Our imaginations are apocalyptic

The lion will lay down with the lamb, said Woody Allen, but one of them won’t get much sleep. Images of violence, apocalypse and judgment crowd our imagination of the end time. Maimonides, the great medieval philosopher, offered a more sober vision. He said the statement about lions and lambs was intended to suggest and large and small nations would dwell in peace. There would be no great overturning of nature. Rather, people would seek knowledge of God, and such knowledge would fill the earth as the waters, in Isaiah’s words, fill the sea.

Since the beginning of time people have predicted the end of time. Our imaginations are apocalyptic. The critic Frank Kermode pointed out that we assume clocks go “tick-tock” but they do not. They go “tick-tick” but we supply the “tock” in our minds because we feel the need to have an ending. Every song, every story, every life, has an ending -- so must the world.

The end will of course one day arrive, bang or whimper. It captures our imagination but it should not divert our efforts. For now we are, each of us, children of the wilderness, traveling to a destination we cannot know. Do not miss the wonder of the journey worrying about the presumed imminence of arrival. It could be a long time yet, and there is much still to do.

David Wolpe  | May 10, 2011 12:03 PM