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.

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