Overdrama

Overdrama:  A condition whereby the sufferer develops theories and conspiracies of the world far beyond any reasonable outcome from the situation.  There are lots of examples of overdrama.  This one from California:

http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/show/live-video-2/video-3324112-ucla-geology-students-visit-buckled-road-in-santa-clarita/

Link above is to a story about a road buckling in California.  If you have never been to California, there are lots of roads, lots of mountains, lots of sand, dust, dirt, but very little in the way of solid ground.

I am not a California hater.  I was there a very short time.  I enjoyed what time I had there.  I experienced several small earthquakes in my time in California and Idaho.  The largest earthquake I have experienced was on August 23, 2011.  I was sitting at my desk in Clayton, NC.  It was 5.8 and it damaged a great big chunk of DC and Virginia.  We felt it distinctly.

The narrative, on the fringes of society around that time was that this was a sure sign of the end times coming.  The posts around the story in California linked above, are about the end times coming, or the prediction of the greatest geological disaster EVER.

It is spookier if you give it the Grinch voice when you read it in your head.  I have my own ideas about the end times coming.  But, let's talk about the greatest geological disaster EVER, first.  It will happen.  No one knows when.  I don't think that it will necessarily be the earthquake event that those along the California faults worry about.  I think it will be Yellowstone waking up and doing its thing.

You can worry about it.  I suppose it is unreasonable to ignore it completely.  It is a physical reality that we have clear evidence supporting.  Yet, with all of our vaunted science and capability, our ingenuity and cleverness, we are powerless to materially impact the mechanisms of the earth.  It is going to do what it is going to do, completely regardless of our desires.   That is how it is.

I prefer to take more of an advised ignorance approach.  We have the things that we need immediately, in the event of a natural disaster.  I have lived in Hurricane Alley all my life.  I have had over $100,000 worth of damage to my home from a hurricane.  I have been there and done that, from the aspect of living through the natural disaster.  But, nothing I could have done, short of moving to Illinois, would have protected us from the hurricane.  And I don't want to live in Illinois again, that was not worth the trade for me.

So, in terms of the natural disaster risk, you have to plan to protect your family immediately, be prepared to survive the short time frame.  Then, you have to be willing to rebuild, rework, reinvigorate.  If not, you have to move.  Hurrican Katrina was not a blessing in any way, but it did remove some entrenched elements disillusioned with their surroundings.  Those that remained, are bought in, motivated and clearly positioned to bring life back in a meaningful way.  It is deeply damaging, and deeply healing all at the same time.

I don't fear natural disasters, though I respect their power and capacity.  I won't stay at the beach again, in the face of a hurricane.  I won't wait and see what happens with a wildfire in my neighborhood.  I won't wait out a flood to see if it actually gets high enough to kill me.  I think that the good folks with the Fire Department and Coast Guard wished more folks had my attitude.  I have little tolerance for the folks that crawl out onto their roof, then complain that it took someone hours to come pluck them to safety.  The flood had been coming for days.

Natural disasters are going to happen.  They are part and parcel of the broken world that we live within.  If you do not buy into the creation narrative in the Bible, then consider it the simple laws of entropy (chaos).  The universe is disposed to chaos, and eventually, the structures of the planet and physical being will reduce to the simplest forms of matter.  Joe's Big Bang Simplified Explanation.  (Yes, besides being a convicted Christian and well versed in the Scriptural description of the world's creation and demise, I am fluent in the language and theorems of the SCIENCE)

As to the end times, the Scriptures tell us that none of us can predict when they will come.  There is no definable sign or vision that will accurately foretell the beginning of the end.  It has been beginning since the Garden and the Fall.  Every day we get closer.  Those are both true statements, and all that we really need to know.  The end is either going to happen before I die, or after I die.  The relative impact is just in the timeframe, not in the requirements for preparation or understanding.

I don't fear the inevitable.  Again, I am Christian, I believe that God will remake the world back to His original perfection of creation, and create a new Kingdom for us to share with Him for eternity.  I have a responsibility to understand Scripture, and remake my life in the image of Christ.  Not so that I can earn a spot there, I can't.  I have to remake my life in the image of Christ because that is what is commanded of me by Christ.  It has nothing to do with receiving the mercy and grace that allows me into the Kingdom of Heaven.  That was bought and paid for by the sacrifice of Christ, through His love.

We get it confused alot.  We see stories like I linked above, and it becomes one of two narratives.  Either it is the End Times, which it is, as it is clearly closer to the end each day, so that is a nonsensical conclusion; OR, it is the prelude to the Big One, which it is, as it is clearly closer to the next Big One each day so that is a nonsensical conclusion.  It does not mean they are not obvious statements of fact, they are just not instructive as anything other than obvious statements of fact.

The response to either being true is identical.  There is only the prudent preparation for you and your family to survive the immediate aftermath of anything short of the EVENT.  If it is the EVENT, none of that preparation will matter.  Your whole life is supposed to be preparation for the EVENT.  You cannot keep it in a kit under the bed, ready to break it out in the event of spiritual emergency, or, when the signs are ominous.  You either live a life that demonstrates the love of Christ to the world, or you do not.

