WHY DO SO MANY PEOPLE WANT THE WORLD TO END? Part II

                                            OR, WHO GOT DROPPED ON THEIR HEAD?

PART TWO

So back to the main point: Why do people want the world to come to an end?

I’ve asked myself that a hundred times. It really doesn’t make much sense. In searching the Web, though, I’ve found a few tidbits.

Some people don’t mean the literal destruction of earth and the eradication of humans, but rather they want “a new way of life.”

Not the End Time™ Ministries, apparently. Its website has an interesting set of explanations for the end of the world as we know it and the return of Christ. Just an aside, End Time™ Ministries offers a DVD “Understanding the End Time” for a mere $99 and, according to the promo, lesson six explains the “Time-line of the End.” Awesome! Not $99 awesome, but still…

End Time™ Ministries refers to a Fox News article – and we know how reliable they are – entitled “Welcome to the Apocalypse” which proclaims that “the end of the world will be painful, ugly and bleak for those on Earth…”

The article is a pitch for the Web-based series “How Will the World Really End?” at BigThink.com. The site features a series of comments by scientists discussing possible scenarios for the abrupt and brutal end of humanity and our world. Cheery things like the oceans turning to sulfur and emitting noxious poisons or an asteroid smashing us or the sun becoming a Red Giant and swallow earth and so on and so forth.

Now, I don’t want to come off as anti-Christian. I was raised a Methodist – which my father described as a people particularly adapt at “eating fried chicken and passing the plate.” Of course, he was raised in a stiff-as-starch Baptist church and he once told me that marrying my mother was an excellent excuse to exit the Baptist Church and become a Methodist. “I was sick and tired of all that hellfire-and-brimstone.”

What I can glean is this: Some people want the world to end because they’re bored or trapped in a bad life or convinced everything is going to hell in a hand basket anyway or they want an early meet-and-greet with Jesus. Whatever the reason, it all strikes me as negative, mean-spirited, selfish and defeatist. I think the world gets incrementally better every day. Sure there are wars and tragedies and mayhem of all sorts, but there, too, are advances and astounding achievements that improve the world and change it for the better.