The following article was inspired by Doug Wilson’s video that you can watch here

Starters

It doesn’t seem to matter who you ask, the 2020s have already been a banger and don’t seem to be slowing down in this regard. I don’t mean that in a good way. We kicked this decade off with a global pandemic, rising warfare around the world (namely Ukraine), and now on the tail end of the pandemic, we are set to enter a recession with looming bank runs, possible hyper-inflation. To top it off, other large and powerful countries are discussing or already switching off of the dollar for their trade currency. If you follow the KPIs, most are trending down. The easy way to react to all this: become a Doomer. A little more difficult is to clutch your pearls. But how does someone who follows Jesus respond to all this?

Multiple Lines of Evidence

There are multiple converging viewpoints on the trajectory of our culture. Within Christian eschatology, which is your view on the end times, Dispensationalists look to Bible prophecy to describe the imminent return of Christ. Though in my eschatology I’m a post millennialist for the time being, I agree with them that Christ’s return may be more imminent than we think but only because of our progress, not our “devolution”. In short, post millenialists (don’t call us post millenials) believe that a large part of end times prophecy was fulfilled earlier in history and that our timeline will progress towards an evermore christ like society and governing morality. Christ will return triumphant to a conquered world(s). You can imagine how difficult it can be to hold this view in the current climate. The concepts of local and global maxima/minima are helpful here. The Bible itself says that not even the Son will know when He will return, only the Father. Just so, my view is that there are some things that could put bounds on Christ’s return. For example, the heat death of the universe. If we assume that this theory is true, then whenever that event is predicted to unfold, Christ will likely return before then because we know that He will return to a remnant of living believers on the earth, regardless of your Christian view of the end times. Though the heat death of the universe is postulated to happen millions of years into our far future. The sun will likely envelope the earth before then. But we can do better. I believe we are making such strides in technology that we are on the brink of solving so many problems that are limitations imposed by humanity’s fall from grace. When we were cast out of the garden for our sins, there were curses placed on our reality that I believe we are poised to overcome through technology. There is a tremendous amount of capital that is going into anti-aging tech, for example. I do not believe that God will let this continue past a certain point. If I’m correct, this also bounds the time of His return in my mind.

Let’s approach it from another perspective. Others see what is happening through more of a materialist lens, in a Nietchiean framework. What do I mean? Their view is that we are in what is called the Fourth Turning, which is the incredibly painful resetting of society through disasters and calamities, none of which can be reliably predicted. Society resets in a variety of ways over a period of about 20 years. Out of the fray a new generation (millenials in this current cycle) will rise and help to rebuild after everything has metaphorically and sometimes realistically burned to the ground. Emprically, it’s hard to argue that we’re not in the Fourth Turning. The pattern has played out over centuries and overlaps with Ray Dalio’s debt cycle theories as well. It’s not looking good for us.

This is what we like to call multiple lines of evidence in science. When you collect different datasets that when analyzed come to the same conclusion, or you gather the same datasets at different periods of time and they point in the same direction i.e. correlation! This is seen as confirmation of the hypothesis. We’ve all read Popper (haven’t we?) and know that it only takes one disconfirming example to disprove a theory. Perhaps we realize at that point that anecdotes do matter, but again it’s besides the point! Inference or deduction. We have a spiritual prediction and a rational prediction, both predicting one thing…turmoil. How we respond to the knowledge though is quite different. There is the rational response to all this and there is the spiritual response. The goal of both is to prepare yourself for the world to be shaken, even though you can’t predict exactly in what way it will be shaken. But the means diverge.

Lack of Predictability

We love to predict things, but what are the limits of prediction? I do prediction work for a living, and I can tell you…it’s very hard. The farther out you try to predict something, the more likely your prediction is to be wrong. Small changes in the conditions of your system at time = 0 can lead to large deviations at time = 100. We’re inundated with more data for prediction than ever, but who among us saw the pandemic happening? My father passed away in January of 2020. We knew he was likely to die, just not the exact date. Little did I know that a world altering pandemic would crash on the scene just a few months later. My grieving was masked by the drastic effects the virus had on our city and society at large. How would I have responded if I had more warning?

The rational response to this unpredictability is to hoard resources and build moats, like you’re preparing for a siege. In a world where there is no spiritual reality or purpose to our lives, then what the billionaires are doing in genetic therapy is the rational response. The spiritual response can borrow from the rational, but focuses more on the kind of person you want to be as everything crumbles instead of solely what you’re going to have for lunch as the fires rage. The increase in life expectancy is an overall good, but when you’re trying to live forever without doing it in the way that God prescribes, then we’ve stepped out of the garden again.

I believe the right action involves doing what you are or should have been doing in the good times before the crisis started. Better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war. Our battle is not against flesh and blood…Preparing for adversity is a continuum but always involves the injection of adversity into an otherwise stable scenario. For God’s children, we are promised adversity and tribulations in this life. It’s the primary way that God conforms us into the image of His Son. This is not something I like, but I submit to it because I submit to God. Plus I’ve seen the fruit of it in my own life. For a Christian, we already have God making us into the type of people that can weather the storm. God, in His mercy and wisdom, is raising up both Jeremiah’s and Noah’s in this present day. Not hoarders or doomsday preppers. We already know how this all ends, so why fear? Not fear, but action. Given that it’s independent of your eschatology, so it’s compelling.

Next Steps

What do we do then? Prepare. Don’t be among the simple minded who either see trouble and don’t prepare or don’t see it at all and are wiped out. But don’t make the mistake of viewing this life as the only one you’ve got. You, reader, are going to live forever. The question is where? Don’t make the materialist mistake of trusting in wealth. Trust in God through everything because He has shown Himself worthy of your trust. But also don’t be a gnostic. You live in a physical world with physical needs. Are you someone who can not only meet your own needs but the needs of others? If not, become that person. In the end, what’s done for Christ will last and everything will burn up. Even if our economy doesn’t completely melt off the stilts that are propping it up, eventually one day it will because the old things are passing away and the new will come. Christ will remake the world. Will you enjoy the New World with Him?