Skip to main content

End of the World

Painting by Adolph Hiremy Hirschl

I grew up listening to a lot of stories about the imminent end of the world.  Jesus spoke pretty much about it and we listened to those biblical verses in the church often enough.  The romantic dreamer in Jesus conjured up a vivid image of “the Son of Man” coming in his glory on the final judgment day, escorted by all the angels.  In that glorious vision, God is a King ensconced on a glittering throne.  The entire mankind will assemble before him.  No one is given a choice, of course.  The King will weigh the virtues and sins of each person and accordingly assign heaven or hell.

It was my childish fancy that the gala event would come soon and I would escape from the misery of life on the earth.  I don’t remember whether I gloated about sitting in heaven and smirking at all the sinners burning in hell. 

As I grew up I realised that Jesus had imagined all those things long ago and nothing happened in all those 2000 years.  In my own little lifetime I came across many other prophets who smugly predicted the end of the world.  Some of them became fabulously wealthy as many people set store by the prophecy and donated their wealth hoping to secure seats in heaven.

I’m now reading a novel, The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber, which is set on an alien planet that is being domesticated by the Americans who hope to sell seats to the privileged rich on the earth as the planet is nearing its end.  [My review of the novel will appear in this space tomorrow.]  It is typical of Americans to think of a heaven whose seats will be sold commercially.  They have not left anything more on the earth to be commercialised.

The novel made me ask a question to myself: would I like to buy a seat in that American heaven?  I scorned myself for asking that question.  My childish longing for Jesus’ heaven was less ridiculous. 

What if the world ends?  Nothing, I guess.  I escape from what the Buddha called a misery, life’s misery.  The Buddha wasn’t romantic enough like Jesus to imagine some fantastic heaven up there.  He was profoundly practical to understand that existence was the biggest pain.  He hated existence.  Would he have welcomed the end of the world gleefully?  I can’t imagine the Buddha smiling anyway, even at the prospective end of the world. 

But I prefer the Buddha to Jesus, notwithstanding the fecundity of the latter’s imagination.


Comments

  1. G. VarkeyFebruary 2, 2018 at 9:22 PM

    What Jesus said is true because His calendar is different than ours. Our 1000 years is just like a day to Him ( ref: 2 Peter 3: 8,9 ). The end will come, but that's not the end, there is life after death. Read the following:
    https://www.keepbelieving.com/sermon/death-is-not-the-end-of-our-story/
    Good wishes!

    ReplyDelete
  2. ARFebruary 6, 2018 at 2:33 PM

    I would recommend you to watch a movie called man from Earth. Its available on YouTube.
    You will surely enjoy it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. ARFebruary 6, 2018 at 2:34 PM

    If possible write an article about it..

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pranita a perverted genius

Bulldozer begins its work at Sawan Pranita was a perverted genius. She had Machiavelli’s brain, Octavian’s relentlessness, and Levin’s intellectual calibre. She could have worked wonders if she wanted. She could have created a beautiful world around her. She had the potential. Yet she chose to be a ruthless exterminator. She came to Sawan Public School just to kill it. A religious cult called Radha Soami Satsang Beas [RSSB] had taken over the school from its owner who had never visited the school for over 20 years. This owner, a prominent entrepreneur with a gargantuan ego, had come to the conclusion that the morality of the school’s staff was deviating from the wavelengths determined by him. Moreover, his one foot was inching towards the grave. I was also told that there were some domestic noises which were grating against his patriarchal sensibilities. One holy solution for all these was to hand over the school and its enormous campus (nearly 20 acres of land on the outskirts
13 comments
Read more

Randeep the melody

Many people in this pic have made their presence in this A2Z series A phone call came from an unknown number the other day. “Is it okay to talk to you now, Sir?” The caller asked. The typical start of a conversation by an influencer. “What’s it about?” My usual response looking forward to something like: “I am so-and-so from such-and-such business firm…” And I would cut the call. But there was a surprise this time. “I am Randeep…” I recognised him instantly. His voice rang like a gentle music in my heart. Randeep was a student from the last class 12 batch of Sawan. One of my favourites. He is unforgettable. Both Maggie and I taught him at Sawan where he was a student from class 4 to 12. Nine years in a residential school create deep bonds between people, even between staff and students. Randeep was an ideal student. Good at everything yet very humble and spontaneous. He was a top sportsman and a prefect with eminent leadership. He had certain peculiar problems with academics. Ans
25 comments
Read more

Queen of Religion

She looked like Queen Victoria in the latter’s youth but with a snow-white head. She was slim, fair and graceful. She always smiled but the smile had no life. Someone on the campus described it as a “plastic smile.” She was charming by physical appearance. Soon all of us on the Sawan school campus would realise how deceptive appearances were. Queen took over the administration of Sawan school on behalf of her religious cult RSSB [Radha Soami Satsang Beas]. A lot was said about RSSB in the previous post. Its godman Gurinder Singh Dhillon is now 70 years old. I don’t know whether age has mellowed his lust for land and wealth. Even at the age of 64, he was embroiled in a financial scam that led to the fall of two colossal business enterprises, Fortis Healthcare and Religare finance. That was just a couple of years after he had succeeded in making Sawan school vanish without a trace from Delhi which he did for the sake of adding the school’s twenty-odd acres of land to his existing hun
19 comments
Read more

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
37 comments
Read more

Sanjay and other loyalists

AI-generated illustration Some people, especially those in politics, behave as if they are too great to have any contact with the ordinary folk. And they can get on with whoever comes to power on top irrespective of their ideologies and principles. Sanjay was one such person. He occupied some high places in Sawan school [see previous posts, especially P and Q ] merely because he knew how to play his cards more dexterously than ordinary politicians. Whoever came as principal, Sanjay would be there in the elite circle. He seemed to hold most people in contempt. His respect was reserved for the gentry. I belonged to the margins of Sawan society, in Sanjay’s assessment. So we hardly talked to each other. Looking back, I find it quite ludicrous to realise that Sanjay and I lived on the same campus 24x7 for a decade and a half without ever talking to each other except for official purposes.      Towards the end of our coexistence, Sawan had become a veritable hell. Power supply to the
12 comments
Read more