I kinda think – hence the title – that we are in a time of ‘collapse’. Much is shifting and here are a few perspectives I have held for some time… we are seeing a shift from west to east and from north to south. I realise once we have an interest in something we tend to get that ‘fed’ to us, so I need to be a little careful but every day I get feeds around ‘new currency’, ‘a shift from the dollar as global currency’, ‘the BRICS are planning xyz’. I don’t know if the term ‘collapse’ is too strong, and I don’t know if it is appropriate what that might look like. Certainly foundations are being shaken.
Jesus spoke into another time when foundations would collapse… and those foundations were understood to be ‘holy’ foundations:
Not one stone will stay upon the other.
If foundations are shaken / removed / they crumble then what they supported will not remain, the building will at best be filled with cracks if not something more devastating.
A time of shaking brings with it both threat and also opportunity. Threat to what has been and opportunity to embrace what is not fully known nor understood. I suggest we are right at that time. ‘End-time’ language does nothing for me as I think it is so mis-guided, but I do consider that we can legitimately use language such as ‘eschatological opportunity’. That is not for believers to own as exclusively theirs (eschatology is about the world, the planet, creation after all) but surely it would be incredibly helpful if a good bunch of believers were willing to welcome in the unknown and not to retract to a measure of self-preservation.
At a time of collapse insecurities surface and there will be a push to restore some old certainties. To hold on to old certainties might not be totally wrong, for there are values worth holding on to… however, we need to be sure those ‘old’ values are rooted in the irruption of the age to come, or as Paul puts it,
[B]ut a new creation is everything!
Everything!! Old values have to be rooted in new creation values if they should remain as foundational.
There is much talk of Judeo-Christian values and I understand that, but we cannot insist on that uncritically. I love the principles of the law such as it is illegal to maximise profits (come on you know that’s true!), but we have to be careful about what we read in the law – it was given to a nation not to the world, and God very early on clearly did not think the law on capital punishment was one he should follow, evidenced by his protection of Cain.
So I think we need to not simply receive every plea for a return to Judeo-Christian values… some of them are seriously sub-Christian! And… and there is a big and. Values that transform are values from the future. The whole aspect of ‘new creation’ being everything.
There is wisdom from the past, but if we are not careful we can embrace that which holds us back from bringing in the future. We are not looking to restore old certainties.
What would eschatological values look like?