The End of the World

Trump’s election may or may not be the end of the world. We survived the first term, and by “we” I mean those of us he did not kill with his paranoid science-ignorant response to the pandemic.

This kind of language—about Trump bringing on the end of the world—seems hyperbolic to many people. But to others—trans kids, immigrants, and any human being who understands that climate change is already killing human beings by the tens of thousands every year—the “end of the world” is not hyperbolic. It’s daily reality. It’s the end of the world as we know it—the end of common sense, of democracy, of decency, of kindness, of safety, of trust that powerful people will act with wise judgment instead of selfish impulse.

The New Testament has a lot to say about the end of the world. The Gospels say that Jesus envisions it. Revelation is an extended dream about the end. Christians should be comfortable talking and thinking about “the end.” But we Christians get what the Bible says about the end of the world wrong. Completely wrong. Dead wrong.

“Apocalypse” is not the literal end of the world. It means an unveiling—a revealing of the true nature of a thing. It’s an epistemological experience. John’s vision in Revelation is an unveiling of the ultimate powerlessness of the Roman Empire. The empire will one day be overthrown. Its power is illegitimate, it will not stand.

But the sloppy mess that is Biblical literalism turns the apocalypse into a real—even hoped-for—experience. Some Christians even long for the end of the world and the unfathomable suffering that comes with it, because they believe they will be saved.

Naomi Klein, on a recent podcast, suggests that popular support for Trump is a manifestation of this kind of longing for apocalypse. Instead of facing the horrors of the world we’ve created, we opt for escapism. We turn to the demagogue, the emperor who parades in the nude, the idea that our nation is “exceptional” and has never done anything wrong and never will. We choose these falsehoods, Klein suggests, because we can’t bear to face a harder truth, and because we believe—falsely—that we will somehow survive the apocalypse, the great destruction.

The better reading of the Gospels and Revelation is that the power of oppression will, through love, one day be unveiled. The architecture of society and economic life, constructed in the logic of domination and extraction, will crumble under the gentle weight of unrelenting mercy. The biblical vision of apocalypse is not that some elect group will survive while others perish. The biblical vision is that justice, righteousness, mercy, and peace will prevail, and all flesh will see it together.