There’s a little something that seems to have been making the rounds in the media the last couple of weeks, something about the Bible that I thought it might be a good idea to discuss today in its relation to my project. Of course, I’m referring to the upcoming Judgment Day scheduled for tomorrow at 6:00 pm in the Pacific Rim as a “great earthquake” strikes each time zone in turn. This according to one Harold Camping of the FamilyRadio organization and his followers, who posit that, through calculating the exact date of the beginning of Noah’s Great Flood (which was precisely 7000 years ago tomorrow). While this group represents a very small minority of American Christians, their story has reached the media throughout the country and the world, due at least in part to their own tireless promotions as they hope to warn a disbelieving world that May 21st, 2011 marks the beginning of the end of the world, proclaiming “the Bible Guarantees it!” I have seen their billboards throughout the Twin Cities and in outstate Minnesota, and these advertisements are also found from coast to coast. I have no idea of the amount of money that went into this campaign.
I first encountered the story on MPR and quickly found it all over the Internet with reactions mostly hovering around humor at these people’s beliefs, with Facebook events scheduled for “Post Rapture Looting” and other jokes. How could these groups take these predictions so seriously, particularly after so many failed predictions for the date of the apocalypse (Camping himself having wrongly proclaimed a date sometime in 1994)? How did such a small group attain such public interest and attention, even if mainly ridicule? Part of the answer, I feel, lies in their study of the Bible and the mysteries that many people, devout Christians and the non-religious alike still feel.
Camping and his followers base all of their beliefs on what they hold to be written in the Bible, Camping himself expressing “I know it’s absolutely true, because the Bible is always absolutely true,” he says. “If I were not faithful that would mean that I’m a hypocrite,” as quoted on CNN.com. In explaining why he got the date wrong back in the ‘90s, Camping said that he had not studied the Bible long enough at that point and “at that time had not gone through the Book of Jeremiah, which is a big book in the Bible that has a whole lot to say about the end of the world.” I also have not gotten to the Book of Jeremiah, and wonder what I might find there that will pinpoint a precise time and date of apocalypse. I do recall reading that “no one will know the time” in the Bible somewhere as well. While many, Christians and non-Christians point to this to declaim the activities of Camping and those like him, to me their interpretations are interesting.
To a dispassionate reader of the Bible such as myself, interested in the cultural environment of Bible study, such interpretations are fascinating, and I can easily see how such things can come to be. Particularly in my continued (and continued) reading of Psalms, it has seemed to me that much I have read so far could be considered, in a word, cryptic. Perhaps such apocalyptic predictions may be a way for modern people to connect with the ancient writings in a way that really, truly will affect them personally today. Knowing the date of something as far-reaching and important as the end of the world due to their faith in the book and knowing the arcane messages hidden inside its many pages put them above other readers of the Bible.
In a way, this illustrates a motivation and attitude toward the Bible, and towards religion in general, that I just cannot replicate. As I read the Bible, including Psalms, I do make some attempt to look at the scriptures through the lens of philosophical meaning. If I truly had faith, what would a certain passage mean to me? How would I justify a belief as radical as the end of the world? In the end, though, this just points out how little I understand such ideas. The idea of wholeheartedly believing that tomorrow only you and a small group of people would disappear from the Earth, leaving behind most of your loved ones to suffer terrible before finally being condemned to punishment is alien to me, I cannot help but think of how sad such a belief is. One article in the New York Times discussing the family dynamics of parents who believed in the May 21 Judgment Day and their skeptical children really illustrated this, with the teenage son lamenting,
“I don’t really have any motivation to try to figure out what I want to do anymore,” he said, “because my main support line, my parents, don’t care.” This really brought a more personal note to the effects of such beliefs. In any case, this topic really deserves more thought than I’ve given it now. Maybe, if the world doesn’t end in the next twenty four hours, I will elaborate on the link between Bible Study, apocalypse, and American culture. If it does, well, I’ll have something else to write about, after all.
So, anyway, to take the title of the MPR piece discussing the phenomena, “Is the end nigh? We’ll know soon enough.” Then, perhaps I can get back to discussing the more relevant topics of my much belated Bible reading. In the meantime, as I hammer out the rest of my hasty attempt to jump on the Rapture bandwagon before its too late, I need to get to sleep in order to prepare for the many plans I did happen to make for tomorrow, and none of them involve earthquakes. Then again, I don’t have any plans for a looting party, either!
