“The End is coming, in maybe 100 billion years. Is it too soon to start freaking out?” asks science editor Dennis Overbye in his NY Times article “Who Will Have the Last Word on the Universe?”.
The article ponders the recent Netflix video ‘Trip to Infinity’ about the last moments of life: “At some point in the future there will be somewhere in the universe where there will be a last sentient being. And a last thought. And that last word, no matter how profound or mundane, will vanish into silence along with the memory of Einstein and Elvis, Jesus, Buddha, Aretha and Eve, while the remaining bits of the physical universe go on sailing apart for billions upon billions upon billions of lonely, silent years.”[1]
If you’re into naturalism (a notion marketed as science that claims a material universe is all that there is)—that idea of there being a last moment of any thought anywhere, forever is…scary. The anxiousness this cosmic end of thought is causing suggests people cling to a vague and undefined hope that it really won’t be over at my personal death…maybe, just maybe I can return to consciousness…at least until Netflix shoved that video at me.
After all, if this life is all there is—fourscore and ten for us, plus maybe another billion before the last brain waves check out, then it’s the chorus to “Dust in the Wind”[2]. Or, as MacBeth laments “…a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Allow me to suggest the need for a cultural rebellion, as disciples. Let’s stop catechizing our minds to the angst, and start bringing hope back to our friends, nation and world. It’s time to retrain our spiritual “muscle-memory”. Liberation from fears will only come by retraining our spiritual “muscle memory”.
How to do that? Let’s think about bad fear, and good fear.
Bad Fear
Fearing the end of time is contrary to the delightful and unambiguous future designed by the Most-High God -for example, Revelation 22:5 [NASB]
Fear is craven, servile and quite fashionable. We flee from, medicate for, or face insanity and suicide in our despair, because we are afraid. That’s Western fear, anxiousness and dread.
Counseling demand and mental health trauma is on the rise in higher education, and suicides and drug use are up. I’ve recently spoken at several colleges and seminaries around the US. Anxiousness has become a buzzword for students and faculty at almost every institution I visited. Counseling rates are rising above anything leaders have seen in their lifetimes. And these are at Christian schools and Seminaries as well!
The younger generations are overrun with anxiety, so says Psychiatrist and author Jonathan Haidt:
“When you look at Americans born after 1995, what you find is that they have extraordinarily high rates of anxiety, depression, self-harm, suicide and fragility.” [Wall Street Journal, Dec 30, 2022, interview with Tunku Varadarajan]
The writer of Hebrews echoes the near-global sense of innate despair and anxiety:
“Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.” Hebrews 2:14-15 [NASB]
Science And Its Limits
One of those limits is the inability to define what a disciple should fear and fret about. I say that because the Bible talks about fear, and that reasoning runs counter to the modern mind’s frets, despair and meaninglessness.
Societal dread isn’t new. Yet in seeking to assuage dread we reach for any-means-other-than-God thinking, whereby even some proponents of science try to end-run God using limited reason and specious theories. Robert Jastrow, scientist and Chairman Emeritus of the George C. Marshall Center:
“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance, he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.“[3]
Good Fear
There is a noble kind of fear. Every follower of Christ is called to live in a fear (Hebrew word: yârê)—which is to be awestruck and drawn toward something. That fear of God, draws us out of the inward spiral, toward the Triune God who wants us to flourish.
Freedom from anxiety and fear is rationally possible only in surrender to Christ, in the journey of a disciple. You and I as disciples are directed to be different—oddly free from mortal dread. Such an identity change has unique vocational and culture implications for every disciple in work, art, community, families and the academies.
Christ followers are obligated to understand other people’s fears. Every disciple has a duty to build relationships, to love people, and to be ready with the answer about the true hope when they ask (and they will ask). Check out 1st Peter 3:15 on that.
Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God has walked among us. His eternal reality for us is infinitely better than a paltry billion years of anxiousness. Run the race well as disciples. Christ’s great work for us is the only rational, and proven hope for mankind’s unshackling from anxiousness. In following him, we are free.
“And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, 4 and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.” Revelation 21:1-4 [NASB]
[1] Jonathan Halperin, Alex Ricciardi, Netflix, “Trip to Infinity”
[2] Kerry Livgren (Kansas), “Dust in the Wind”, Point of Know Return, 1977, Kirshner Records
[3] Robert Jastrow, “God and the Astronomers”