When Laughter is the Best Medicine
The end is nigh! The world as we know it is about to end! We are now experiencing prophets of doom on every side. It used to be that one would occasionally see a few isolated people carrying placards warning that Armageddon was about to happen. Now apocalyptic warnings are found everywhere.
Recently, a Convention on Catastrophes was held in Toronto. We kid you not. All the possible catastrophes had displays and booths, so that those titillated by such (apparently) real-life horror could go and get their frights. Fear was the underlying thrill. We are not prepared. We are going to be caught out.
Showcased catastrophes ranged from flu pandemics, to cyber warfare, climate change, rising water levels, food shortages, pandemics, and to meteors ending life as we know it. One speaker apparently frightened his audience by asking, What would happen to the world if the internet just stopped? Well, we mutter, we would just call up Al Gore, who apparently invented the thing in the first place, and get him to fix it. No, seriously it apparently could just stop, since governments, organised crime and extremist groups in at least 140 countries now claim they could launch a full scale cyber war by the end of the year. It must be serious then.
One of the catastrophe experts who consults to large corporations and anyone else who will pay the fee to help them get prepared for catastrophes, has an icebreaker guaranteed to get attention: “What if Martians came?” What indeed.
One of the speakers was a gentleman from NASA whose job it was to track asteroids which could hit the earth. He and his colleagues have identified one which has a three percent probability of hitting the earth on Friday, April 13th, 2029—get that date. It has to be serious. If this were to strike it would be equivalent to Hiroshima every second for ten and a half hours. That is goosebump territory. The pitiable man from NASA sadly told his audience that this sort of thing “keeps us up at nights.”
Poor chap. His sleep deprivation and exhaustion will have killed him off long before 2029. Maybe that's his cunning plan. If you can't beat it, get in early.
What is happening here? At its most superficial level people love the thrill of being frightened. When we were children we loved to play “flashlight” and scream in terror. We loved boogey man stories. When we got a bit older some of us went to horror movies. Catastrophism could be seen as just the same, but for adults. It makes us scared, gets us worried, and we get a little adrenalin kick.
At a more pathetic level, it could be that preoccupation and fascination with doomsday scenarios makes us feel important. Yes, well, my life might be falling apart, but at least I am confronting the really big issues, like pandemics and cyber war. That makes me significant and important—so there! I am a serious heavyweight when it comes to the big issues. It reminds us of the sweet wife who said to her husband, “Dearie, I'll take care of all the little details of the family—where to live, what house to buy, where to send the kids to school—that kind of trivia, and you focus on the really big and important stuff, like, When should the US get out of Iraq?”
If this were all modern catastrophism represented it would be both stupid yet relatively harmless. Yet we suspect there is something more profound playing out here. As secular humanism has become more dominant, its amorality has become more evident and strongly entrenched. Secular humanism is materialistic in its world-view—that is, it assumes from the outset that there is no reality apart from the material and the physical. Amorality is a necessary corollary of materialistic secular humanism—there is is no right or wrong. There is just what is. Just as the sun is neither right nor wrong—it is amoral, morality with respect to the sun is not a meaningful concept—so, all of existence. (Actually, the fools to be most pitied, from the perspective of securalism, are those who claim to be secular humanists yet continue to speak and think in categories of right and wrong.)
This prevailing amorality, however, does not sit well with man as he actually is—a creature made in the image of the Living God. All men—every human being—since the Fall bears not only guilt feelings, but true moral guilt, whence the feelings of guilt arise. But secular humanism gives no way to assuage, atone for, nor redeem from guilt. It simply declares all guilt to be a fallacy. But that specious declaration does not change the reality. As a consequence, fear arising from a sense of guilt, coming vengeance, and punishment cannot be suppressed. It keeps coming out. It cannot be successfully suppressed.
That is why so many moderns rush around trying to put things right and do good. They want to make up for evil and things that are wrong—whether in their own lives, but more often amongst the race in general—they want to atone for the past and the present (and the future). But the guilt remains, for the Lord has appointed only one means by which the evil of man and resultant guilt can be assuaged—and that one means is the Cross of His Son. There is no other Name under heaven, given amongst men, by which we must be saved.
Because the sense of true guilt cannot be eviscerated or covered over, the heart of modern man inevitably turns to ideas of judgment. The secular version of judgment is to believe increasingly in catastrophes and calamities. It is to fear that we are all going to suffer terribly. But, as always, the calamities do not represent true moral judgment upon true moral guilt (for in the secular humanist world such things cannot exist) but a vague fear that the world, Nature, the universe, or something is out to get us.
Why? we ask. Because we deserve it. We have polluted. We have cut down rain forests. We have not taken care of the poor. We have discriminated against homosexuals. We have poisoned the planet. We have not given women rights over their own bodies. We have conducted wars. Our governments have told lies. Big business has done nasty things. Wal Mart has impoverished and exploited people in the Third World--and yes, I share in their guilt because (I confess) I have shopped there. I share in their guilt. The litany of evil goes on. We will suffer the consequences. We will be punished. Catastrophes are on their way.
Notice that in this litany of indictments something is missing—there is no conscious acknowledgement of true personal moral guilt. Rather, for the most part, it is all corporate sin, which has tainted individuals, despite ourselves. And a pre-occupation with corporate sin can deflect neatly from the real issues. As one Christian wag once put it, “To love the whole world is no chore; my only real problem is my neighbour next door.” Indeed.
But the litany of confessed sin within secular humanist is largely of the corporate variety. We have done this. We have done that. Therefore, we are all going to cop it. I am going to try to hunker down and survive as best I can. It's not me—someone else, some other intangible, large “thing” is to blame, but we are all going to suffer as a consequence. This is the nearest the secular humanist can come to acknowledging sin.
But when society enters finally into the “corporate sin and coming judgment” mindset, catastrophism blooms. In such a community zeitgeist, the more fearful you become and the more threats you can identify, the more sensitive, caring, responsible, holy, and sanctified you see yourself. In the modern world, the truly holy and the pious are those racked with secular fears and dreads—very much like the kind of false piety prized across much of Europe in the Middle Ages.
Years ago, when we saw the chap walking up and down with a placard warning of the end of the world, everyone shook their heads and laughed. Now, the doomsayers are revered as prophets to their own generation. Now people reverence the ground they walk on. Those that laugh now are called unbelievers and apostates, wreckers and haters of humanity.
But laughter in the face of such secular humanist folly remains indeed the most appropriate and apposite response.
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