End of Daze

Earlier this week, I listened to an interview on NPR’s “All Things Considered” in which host Michel Martin spoke with Dr. Russel Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberties Committee. She asked Dr. Moore how his religious beliefs have shaped his perspective on all that is happening in the world today, namely police killing unarmed citizens, racial injustice, COVID-19, and the social and economic effects of it all.

Dr. Moore stated that a lot of people have been asking him if this seems like evidence of apocalyptic times, pointing to the belief that many traditional Christians hold that catastrophic world events will presage the second coming of Jesus.

I was pleased to hear Dr. Moore say that considering that the word ‘apocalypse’ literally means “an unveiling or revelation,” he believes that it could be apocalyptic in that many things that have been hidden are now coming to light in ways that have not only revealed the horrors, but have also revealed signs of life in that people are coming together to do the “right thing.”

I deeply appreciate hearing him, as a leader in the Southern Baptist denomination, state this perspective. It is heartening to hear what I consider to be a more enlightened view. However, I was disheartened, but not surprised to learn that as many as 200 Southern Baptist churches have threatened to withdraw from the organization because of Dr. Moore’s “radical” views.

I grew up hearing eschatological theology that included this frightening belief in the horrors of the apocalypse that awaited us if we did not accept Jesus Christ as our personal savior. I know that many people still hold to this belief. I know because some of them are members of my family.

The Left Behind series of books by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jennings that have enjoyed wide-spread popularity over the past nearly twenty-five years and which have been made into movies, are based on this conservative Christian interpretation of the Book of Revelation. According to their version, Revelation predicts the end times when those who are “good Christians” will be taken up to heaven, leaving the rest behind to suffer the wrath of a vengeful God as punishment for sins.

I have not read any of the Left Behind series, nor have I seen the movies, but I am familiar with the premise of this Christian eschatology, referred to by some as the “rapture.” I have seen artists’ depictions of planes plummeting to the earth because the pilot was taken, people floating up into the sky leaving cars on the freeway, and the ensuing death and destruction experienced by those who are “left behind.” In my way of thinking, these are not the actions of a loving and forgiving God. I continue to be dumbfounded by this alarming predication of what will occur in the “last days.”

I prefer to accept Dr. Moore’s interpretation of the apocalypse. I choose to see what is happening now as uncovering or “revelation” of the darkness that has been lurking in the hearts and minds of humanity and which has been expressed in ways that until now had been hidden from view. I choose to believe that all that is happening now does not presage the “second coming of Jesus,” but the dawning of Christ consciousness upon the Earth. In other words, the “second coming of Christ consciousness.”

It is not up to Jesus to bring the reign of peace and harmony to humankind; it is up to each and every one of us. We do this by inviting the Light of Christ into our consciousness, revealing the darkness hidden in our own hearts and minds, allowing the light to restore us to the realization of who we are in Truth, and taking the actions that are inspired therein.

My hope and prayer is that we will come together as the human race to bring about not the “end of days,’ but the “end of the daze” we have been living in and have allowed to blind us to the realities of the pain and suffering in the world.

I pray that we will be the ones to bring forth the manifestation of the consciousness of heaven and a world that reflect it here and now. It will not happen in a flash, but will happen as we make conscious choices moment-by-moment. It takes our clear intention, strength and commitment. It may not happen in our lifetime, yet every choice we make can move us one step closer to the end of our daze and the second coming of Christ Consciousness.