For a variety of reasons, I have long found myself to be deeply interested in apocalypses, about which I have long had a complex view.  One of the more fascinating aspects of contemporary life is that there are a variety of different apocalyptic worldviews that are very easy to maintain, each of which is the shadow of the other.  On the one hand, we have the prospect of children being raised (and brainwashed) to view anthropogenic climate change as an apocalyptic threat to humanity, with the power to wipe out islands and make the sea rise 300 feet in our lifetime and destroy whole nations.  On the other hand, we have a view of religious apocalypses that believe that God will judge an increasingly rebellious and ungodly humanity with biblical curses.  Now, I must admit that I am a rather biased person in this regard.  But irrespective of my own present bias, I would like to discuss the way in which these two apocalyptic views form a certain dialectic that is well worth considering.

Let us begin with the climate control activists, some of whom can be seen twerking and demonstrating on behalf of a fear-based opinion that the world will suffer calamity soon based on how we have treated the earth.  Few people would argue that our treatment of the earth has been in line with our role as stewards of creation for the Creator, or that we could not do much better than we do, but it is well worth noting that activists in general tend to be somewhat biased in terms of who they protest, avoiding the protest of those nations that are doing most of the polluting.  And those leaders who promote an agenda to stop climate change themselves live in large houses, often in vulnerable coastal areas, and travel via means that are highly damaging from their own standards, with private planes and gas-guzzling vehicles and what not.  Setting aside the do as I say and not as I do mentality that is present here, which can impolitely but accurately be considered as rank hypocrisy, the viewpoint is one that claims that mankind’s own behaviors are threatening the well-being of the earth.

And that is not too far removed from the point of view of those religious people who see the corruption and decadence of the West (and not only the West) and see this as ultimately destructive of the well-being of the world and provocation for divine judgment.  Many of the biblical plagues involve aspects of environmental destruction, whether looks at scarcity and widespread disease (the third and fourth seals of Revelation 6), or cosmic disturbances (sixth seal), or vegetation, seas, the waters, and heavens being struck (the first four trumpet curses of Revelation 8), our various of the bowl curses of Revelation 16 including sores, the sea and waters turning to blood, the scorching of men with great heat, or the Euphrates drying up.  Many if not all of these curses can be seen as environmentally related, showing God judging a rebellious humanity through His creation.  And that is not even getting into the sorts of curses that happen as a natural result of our behavior, be it declining water tables or the destruction of arable land through overgrazing, increasing salinity, declining fertility, or desertification.  And this divine view of environmental judgment similarly views mankind as being to blame.

The question, therefore, is what is to be repented of.  Anthropogenic climate change offers a great deal of extrapolation and gross simplification of models, but there are a variety of ways things could turn out, ranging from global cooling as a result of changed currents in the Gulf Stream and other places that would then encourage the global warming of coal use to counteract a threatened ice ave revival, or the search for technological solutions to threatened greenhouse defenses as well as the search for protection from UV rays and so on.  With divinely enforced environmental curses, any attempts at reversing or preventing such curses would have to involve widespread and societal, if not civilizational, repentance and renewal.  It is remarkable and striking that those who fear anthropogenic climate change have little conception of the way that their own immorality and hypocrisy and behavior is encouraging the sort of negative environmental changes they say they fear, which would seem to indicate that their climate fear is merely a cover for their desire for massive political and cultural changes that are disadvantageous to the United States and Europe.  That said, it is without a doubt true that the call for repentance and cultural restoration in a way that is according to God’s laws and ways would have some clear political and cultural implications as well.  The question is, whose agenda is to prevail, and will the judgment of the earth upon our wickedness be a mere consequence of our behavior and our unwillingness to live within boundaries or will it be an active judgment delivered to us by the Creator and Lord of the universe?  I suppose in this, as in so much else, time will tell.