What do we do? There is a shared sense of helplessness in those I talk with. I find myself leaning on Sharon Welch’s feminist ethic of risk: we can’t know the future, but we can do the next faithful thing, in community, with accountability to one another.
That ‘next faithful thing’ is best done in context with our stories—interpreting histories, in dialogue, with community. For those using end time prophesies to justify bombing in the Middle East, knowing that communities in the past have believed they were witnessing end times is helpful in determining the next faithful thing. Some of these became self-fulfilling prophesies, while the world lived on, and end times were only for those who spiraled into self-destruction.
Knowing that, over centuries, different methods of interpretation have been used for religious texts and literal interpretations of the apocalyptic genre, such as the Book of Revelations, is an exegetical outlier, is helpful. But these helpful perspectives don’t change what has been irresponsibly taught for the past several decades in America; we are living with the consequences. It brings a quote I read recently to mind:
“History is not the past. It is the stories we tell about the past. How we tell these stories – triumphantly or self-critically, metaphysically or dialectally – has a lot to do with whether we cut short or advance our evolution as human beings.” Grace Lee Boggs, The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century
So, I will keep leaning into the next faithful thing, in community, with accountability to one another.
In fellowship,
Rev. Stacy Craig