Kimberly Emerson

Unless you lived under a rock – a powerful rock, capable of destroying all media transmissions, national or international – you heard that the world was supposed to end this past week.  It didn’t, and life moved on.  If there was a rapture, it happened quietly and I was not among the chosen.  If you’re reading this, I can only assume you weren’t either.  Don’t worry, I believe God still loves us both, so all will be well.

The whole ordeal kind of baffled me.  I know, people have been trying to figure out when the world would end – well, pretty much since it began.  The surprise came when I saw how many people picked up this particular end date and ran with it.  My two main news sources, CNN.com and NPR.org, both ran stories about it, and I do mean stories, plural.  There was no escape.  (Personally, I find the whole issue summed up by Matthew 24:36, “But about that day and hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father,” but that’s just me.  Other friends have pointed out later passages in Matthew saying we can’t know the day, but we can know the season.  Your call.)

The current bout of apocalypse fever began with Harold Camping, a minister who heads up the Family Radio network.  Predicting the end of the world seems to be his reason for being.  (Interesting paradox there.)  By the end of the week, I had listened to enough stories (despite trying desperately to ignore them) to learn that he had already started the “Repent, the end is near” chorus back in the 1990s.  Now that I have done a little research, I find that I was misinformed.  This past weekend constituted his third estimated rapture date, and he has already revised it to come up with a fourth. (For the record, the New Testament actually says “The Kingdom of God is near” or “The Kingdom of God is at hand,” and I’ve heard several ministers preach that it’s talking about a way of life, not world destruction.  But that’s up to interpretation.  We will now go back to your regularly scheduled Kimberly post.)

Personally, I found the apocalyptic updates annoying.  Basically, the man has already predicted the end of the world incorrectly twice.  Why were we all paying attention this weekend?  Truth is, none of us knows how long we have.  You say the world is going to end in five months?  Not to be too much of a downer here, but I say, who guarantees I’ll be around to see it?  If I’m hit by a bus tomorrow, then my personal clock is up.  (Really, watch out for buses.  With city budgets shrinking daily, they can’t be spending much on new brake pads.)

My best friend had more pity for the national media than I did.   Once someone put up “The end is near – May 21” on a billboard, she told me, it became a story too obvious not to write.   Perhaps she has a point.  Maybe, like me, many people are so desperately bored with the seemingly never-ending hockey and basketball seasons that they grasped at any alternative.  (Apologies to all of you who are fans of either.  Console yourselves for my heartlessness with the fact that you had better things to do at the time.)  Perhaps it was just that the jokes were so easy, it was impossible not to tell them.

Here’s the thing, though…underneath all the mockery, I couldn’t help but detect an undertone of fear.  People said they didn’t believe it, that they didn’t care.  But when you don’t care about something, you ignore it.  Everyone had something to say about this.  No one was allowed to ignore it.  Not even those of us who really, really wanted to.

In point of fact, there was only one thing that didn’t get said, and to me it’s the most curious point: why do we want to know?

For some people, I suppose it could just be scientific curiosity.  As Douglas Adams pointed out in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, it’ll be a heck of a show.  If, like me, you enjoy a good puzzle, then trying to divine numerology from the Bible could help you while away a lot of free time.  If you are one of the many who believe that we will all be judged in the end, you may want to repent.  Does hearing the potential expiration date for the universe makes you look at your life and want to atone for past wrongs?  More power to you.  I will admit to a couple of “would I do this differently if this really were my last day on Earth?” conversations with myself last Friday.  (As I clarified in my last column, I talk to myself.  Frequently.)  But here’s the thing – the conversation is worth no more than the air into which the words disappear if it doesn’t change my behavior should I find that the world hasn’t ended.

I think that’s the thing that irritates me the most about Mr. Camping and his recurring Doomsday dispatches.  He implies that the only reason for changing your behavior is that God will smite you if you don’t do it in time.  It puts God in the light of a sadistic school principal, who stands around waiting for kids to mess up so that he can send them to detention.  Does God really want you to run around yelling about the end of the world just to scare people?  How about this, just for counterpoint – maybe God wants us to be better people because it will actually make the time that we are here more pleasant?

When you review that movie in your head that shows the story of your life, are there some parts you aren’t so proud of?  Well, first, congratulate yourself on being in such good company, since the rest of us are all right there with you.  Then sit down and write a letter to each of the people that you’ve hurt, and tell them that you’re sorry.  They may forgive you or they may not, but I’m betting you’ll breathe a little easier knowing that you tried.  And really, even if you manage to avoid all buses in the area, wouldn’t it be great to have that easier breathing while you’re still alive, too?  I think of it sort of like remodeling my kitchen.  Yes, I’d like to do it before I sell the house, because I can get a better price that way, but if I’m going to put all the money into remodeling, wouldn’t it be nice to do it sooner so that I can enjoy it, too?

If I had the money for a billboard, here’s what I’d put up:  “REPENT!  YOU MIGHT LIVE.”

Last weekend found me having dinner with my two brothers, my sister-in-law, and my nephews.  I remember thinking fleetingly that if I only had a few hours left, this would be exactly the way I’d want to spend them.  Eating good food, surrounded by people that I love.  (Well, ideally we would be eating at home, so that my cat was there too.)  But you know what?  I enjoyed the meal immensely, even figuring that the world wasn’t going anywhere just yet.

Wanting to set some things right?  Beat the rush to atonement.  I don’t pretend to know a thing about what happens when we die, but I’m willing to bet that you’ll enjoy living more, carrying a lighter load.  That’s worth a lot.

Kimberly thanks God for her family, her cat, her friends and all the other things about her life that make her hope her personal end time is a long way off yet.

Tags: apocalypse, forgiveness, Harold Camping, rapture, repentance