And in the end…,

This is, I suppose, goodbye.

The end of the world is upon us at last.  How could I doubt it, when so many have assured me, and with the utmost conviction, that the time has finally come.  We stand at the brink of utter collapse, of our own eternal oblivion.  The United States teeters beneath our feet, its inevitable slide into chaos has begun.  And when that last bastion of the chosen has been rendered into dust, the whole of the world must surely follow.

They always told me that the end would come like a thief in the night, and they were right.

I’d expected us, perhaps, to vanish in the unspeakable flash of nuclear warfare.

Or an maybe we’d be snuffed out by an asteroid strike, or a super-volcano…,

And barring those more dramatic options, a slow decline at the hands of climate change, bickering to the last about our own role in the latest mass-extinction.

Surely I’d have never guessed that, in the end, we’d be done in by allowing one guy to marry another guy.  It’s the bleeding apocalypse in rainbow hues!

I’ve been reading this stuff all week, and it is amazing!

It goes like this…,

Now that same sex couples can get married throughout the United States, all the churches are going to close.  It happens because the government will try to force all the religions that don’t like homosexuality to marry ‘em anyway, and when they refuse, the Fed will take away their Tax-Exempt status, forcing them to close their doors.

Once the churches are closed there will be no support structure for Christians (already a small and persecuted minority) and the country, indeed the world will turn away from the teachings of God.  Marriage will vanish entirely, and the family unit will be replaced by a carnival of depravity, the likes of which would make even the ancient Romans blush.

With the collapse of heterosexuality, actual breeding will decline, populations will drop, and the races of the West will be overwhelmed by the savage hoards of Islam, who, for all their barbarity, at least have the good sense to steer clear of all that sissy stuff.

And that’s when things get really bad…,

and…, ummmm…,

Honestly, I’m still pretty vague about what happens next.  I think it starts to rain blood and some angels and horsemen come along.  Some seals get broken, and there’s a bit with a dragon and a foreign prostitute.

And I’m still not sure if that bit comes before or after the apes rise up and enslave humanity.

It’s all a bit of a mess.

Two years ago this week, I asked the question: Can Christians live, as the rest of us do, in a world that is not shaped and molded to satisfy their personal wants and expectations?

The question still stands, but the early polling doesn’t look good.

Faced with the reality of marriage equality for same-sex couples, many of their more vocal representatives appear to have doubled-down on the expressions of victimhood and isolation.

I mean, yes, there’s a church on every corner, tens of thousands of Christian television channels, radio stations and websites, there is a Bible in every hotel room, and an uncountable number of Christian political action committees sifting untold millions of dollars into the hands of politicians who will be sworn into office with one hand resting on the cover of their holy book…,

But for all that, it’s still a lonely world for the faithful.

And yet there is hope.

There has been no rioting, no attacks or bombings, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision.  In fact, the most disruptive protests have come from a handful of county clerks who refuse to issue marriage licenses, along with an sudden uptick in whining from certain folks in my Facebook feed.

The majority of those who identify as Christian, seem to have taken in stride this dramatic change in the social fabric of our nation.  At least, for the moment, they have.

The real test will come when the more strident minority, driven to desperation by very real (but unfounded) feelings of persecution, lash out in some way against the culture which they believe has turned against them.

Will the silent majority be rallied by the impassioned voices of the culture-warriors?

Will they remain silent, waiting to see which way the wind will blow?

Or will they stand with those who want to live in a world where all beliefs are sacred and freedom is not restricted to those who think and act and love in a certain way?

It doesn’t have to be the end of the world.

It can be the beginning.

And in the end, the Love you take,

Is Equal to the Love, you make.

—The Gospel according to McCartney—

Picking up the pieces

I was pleased, earlier this week, to see a small but emphatic shout of joy ring out from certain portions of this, our internet.  This, in response to a bit of unexpected good news, as word spread that the statue of Manannán Mac Lir, recently stolen from a mountain top in Northern Ireland, had been recovered.

The image of the Irish sea god, missing for some weeks, was found where the vandals had cast it down, at the base of a ravine only a few hundred yards from where it once stood.

Until now, I think most of us believed that the fiberglass statue had been torn apart and disposed of.  Instead, it appears to have been carried a short distance and then rolled down a hill.  So, I suppose we can ad laziness to the list of crimes for which these religiously motivated thugs are guilty, should we ever chance to discover them.

And, with the statue safely returned, I seriously doubt we’ll see any great effort put toward that investigation.

Did I say, “safely returned?”  Well no, not really.

Even as the first stories of the statue’s recovery began to circulate, there was mention of some damage to the head.  When the first photos were finally released it was clear that the entire back of Manannán’s head had been sheared away.  Whether this was a consequence of the fall or an active attempt to further disfigure the sculpture is unclear, but the result is the same.

A community is left to pick up the pieces, both literally and figuratively.  Will the local taxpayers have the means to both restore the statue, and secure it against further attacks?  And even if Manannán is returned to that high lookout on Binn Fhoibhne, I have no doubt he will always bear the scars of defilement.

In that, at least, he is in good company.

Tour any of the great museums and you will see them.  Cracked and broken, their once graceful arms missing, they are the gods and heroes of old, the glory of civilizations past, long ago cast down in a fit of religious fervor, and more recently resurrected as simple curiosities to entertain the masses.

Here is the head of the Goddess Aphrodite, torn from her statue, her eyes gouged out and a cross chiseled into her forehead. Carved in the 1st Century C.E., it was found in the Roman Agora in Athens.

There is a warning phrase which we hear, from time to time, among certain segments of the Christian faithful.  “These are the End Times,” they shout for all to hear, usually in response to some aspect of our modern world which they find irksome to their sensibilities.

Be it secularism…,

…same-sex marriage,

…stem-cell research,

…global free-trade,

…and let us not forget the rise of alternative religions,

…you can be sure that someone, somewhere is convinced that society is about to collapse in on itself and a new age is about to begin.

And therein lies the irony, because these really are the end times.

The biblical ‘tribulations’ began long before the first words of that book were set to paper, when the various tribes of mankind began to migrate across the face of the land and entire societies fell in their wake.

The end isn’t neigh.

The end was yesterday and the day before that, and the world of marvels we have built for ourselves rests upon the gutted remains of the ages that came before us.  And while some are still trying to pick up the pieces, others are determined forget it all in favor of some approaching paradise.

But what so many of them fail to understand, is that the end is a process, not a stopping point.

The worlds we know is always in a state of death…,

…and birth,

…and rebirth.

The human response to this process appears to involve clinging to those portions of the past we hold dear while simultaneously trying to pull down that which we find hostile to our world view.  In so doing we become as much the engine of the end times as we are its victims.

I don’t imagine that will ever change, but I’d like to think it possible.

In my moments of greatest optimism, I imagine the world we know in collapse, falling away to be replaced by one in which we are free to worship any god, or none, without feeling the need to pull down that which is sacred to our neighbor.

It wouldn’t be the Biblical Paradise, the Celtic Otherworld, the green fields of Iðavöllr, or the Age of freaking Aquarius, but I think it would be a nice start.