The Doomsday Blahs

Many persons today are forecasting the early demise of the world. Our world is dying, they say. The end of human history, as we know it, is at hand. The human race, they say, is on a collision course with disaster. Men now have in their hands the tools of total destruction. Literally, a handful of men now have it within their power to trigger a kind of war that could devastate the planet earth in minutes: great grandparents, grandparents, parents, uncles, aunts, cousins, brothers, sisters-gone. Children all gone-and their children, never to be born. No more us: no more me, no more you. Gone! That is the very pessimistic outlook on the world that many people are espousing these days.

At a recent convocation of religious educators, one woman who had been invited to speak startled her audience with these sombre words: “I don’t believe my children will grow up in this world. The best thing I can do as a Christian mother…