None of us do it perfectly, and thankfully, perfection is not the requirement.  We just have to do it with our whole intention and heart.  It is not okay to get it wrong, but it is only irrecoverable, if we intentionally get it wrong.  There is only one unpardonable sin, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.  That is not a free pass to go be every kind of bonehead there is, except a Holy Spirit blaspheming one.  That is just the boundary that Christ set.  The Pharisees exceeded it, claiming Christ's power came from Satan.  It is a clear and pronounced denunciation that cannot be made without knowledge and awareness.  You can't do it accidentally, or because you don't understand what you are saying.

It is pretty hard to get in deep trouble with God.  That is the thing that we have done poorly, as Christians, in this modern age.  We have let the narrative of God's love and mercy be consistent with attitudes and approaches that were formed in the same places that created the Crusades, the Inquisition and the conquest of the New World.  There is this compelling narrative that God is sitting in judgement of us continually.  Instead of being comforting, the idea that God is everywhere makes us paranoid.  We focus on what God sees, instead of what we feel.  God being with us should be comforting, and the thing that makes the approach of the EVENT something we do not dread.

I do not fear that God wants to condemn me.  That is not Christ's message, nor the message of the New Testament.  God wants to save and redeem me.  Of course He knows what I do wrong, what I think wrong, what I believe wrong.  It pains Him and saddens Him.  But, it does not harden His heart against me.  It makes Him reach for me, even more urgently.  God will judge us all, but that should not be our fear, that should be our excitement.  Because though perfect, and incapable of blemish, God has covered over our blemishes with His grace.  It is that simple.  It is not now, has not been before, and will not ever be about me.  It is about HIM.

That makes the EVENT not terrifying to me.  That makes the next great calamity not terrifying to me.  That makes the inevitable processes of the earth not terrifying to me.  I respect them.  I prepare as is prudent and reasonable for them.  And, then I focus on communicating that God loves us all, and focus on living that promise myself.  It is what I am most thankful for, because it does not allow fear and confusion to overtake and overcome my life.

There is plenty of science we don't understand.  Because of that, some of us assume that there is no God.  The evidence, they claim, does not support God.  There is no God particle, there is no quantifiable, qualifiable, verifiable, inutterable equation that proves the theorem of God.  Science forgets that it is predicated on faith.  Science assumes that there is an explanation just ahead for what we do not understand now, it is what drives us to experiment, qualify, quantify.  That is faith.  Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will happen, that is from Hebrews.

That is the scientific method.  We have confidence that what we have isolated and are experimenting to describe will happen.  Where science fails as a life medium is that piece where it says every wrong data point is immaterial overall.  It makes the scientific method great in laboratories and industry.  It works for science, but not for life.  Making mistake after mistake after mistake is hurtful and damaging in life.  It is okay in isolating the non-reducable salts of a reaction within defined parameters.  Parameters do not have feelings, egos, self-image.  Parameters don't care.

People care.  We have to inform our lives beyond the inexhaustible allowable wrongs in "science", and live so that we bring up, and enrich others with love.  We don't have to remain ignorant.  Faith does not disprove science.  But, it gets close to blaspheming the Holy Spirit, to take the other view, that science disproves faith.  If you are making that case, you need to really consider what your actions and outcomes will be.  Because there is no God particle, there is God.  It is the foundation that is indescribable.  Much as that drives us crazy, with our knowledge of good and evil, it is truth.

So, roads buckling are not anything new in terms of the End Times.  There are not more earthquakes today than there were millions of years ago.  Science will not ever pinpoint where God is, because He is everywhere.  Worrying about it is not instructive.  Preparing prudently, living lovingly, that is instructive.

Just makes me cringe when I see people pointing to signs and wonders, and ascribing prophesy to observation.  We should respect and understand prophesy to a much higher level.  Science is a cheap parlor trick compared to inspired prophesy.  It is what makes us all distrustful of prophesy, it is verifiable, but not with bunsen burners and computers.  It requires Scripture and prayer and consideration.  Earthquakes and floods are so much easier, they get measured on scales and with metrics.  Prophesy is unquantifiable.  That scares us, because we have decided we know the value of the universe.  That is the real EVENT, when the completely unfathomable depths of our ignorance are laid bare.

Don't know what prompted this rant, but every "Black Friday" includes these doom and gloom reports.  I don't see it that way.  Personally, it looks to me like the soil engineers got their calculations wrong and the dirt is sliding under the road.  I have seen it happen on the driveway I grew up on in Maryland, not noted as a geological hot spot.  The dirt slides under the road, all over the world, literally and figuratively.  That the degreed geologist is befuddled makes me feel bad for those kids that are paying so much money for the experience.  I know how much money that is, and it is a cruel trade in this case.  But, it does not make me think God is any more ready to smite the world today than any other day.  God knows how good science is, after all, He gaves us the Bible to have something to rely on.

GLYASDI