Thoughts on the Monday After

There was a lot of joking in the days leading up to this past weekend. I only became aware of Harold Camping's prediction that the world would be ending on May 21st when I noticed Facebook comments about what people planned to do or eat on their "last day" (chocolate in all its various mutations topped the list). Most of the funnier (sarcastic) comments came from people I know to be believers. I'm sure there was a sense of wanting to distance themselves from what most thinking Christians believe to be error, namely, the notion that anyone can predict the day, let alone the hour, of judgment day.

As is now apparently clear to anyone who was paying attention, 5/21/11 came and went, the prophesied earthquakes never materialized, the rapture didn't happen, and people who gave up jobs, homes, savings, and reputations, now need to figure out how to get back to reality and continue living their lives like the rest of us, one day at a time. Harold Camping has to face both his followers and his critics. As one person on Facebook wrote, "Harold Camping has some 'splainin to do."

Since billboards were apparently one of Camping's mediums of communication, I guess it's appropriate that new billboards are popping up in the aftermath, a reminder of what most Christians believe to be true: "No one knows the day or the hour" (Matthew 24:36).


Yes, the billboard is funny. But I'm not laughing. And I was not among those who were mocking Harold Camping on 5/20 or 5/22. I feel sorry for him. I feel sorry for those whose lives are now completely messed up because they trusted his "math." But I'm also sorry for the greater mess Camping has caused. People who believe, as I do, that there will be a day of judgment, that believers will be raptured, that this world will be destroyed, that there will be new heaven and a new earth...now find our task was just made more difficult. It's like the little boy who cried wolf. He fooled the villagers so many times, that by the time a real wolf attacked his flocks, no one believed him, though he cried and cried for help.

It's bad enough that agnostics and athiests poked fun at Camping's message. That's to be expected. But when Christians mock, it's a problem. Because the time will come when the "wolf" will attack, but the "villagers" will no longer pay attention to the warnings.