematical possibility that the atomic bomb will light the atmosphere on fire and destroy the whole planet. And yet, in their desperation to outpace the Nazis, they go ahead with the test anyway, and a new, more terrible world of potential nuclear holocaust is born.

We are in such a time where the old world is dying, and a new world struggles to be born. As some people have wryly observed, it feels like whatever dark energy got released into the world in 2020 hasn’t really abated. Social media and polarization continue to tear our society apart. Political and cultural institutions continue to crumble. Wealth inequality and its attending economic woes continue to expand. The effects of climate change continue to worsen and intensify.

What new world will emerge out of this darkness?

There is terror in staring into such an abyss, and many of us are rightly terrified.

But strangely for me, as I’ve grappled with apocalypse over the past few years, there is also some odd comfort in knowing that this has happened before. The world ended and began again when Rome fell. When the Black Plague decimated Europe. When World War I happened, and again with World War II. And that’s just naming some of the big ones.

The crisis is here. There’s no going back. So what will we do?

Since it is the day on which we celebrate his legacy, I can think of no better voice of wisdom to guide than that of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a prophet during the apocalyptic crisis of the 1960s, who was killed by those who didn’t want to confront the truth he was presenting.

In the speech that he gave the night before he was assasinated, he saw and pointed to the crisis at hand:

Something is happening in Memphis; something is happening in our world…..the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around.

And yet, he reiterates through his speech that he would rather be in no other time:

And you know, if I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of taking a kind of general and panoramic view of the whole of human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, "Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?" Strangely enough, I would turn to the Almighty, and say, "If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the 20th century, I will be happy." Now that's a strange statement to make…. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding.

King was aware of the danger of the moment, but he also had the vision to see the possibility of a new and better world on the other side of the struggle:

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! And so I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!!

May we, like MLK, have the courage to face the truth of ourselves and our present situation, the hope to believe that a better world is possible, and the strength to change in ourselves what needs to be changed to see it through.

1. Sorry, there’s just no better way to describe 2020