Today, according to some folks who don’t know how to read Mayan calendars, was meant to be the end of the world. Just another of many predicted ends of the world, like the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Y2K bug, another big meteorite which might hit the planet, Harold Camping’s calculation last year, or the widespread Dispensationalist belief that Jesus will return precisely seven years after the United Nations signs a peace treaty with Israel. Seems every sect has a scenario.
Of course, we Christians understand Jesus can return whenever he wants, at any time; that we don’t get to know that time, (Mk 13.32) and need to be ready for it just the same; that the world’s circumstances are only reminders of the End, and not the End themselves; and that the End isn’t really the end but the beginning. It’s a time for Christians to rejoice, for pagans to repent, and for there to finally be peace on earth and goodwill to all.
In the meanwhile, since the End has not yet come, it will of course be a time for a fair amount of “We knew better” type scorn from all sides. Go ahead and make jokes about it. Just be kind to those people who really did believe a little too much the End had come. But, as I pointed out last year when Camping’s prediction went bust, you’ll notice a difference between the skepticism and mockery of different groups.
Unless you can show them some sort of material, physical world-ending disaster, like a meteor, the threat of nuclear war, or greater and greater natural disasters as the result of climate change, pagans don’t believe the world is gonna end for another 5 billion years or so. Nor do they believe Jesus is returning. They think he’s dead. Dead dead dead. Crucified and dead. Put in a tomb, body got swiped in some conspiracy by the apostles, not coming back, dead. He’s particularly not coming back to gather together all the Christians and meet with us in the sky. (1Th 4.17) (Or take us to heaven, which is what the Left Behind novels claim will happen.) ’Cause he’s dead.
Yes, from time to time you may encounter pagans who pay us Christians some lip service, just to be nice. They concede Jesus might return in some kind of form. But it’s as a spirit; as the ghost of Jesus. Or it’s the “spirit of Jesus,” which is a lot like the “spirit of Santa Claus”—they don’t believe either person is real and alive, but if people carry around the ideals of that person, that’s just as good. And while we Christians definitely ought to carry around Jesus’s ideals, that’s not what we mean when we say he’s alive. We mean he’s got a body. He fully intends to come back to earth, walk around on it, breathe its oxygen, eat its food. We mean real and not dead.
Big difference. Important difference… and one that, if you were paying close enough attention to what people were saying, might even have revealed to you which Christians believe Jesus is dead. Because there are some. Certain so-called Christians don’t believe Jesus will ever return: When we die, we go to heaven, and life on earth will just continue till the sun burns out. To them, Jesus is the god of the afterlife, like Osiris or Pluto, and we’ll interact with him there. Not here. Never here.
But that’s a theology discussion, and this bit is about the temporary world we live in. How ought Christians deal with this far-too-common attitude we find among the pagans?
First of all, there’s always an opportunity to talk about it. While it’s perfectly okay to point out the ridiculousness of date-fixing, and we can laugh about that with the pagans, we need to make it clear to them we’re not laughing at the idea of Jesus’s return, or the End. Just that anyone can predict when these things take place. That, we don’t know. That they’ll eventually happen, we do know. Because Jesus is alive.
Then we can talk to them about how Jesus is alive.
We can give testimonies—share our own experiences with him, and how he’s proven to our satisfaction he’s alive. We can listen to why they don’t feel he’s alive. Sometimes their reasons are quite valid. Some will scoff. Some will try to reason their way around orthodox Christian beliefs so that they can still call themselves Christians despite believing our Lord is dead. Some might actually repent. Regardless of what happens, this is our opportunity to share the good news: Jesus is alive, and he’s coming back, and it’ll be awesome.