House Guest

If you haven't heard, Jesus is coming back soon. Apparently, there is a correlation between the terrorist attack in New York City on September 11th, the earthquake in Haiti on January 11th, the recent earthquake in Japan on March 11th, and a passage from the Bible, Luke 21:10-11, that says nations and kingdoms will rise against each other and there will be great earthquakes. It's all supposed to signal Jesus' speedy return.

I better pack my bags and close my bank accounts.

Can we all just calm down? I know what is going on in Japan is scary. Throughout our history, we have all experienced terrifying times. Imagine how people - especially the Jews - felt during World War II. If ever there was a time for Jesus to show his face, that would have been the most ideal: before we dropped not one, but two atomic bombs on Japan, before Japan got a chance to bomb Pearl Harbor, before Hitler was even allowed to come to power. I realize there weren't any great earthquakes, but nations were rising against nations. If a great earthquake had to be a part of the equation, I guess Jesus couldn't come back. The formula was missing an important component.

It is scary when thousands of people die and disappear in the flash of a second, but numbers repeating themselves is no reason to start buying real estate in the sky. Numbers repeat themselves all the time. It's called mathematics. And math is everywhere. So let's not get ahead of ourselves. There have been hundreds of large-scale natural disasters. Crying the sky is falling after each one reeks of irrational thinking and laziness when it comes to understanding how and why something happens.

Let's take a deep breath and think about when the Bible was written. Fault lines existed then, as they do now, but there were no scientists around in good old 1400 B.C. to explain it to the shepherds, kings, slaves, and day laborers. For them, the ground unexplainably shook. Considering their low level of education, the only feasible explanation was the man in the sky was angry. For us, natural disasters are no longer a mystery. Science can explain them all.

So, as disasters and wars keep happening, can we stop looking for meaning in numbers? There is meaning in numbers, but they hold no meaning in the only mythology we're still willing to believe in.