The Late, Great Planet Earth...

Less than a year after two Americans first landed on the moon, an obscure Southern Baptist named Hal Lindsey wrote a book entitled, "The Late, Great Planet Earth," in which he gave his own interpretation of biblical prophecies. Lindsey believed the Earth, as we know it, would end sometime in the late 1970s or early 1980s, when Jesus returned. While there was no Internet back then, and therefore no social media or You Tube, his book went "viral," selling over 28 million copies by 1990. Lindsey's view was from the pre-millennial, dispensationalist view espoused by many Southern Baptists. If you don't know what those terms mean, you are the better for it. Basically, they assert true Christians get to have all of the fat and flavor without any calories, snatched out of the earthly turmoil they helped create in something called the "rapture," kind of a biblical version of "Beam me up, Scotty." The book frightened a lot of people into "believing." Even if you considered yourself a Christian, but didn't believe the Bible the way Lindsey and his ilk did, the book still scared the hell out of you. As a young adult exploring his rekindled Christian faith, I was enraptured by it, as were Sunday School classes and youth groups across all brands of church, including most "mainline" denominational ones. Given that the Post-Vatican II charismatic movement had turned many Roman Catholics into sacramental Southern Baptists at about the same time, even they latched on to Lindsey's doomed planet theories with great passion. The whole thing got a second life when Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins later wrote the "Left Behind" series, and a fresh wave of paranoia spread across the bow of Christianity, from the "evangelicals" to the generally neurotic worriers, including the Methodists.

Fast forward to 2019. The earth is in danger again, and no "rapture" is in sight to save anybody. Turns out some of those prophecies may have been right about the events, but wrong about the cause. We're boiling our oceans with cataclysmic temperature rises, melting our glaciers and polar icecaps, raising our water levels, and swallowing our coastal cities. It's not "God's judgment," or even anything apocalyptic. It's just human stupidity, greed, and destructive public policy formulated to boost profits and assuage the corporations and the wealthy. Maybe that IS God's judgment, after all--"What you sow, you reap." We're poisoning our air, fooling around with genetic plant manipulation (breeding insecticide into our food crops?), and poking so many holes into the earth that one fears it could deflate like a punctured balloon. And if that isn't enough, we're drilling deep, deep wells just to pump the radioactive and caustic wastes from fracking back INTO the ground. Mother Earth can't like that! One might have thought we had learned just how precious and fragile our home planet--our ONLY planet--when the Apollo missions beamed back pictures of it floating in space like a "grand oasis," as astronaut James Lovell described it. "Earth Day" was born, in fact, from people seeing that famous "Earthrise" photo taken by the crew of Apollo 8. Surely we would never again backslide on efforts to clean up our environment and preserve our celestial home? Wrong.

We're also polluting our relationships. Racism, sexism, nationalism, and white supremacy have all resurged within the past few years. In our own country, the historic election of our first person of color as president brought out the "birthers" and bigots in record numbers, and his successor has dumped gasoline on a smoldering pile of hate. American citizens of recent foreign ancestry are being told to "go back to where you came from," and not by Neo-Nazis, but by the President of the United States, himself a descendant of an immigrant family (aren't we ALL, unless you come from a Native American tribe?). America is fighting a civil war, this time without bullets, but using words and votes to exchange harmful volleys, harm that will take decades to repair and undo. Schisms are happening everywhere, from religious denominations to nation states like Great Britain.

Politically, we are falling into a new "Cold War" era, only this time we have added China and North Korea to the mix. Putin's Russia has fussed with our elections and is building new weapons of mass (and mass media) destruction. On its part, the United States has increased its military spending to record levels, trashing the Federal deficit, and is creating a "Space Force." While this country has always seen its military posture as defensive, our "Space Force" is an offensive enterprise, as no one else is fighting in space, currently. Let's hope it is a cure for which there is no known disease. Genocide is happening in many nations around the world, the Saudi government assassinated an American journalist with no regret and with no sanctions or punitive measures taken against it, and the fight over "Brexit" has deposed yet another Prime Minister in England.

I could go on, but isn't this getting depressing enough? Why, what is happening around Planet Earth now is making Hal Lindsey's stuff out to be small potatoes. Even if "raptured" off terra firma, we'd leave enough baggage behind to continue to inflict pain for those "left behind," as well as to weigh down our departed souls that we might not make orbit. So how do we fix this?

First of all, the entire burden is not on us. God made this island Earth, and we have to believe that if we start taking better care of it and stop intentionally poisoning it and working against its ecosystems, its "autocorrect" will kick in and save the day. BUT WE HAVE TO STOP! WE. HAVE. TO. STOP. DOING. HARM.

--To the Earth, for it is our mother and our home; it's time to "flip" it, like real estate people do houses.  Clean it up, repair it, and install some new carpet, ready for its next inhabitants--our children and our grandchildren

--To each other, because we are all neighbors, whether we like it or not! Walls and fences do NOT make good neighbors, in this case, and we have to realize that our DNA is all the same, regardless of what nation we come from, the color of our skin, or the languages we speak. There are only enemies if we MAKE them enemies. Haven't we watched enough Star Trek to know that we have the choice to make our society either Eden or Hell. You choose. And if we believe everybody is against us, they will be. That is called paranoia, and it can destroy lives, families, nations, and probably the planet.

--To God. Yes, we are harming God, or at least what many think about God. What is passing for a Christian witness today (on the part of "evangelicals," the Wesleyan Covenant Association, Franklin Graham, etc.) would chase you away from a dealer if you were looking to buy a new car. Because of infighting in the church and its frequent "circling of the wagons" in paranoia, many people have come to not trust God, or at least anything we people of faith SAY about God. We need God, but the loving, forgiving, reconciling Parent the Bible reveals, not the vindictive, rule-keeping, judgmental "evil step parent" getting preached in way too many pulpits. Jesus changed the narrative. Jesus didn't change God, but Jesus corrected the paranoid human filtering of the message regarding what God is up to.

Our Jewish siblings have a saying in Hebrew that defines solid "marching orders" for us all: tikkun olam, usually rendered "repairing the earth." The earth is like any other house--we're either improving it, or we're using it up. Relationships are the same way--we're either growing them and making them closer and healthier, or we're using them to get what we want and dissipating them. Both "worlds" are in serious need of repairing right now. Again, we're not alone. The one with the original plans for people and planet is poised to assist, but we have to do our part, and be open to God's guidance and wisdom in the effort. There are heavily moneyed and powerful forces with a different agenda, the "principalities and powers," as the Bible puts it, that will resist our remediation endeavors. They will lie incessantly and pit "brother against brother and mother against daughter" to maintain dominance. Some need to be "voted off the island," while others just need to sit down and shut up. Our planet and our civilization are at stake here, or the "late, great planet earth" will be our epitaph.