Let me now debunk three thoughts about the end of the world.

NASA has taken concerns about the 2012 myth so seriously that it has even worked to debunk it. Let us then NOT assume the alleged predictions about December 21, 2012 are true.

The second myth to be debunked is spread around in atheist circles. It is that in the bible when God has destroyed the world, everyone was just getting along fine, but things they were doing were not pleasing to God and so He simply decided to destroy innocent people on a whim. That is a myth and by definition is false.

The third myth is a combination of the two, the end of the world will happen on December 21, 2012 and people will be getting along fine when suddenly all the planets will align correctly and destroy the world.

Now that we have debunked all three myths, let us look at today’s gospel and understand it in light of the world around us. Jesus described the end of the world, but the key to this whole gospel is in the first line.

“In those days, after that tribulation” Jesus says. The first question that we need to ask is “What tribulation?”

The answer to that question we can find in the verses before this passage. Jesus is describing the key element that leads to God’s ultimate action of destruction, a society where the people turn on each other and commit severely unjust, dehumanizing and destructive acts.

Jesus describes the tribulations in a way we understand as an unjust society where nations turn on nations and people in each nation turn on each other. This is a society, and according to the earlier parts of Mark 13-a world, in which the darkest elements of humanity come forth and in so doing cause death and destruction. This means the common atheist myth that people are just living happy lives as God chooses on a whim to destroy innocent people is just plain wrong.

What Jesus describes is a society that is engaging in genocide, oppression, false imprisonment and summary execution. The people are turning on each other. Families are turning on each other and societies are becoming great battlegrounds. It is in the midst of this great evil that we see the destruction of the end of the world. The human race has lost its ability to run itself and society is collapsing.

One of the most dramatic examples of this from the bible is in Sodom and Gomorrah. Again, the bible describes a society that goes bad and turns on itself. It becomes a Hell on Earth, not because of God’s action, but humanity’s actions. We see in other parts of the Bible that things become so bad that people cry out for the mountains to fall on them.

How could this happen?

It brings us back to the first chapters in Genesis. The basic message of Genesis deeper than the literal interpretation. The book tells us basically whom we are as humans. It tells us that just as the sun, moon, earth, stars, etc are not God, neither are we. We cause great evil and destruction when we do not recognize God as God and more so when we recognize us as gods. Only God is God and any society that rejects that truth for a false truth runs the risk of turning on itself.

Let us notice something else, when that happens, the people who are most hated are the disciples of Jesus. (Sound familiar). Victims of severe anti-Catholic persecution at the hands of the secular powers, I am sure can imagine the scenario described in the bible. However, what is the proper response? Focus on God, the persecution is to be expected, but do not fight it. Instead, focus on Christ. There is great suffering in persecution but eventually those who seek to destroy the followers of Christ become victims of their own hatred and turn on themselves. It is not a pretty scenario. However, if we respond and turn on them too, we enter the same cesspool. If instead we focus on Christ, we at least can lead some out of that cesspool. A case in point is in the actions of St. Maximilian Kolbe whose powerful witness to Christ led many to turn to our Lord and led him to comfort those who were victims of the actions of the NAZI regime. That regime is described well in the words of Jesus, as are other self-destructive regimes of the 20th century and beyond.

Pretty much everything Jesus says here  the Germans experienced in World War II. Would we say that an unjust God punished a happy go lucky people? No we would say that an evil regime was stopped and the evil it spread was slowed greatly. There are still those who will promote the ideas of NAZI Germany, but they are not able, as of this writing, to do it in a way as destructive as seen in Germany in the 1930’s-1940’s.

Maybe another example can be found in one of our newest men beatified. Bishop Zoltan Meszlenyi. He froze to death at the hands of the government of Hungary in 1951 after speaking out against the communist regime. They put him in a solitary cell and purposely left the windows open so that he would die such a horrible death. What kind of evil would do something like that on a government level: the same kind that Jesus describes in Mark 13. The same kind born out of a false belief that we are gods.

Jesus promises eternal joy to those who seek to follow Him. Those who reject Him are incapable of accepting His grace and wisdom and end up becoming victims of their own errors. Our hope is in Christ alone who can lead us to the fullness of humanity, those who reject the grace of God become victims of their own flaws by their own choice. We can prepare for this disaster, but only God can stop it and we become victims of it if we try to do stop it ourselves.

Therefore, it is not God that ends the world, it is humanity without God that collapses under the false pretense that we are God. This is the exact pretense that the Devil tempts us with in the Garden. Once we recognize God as God, then the false humanity dies and we follow Christ into Eternal life. Until that time, however, we remain patient until the false understanding of whom we are as humans runs its course. We also do our best to lead others to the truth in the meantime.

Photo Credits:

Top: hasenonkel via Bigstockphoto.com

All others Public Domain:

Top Middle: Chinfo.Navy.Mil

Bottom Middle: the Franciscan church in Szombathely, Hungary

Bottom: “L’ elezione della Vergine” by Francesco Botticini