Lousy Predictions

I get a kick out of reading and watching old sci-fi stories. The ones that give a "prediction" of what the future will be like are sometimes the most fascinating. In the same story you will see colonies on Mars, time travel, teleportation, and yet they will still have wired telephones. There was one Twilight Zone episode where faster-than-light space travel was common place, and yet they had no idea about a touch screen (everything was still push-buttons).

The reason this happens is that whenever we think about the future we always make predictions through the grid of what we currently believe. In other words, we make certain assumptions about the changes that will happen and the ones that will not. It is not just a matter of expected technological advancements, it is also the fact that each person has a set of presuppositions that he brings with himself to the discussion. It is these presuppositions that cause us to make mistakes when we "predict" the future.

The exact same thing holds true when we try to predict the end of the world. Some will see the sun dying out, others imagine a zombie apocalypse, while others forsee a totalitarian dystopia. It is not much different when people go to the Scriptures and try to pull out of them a "plan" for the end of times. Our protestant friends have been trying it pretty heavily for almost 200 years now (and been wrong every single time!). Yet, as Catholics you would think we can learn from the mistakes of others, but that does not appear to be the case.

I have come across a few books over the past decade that claim to have the "catholic" understanding of the end of the world. It is a bit startling how they do not agree with one another. Sometimes they even give explanations of certain passages of Scripture that contradict one another. There is a good reason why our Lord says "no one knows the day or the hour" and gave us only a few passages that give some very vague details of what is going to happen at the end of history: He wants us to trust Him in it and stop speculating about all the details. This unhealthy kind of speculation does not lead to faith or faithfulness.

In the first century, the Apostles missed all the predictions about what the Messiah was going to be like (and there are hundreds of predictions about the Messiah in the Old Testament). Jesus told them multiple times Who He was, and they still did not get it. They had to have it all laid out for them after Christ resurrected from the dead. Do we really think that we could do any better? God gives us a few prophecies so that we can have a general idea about the end of the world, but not a specific laid out plan. He wants us to trust Him and rely upon His grace.

If we knew exactly what was going to happen we would become complacent and in the end we would lose true faith and hope. Let us be humble enough to admit that predicting the future is not our specialty, nor is it our calling. We are called to be faithful, no matter what God sends our way. After all, it is quite prideful to presume that we are the final generation. Many of our forefathers have made this mistake. The end might be tomorrow or it might be in 10,000 years. We should seek holiness until that day arrives.