The State of the World

 

‘Confusion will be my epitaph,

as I crawl a cracked and broken path;

if we make it, we can all sit back and laugh,

but I fear tomorrow I’ll be crying…’

[From ‘Epitaph’ by King Crimson on their 1969 album ‘In the Court of the Crimson King’]

  

Back in the day, songs such as the King Crimson one I have just quoted, were rather sneeringly dismissed as ‘Doom Rock’! Well, I can now see why. As well as being somewhat portentous, it is also more than a little pretentious!

But it reflected the mood of the time, when the Vietnam War was still raging, tensions and violence dominated the Middle East (and especially in Israel-Palestine) and when we lived with the constant threat of nuclear annihilation.

But much of that changed… and yet now seems to have returned.

I am old enough to remember what it felt like to live in the 60s, 70s and 80s, and the relief and hope that followed these tense decades, once the Vietnam War ended, the Middle East situation settled into an (albeit uneasy and unjust) co-existence, the Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union disintegrated, Nelson Mandela was released, a new South Africa emerged, and the nuclear threat seemed to recede.

And now, it feels very much more like it was back in the 60s, 70s and 80s with regard to he present geo-political situation. But perhaps it is even worse in some respects. We have even deeper political and cultural divisions in our Western nations than I seem to recall from 50 or so years ago. And, more alarmingly still, we are now facing the crisis of climate change and global warming.

And all of this simply by way of observation. It does very much concern me. But I can come up with neither easy answers nor short-term prophecies.

My faith assures me of ultimate hope, and I continue in that hope as I also pray. But while that may assure me of a final destination, and that there is One who will – in the end – bring about a ‘new heaven and a new earth’ (however we understand that), it does not describe the immediate path ahead as we travel onwards, nor of how things will go in this world in the years to come.

I am reminded of the words of Jesus ‘ You will hear of wars and rumours of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come.  Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places.  All these are the beginning of birth pains.’ (Matthew 24: 6-8)