rapture

Well, here we are: another Monday.  And the world didn’t end.  Too bad.  Of course it was never going to: Jesus always said (Matt. 25:13) that even he didn’t know when it would happen and that speculation was futile; and in any case the colorful biblical depictions of the ‘end times’ are among the most misused and least understood passages in literary history.  Added to that, Mr Camping has been wrong – and exposed as a charlatan – before.  But that didn’t stop the level of public interest and media hype his latest prediction generated.

I actually found myself a little frustrated by it all.  Once again, religion and the people who find it important to them attract attention only when being caricatures, freaks, kooks or lunatic basket cases.  I understand why, of course.  But while the news channels endlessly interviewed ‘experts’ and speculated, tongue-in-cheek, about the whole thing, billions of people around the world on Saturday quietly got on with allowing their religious convictions to inform them in transformative and yet somehow less newsworthy ways.  For example:

On the southwest side of Chicago, Muslim community group IMAN continued to expand the provision of free health care to its uninsured neighbors and clients;

 In Myanmar, Buddhist monk U Gambira, aged 33, continued his extraordinary and courageous witness in a Rangoon jail, sentenced to 68 years’ imprisonment for leading the ‘Saffron Uprising’ of Buddhist religious groups against the country’s military dictatorship in 2007;

In the UK, development agency Christian Aid (whose motto used to be ‘we believe in life before death’) stepped up its campaign to end sexual violence in developing nations, especially the Democratic Republic of the Congo;

In Skokie, the IL Holocaust Museum continued its project of enabling the experience of the Jewish community to inspire justice, reconciliation and understanding locally and across the world;

In Chennai, India, the Hindui Mission Hospital served dozens of the city’s poor in desperate medical need.

You get the idea.  Religion doesn’t inspire everyone for good, and many don’t see the need of it.  But for the vast majority, it issues in lives of goodness, compassion and care.  Some argue that it isn’t necessary for such lives: well, for these people and these causes, it has been.

 I’m thankful Mr. Camping was wrong.  Again.  Perhaps from now on we won’t be so easily distracted by the fraudulent from what really matters in our world.  If we allow them, our religious convictions always point us to the urgency of mending our world, not the superficiality of so much of our culture.

a life less ordinary

Last  week, I spent a couple of days in Atlanta with dear friends.  Having just taught a course on American History since 1960, I was curious to visit the Carter Center, founded to house Jimmy Carter’s papers and record the major events of his one-term presidency.  It was only the second such presidential museum I’d seen, and the only one detailing a contemporary presidency (the other being the stunning Lincoln Museum in Springfield, IL), so I was curious to see ‘how it was done’.

The Carter Center is much more than a presidential museum, or even a library.  The 39^th President himself insisted that it predominantly be a place for forging the reconciliation and peace he longed to achieve while in office.  It retains that role today, a beautiful, contemplative space in the midst of the city for dialogue and the resolution of dispute.  And what struck me most about the museum was not so much its record of Carter’s time in office, about which debate will continue between historians and political scholars, but of the President’s life since leaving the White House.

In the last 31 years, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter have tirelessly done simple things to find answers to global problems once thought insoluble.  Through the Carter Center and because of their global vision, diseases such as malaria, guinea worm and river blindness have been tackled head-on, to great effect.  Countries struggling to embrace democracy – and those struggling to prevent them doing so – have been overseen and scrutinized to ensure fairness and equality.  Resources have been offered to communities seeking a way out of endemic poverty.  Nations and communities have been encouraged to seek the mutual understanding that for decades have eluded them.  But for the status they afford the Carters in this endeavor, the White House years are almost unimportant, compared to this extraordinary ongoing achievement.

In many cases, the work has been simple, but simply ignored or spurned by others.   The Carters have mobilized an effort and lent it their energy and support.  Awarding them the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Bill Clinton movingly – and simply – said that they have done more good to more people than any other couple on earth.  Not bad, for peanut farmers from south Georgia.  Though I shall never have the weight of the presidency behind me, I did emerge from the Center’s landscaped lawns and elegant fountains re-inspired that one simple, focussed, committed life can make a world of difference.