No, It’s Not Going to Get Better

Sometimes the light at the end of a tunnel is an oncoming train.

We hugely underestimate the utter fragility of modernity.

Many times in history, we’ve turned the clock back to a much tougher & rougher past.

For centuries after Rome fell, Europeans couldn’t even dream of things like hot piped water, luxurious baths & central heating.

— Farooq Butt (@fmbutt) December 30, 2017

In the fall of 1983, the biggest thing on television was the TV movie, The Day After. Coming at a highpoint in the Cold War, this movie depicted a war between the Soviet Union and the United States that becomes nuclear. The movie centered on the lives of people living in and around Kansas City, Missouri. I never saw the movie itself. What I did see was a clip from the movie that was shown on 60 Minutes. It shows the last few seconds before the bomb hits KC. There is chaos in the streets. Freeways are clogged with people running away even though there is no place to hide. The iconic scene for me is when Jason Robard’s character is stuck in traffic and peers out of the driver window when..boom the sky turns an ugly shade or orange and a mushroom cloud appears over Kansas City.

It was hard to sleep for nights after that.

I calmed myself by believing that God wouldn’t let something like that happening. Yes, it was a lie, but it worked.

Thirty-five years later, I am wondering if a war with North Korea will turn hot. There are already scenarios out there that show how an errant tweet might rain down death from the sky killing millions. The fear is back. I want to tell myself that things will not careen out of control leading to some kind of apocalypse. But there is also a voice telling me that yes, things could be bad very, very bad.

If there is something that I will be keeping in the front my mind in 2018 is to have a healthy sense of lament. Yes, you heard correctly. Over the last few days, I’ve encountered a few postings on social media that seem to tell us that yes, the worst can happen, will happen and is happening. Normally, my MO is to ignore these postings and focus on hope. What is happening will at some point pass, is what I tell myself. But I’m learning to not immediately go to hope. I feel like I need to spend time in terror and despair. The above tweet is part of a tweetstorm that talks about how fragile “modernity” is. Progress is not certain. We can move forward in progress or backwards as is evidence in the technological advances of the Rome, that were lost when Rome fell.

When we blithely mock our own systems with tribal glee, when we knock down institutions, when we take political pleasure in zero-sum fights, when we take war less than seriously, just remember that the cave, starvation & the tribal club are never too far away from modern life.

— Farooq Butt (@fmbutt) December 30, 2017

Farooq Butt’s tweets remind us that our present can unleash forces that send us backward in progress and when that happens, it can take decades or even centuries to get back to square one.

But people will say that things were worse in say, 1968 as opposed to today. They have a point. But we don’t know if our relative calm is truly a sign of a better day or if it is the calm before a storm.

I think that we are living at a time when we feel like we are at the edge of a precipice. When a trip to Korea in the fall of 2018, has a pastor and his spouse talking about nuclear war, we are not in a time teeming with hope.

Been invited to speak in Korea in the fall… Ironically, I’m actually having to consider nuclear war in the discussions with my wife.

— Ed Stetzer (@edstetzer) January 1, 2018

The reason I’m thinking about lament is because of an Instagram post by religion writer Jonathan Merritt. He decided to ring the new year with a downer:

Sometimes,…we should refuse to be comforted. That’s hard to hear, but more and more I am accepting it. Sometimes things don’t get better. Sometimes there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Sometimes all you are left with is lament. Lament is not the same as despair, but it is about not trying to put lipstick on a pig when life just sucks.

The thing is, being a Christian doesn’t mean bad things will never happen to us. Just because we think God is in control doesn’t mean that evil will never harm us or that the sun will come out tomorrow.

But the thing is, God will be with us as we lament. God can take our tears and fears and sit with us in the dark. It is a God that will be with us even if the worse happens.

I don’t know what 2018 will bring. Maybe there will be war. Maybe not. Maybe other things that will happen that could bring calamity. That is a time for lament and sadness. It is a time to be like those mothers mentioned in Matthew 2 who refuse to comforted after Herod kills all the baby boys in Bethlehem and not try to talk about things passing, because they just might not.

But even in our lament, even in our fear I know paraphrasing the Apostles Creed, that I believe in God, I believe in Jesus, I believe in the Holy Spirit, the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.

Amen.

Originally published at questorpastor.wordpress.com on January 4, 2018.