Читать книгу Apocalypse Now - Volker Schunck - Страница 9

I talked always in my books and my blog about God who shows us his human face. Through his Son Jesus Christ, his love, goodness and mercy come near to us. God wants reconciliation, neither death nor ruin of the individual human but his / her salvation. What I talked about seldomly is that Jesus was an apocalypticist. What does that mean? Jesus was someone who knew the gravity of the situation. “God is near. The realm of God has begun... Therefore turn back.” At that time the reaction of the bulk was: “We are still religious, so what do you want?” Today the reactions reach from “I also don’t believe in the easter bunny, why should I believe in God?” to “Faith is a private matter.” The times of a popular piety are over. Something like a Christian “groundwater level” which gives vitality and comfort in times of drought hardly exists.

We live in a society of shameless egoists, which are unable to sympathize with other humans. What a shame!, thousands of refugees are drowning because Europe cannot come to an agreement. How come that the rich always get richer and the poor always get poorer? A tax evader gets an amnesty, while welfare recipient always must be afraid that the government makes deduction of his / her small income because he / she misses an appointment with the labor bureau. But the super rich get tax reliefs by politics, because it is afraid that they could dislocate their production site into another country. Who wants to be honest today have to be willing to accept pauperization. The saying “honesty doesn’t pay” again makes sense. Of course you can’t all lump together, but unfortunately these generalizations are mostly right.

Jesus was an apocalypticist. His appearance has something of a shot across the bow, or when the father or the mother counts to three and at three it gets serious. Or when you startle because you have forgotten the appointment is today and you didn’t tidy up your appartment and the doorbell is ringing. Beside God’s goodness and love the message “God is near” not only means joyfulness but also comes along with fright and consternation. The holy God is near. Therefore turn back! Already Dietrich Bonhoeffer spoke about “cheap grace” (“billige Gnade”). Human, it’s about your soul! God doesn’t simply say: “No hard feelings!” “IS-Terrorist, it doesn’t matter how many people you dismembered and killed - no hard feelings!” “Adolf Hitler, it doesn’t matter how many Jews you killed - no hard feelings!” “You child abusers, murderers, egoists and tax evaders - no hard feelings!”

NO! There is a higher justice. You cannot live as if it was all about you and spurn the dignity of other humans. You cannot live as if there was no God. At the end you have to bear responsibility for your deeds. I don’t know what that exactly means for the individual human. If the human facing God can come to his senses and can convert, or if there is a kind of purgatory where he / she gets cleaned and than is able to open his / her heart for God, I can’t say. But however I don’t believe in an eternal hell. But I also can’t believe in an automatism of salvation (final reconciliation), which treats all humans equal - no matter if offender or victim. That would really too cheap. The evil or the devil has no place in heaven and becomes annihilated (Annihilatio). But all these last things are hidden for us and lay beyond our earthly lives.

As well the future of our planet is hidden. Physics assumes that the universe itself expands since the big bang like a balloon who is blown up and than, so in a few billion years, completely contracts again.

I’m not so optimistic, that our earth still exists such long. When I look at the world’s problems (aging, overpopulation, pollution, climate change, poverty, hunger), the increasing God Loss of the people and the decline of any values in the last twenty years - the people’s obsession by the hunger of power, the addiction to consumption and to sexuality are obvious - it seems to me as if we were at the end of the end time.

I don’t want to aggrandize myself and I’m either not a prophet who can look into the future, but I don’t believe that we as mankind have such as much time. What is, if it only were hundred years, in which the earth turns around its axis? I can err like a doctor who make a wrong prediction to someone who has cancer: “You still have three month!” and the patient still live now, twenty years later.

It’s high time! Turn back, believe in God and live like Christ.

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