COMMENTARY: Something large is at hand

c. 1999 Religion News Service (Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.) UNDATED _ While we have boys home from college, it seems natural to talk of the future _ next semester’s classes, summer vacation, careers, apartments. In response to a comment […]

c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.)

UNDATED _ While we have boys home from college, it seems natural to talk of the future _ next semester’s classes, summer vacation, careers, apartments.


In response to a comment by his younger brother, our oldest notes with amazement that in 10 years he will be 30 years old.

Are we fools? Are we deluded to think that, on the other side of Jan. 1, 2000, there will be a future? Even if an army of computer programmers fixed the Y2K bugs, what else will the dawn of a new millennium bring? Helicopters circling Times Square and border patrols searching for bombs seem an ominous welcome.

Last time a millennium began, people were in terror, expecting mass destruction. Their terror seems quaint in retrospect, but as today’s frantic buyers of batteries, water, food and handguns will attest, it isn’t rocket science to see that a calendar rollover like this is a big deal. Or feels like one, anyway.

Whether the Third Millennium dawned six years ago on the 2,000th anniversary of Jesus’ birth, this year as the calendar rolls all four digits, or in 2001 when the next thousand years actually begins, something large is at hand. Will anyone be so confident about calendar science and computer science that, when the clock tolls out 1999, they won’t take a quick, worried look around to see if anything dramatic is happening?

We’ll laugh when those who market faith-through-cataclysm come home empty-handed from their mountaintop vigils, but for a brief moment, I suspect many of us will wonder if we missed a sign and should have done more to prepare.

My main concern is the preparation-minded themselves. I shudder at the prospect of my fellow citizens armed for battle, waving handguns and rifles toward anything that moves. I don’t expect airplanes to collide, elevators to plummet or bank teller machines to freeze, but I do plan to stay safely inside until the panicked relax.

While religious and secular writers delight in doomsday scenarios, real danger tends to be more down-to-earth than colliding planets or alien invasions. As Pogo Possum said during the hysteria of Joe McCarthy,”We have met the enemy, and he is us.” When Jesus was born, his immediate enemy wasn’t an exotic devil-figure, but a local ruler. Herod decided the birth of a messiah threatened his reign. When he couldn’t find the child, he slaughtered every baby in the area of Bethlehem. He waged war against his own subjects in order to protect his self-interest.


Herod’s successor came to share the same terror. In time, the people themselves turned against this messiah who seemed to threaten life as they knew it. Satan was a mild enemy compared with panicked people.

If the people around us lose control, no amount of stockpiled water or bullets will make us safe. If we have learned nothing else in the Second Millennium, it is that people _ people like us, people like our neighbors, people whom we can’t escape _ are capable of profound evil.

Pivotal events of this past century _ the Great War, the Great Depression, the Nazi slaughter of European Jews, ethnic bloodbaths on every continent, including our own _ came about because common folks went berserk.

People wage war first against their neighbors and against the helpless. Herod’s slaughter of innocent children has been repeated in every era.

Common folks are also capable of great nobility. They wade into floods to rescue children, they resist tyranny, they protect the defenseless, they invent penicillin and vaccines, they heal the sick, they proclaim hope to the sorrowful, they sit with the dying, they coach children’s soccer.

We can go either way. We can panic and destroy, or we can be brave and charitable. We can stockpile water in order to share it or to hoard it. We can turn our fears into warfare or into community-building. We can exploit others’ weakness or offer comfort.


That is the human dilemma. That is what accompanies us into the new millennium. And that is why the event itself occurred _ the birth that gave rise to the occasion of millenniums _ to shine a light into darkness and to bid us walk boldly as children of light.

DEA END EHRICH

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