We humans are strange creatures! I occasionally read about Americans and people in some other big countries of the world going to live in some isolated place and stocking up on guns and provisions. Fuelled by the “work ethic” and the “prosperity gospel”, some believe a person is worth what he or she owns and how much money they have.

The Scriptures seem to give some support to this notion, many times in the Old Testament and also in the Gospels – the Parable of the Talents. Those who are not good investors on the Stock Exchange will go to hell and God favours the biggest earners. Thus, poor people are parasites and the fat-cats are the blessed. On the other hand, we read in the Magnificat:

He hath shewed strength with his arm : he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.He hath put down the mighty from their seat : and hath exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things : and the rich he hath sent empty away.

It just doesn’t seem to add up.

One thing I find strange is the desire for the end of the world – but yet an even stronger desire to survive it. The chances are that if the planet earth was destroyed by a meteorite or a super volcano, among other possibilities, most or all of us would die. All those who sold the end of the world for last December didn’t think that they would be killed if it had come to pass.

It is something psychological and expressed in many ways. Secular apocalyticism is expressed in alleged scientific proof of global warming caused by the amount of carbon dioxide industrial mankind throws up into the atmosphere. That is not to say that we shouldn’t fight against pollution and emissions of noxious gases from chemical factories and the like. A desire to see the end reveals the malaise many have, as I have expressed in other articles. Our world seems so hopeless with pollution, greed and everything based on capitalism, money and power. Revolution abounds in each of us, together with seething anger and a sense of hopelessness.

We often react by wanting to opt out, which we usually can to some extent if we really want to. The most healthy option, as for when a young man thinks about the monastic life, is to think of what we are looking for rather than what we want to get away from. In many of us, it is a mixture of the two. No intention is absolutely pure! There is no limit to human inventiveness as in wartime. People stock up and hole up – and they certainly intend to keep it all to themselves.

Most of us dream about escaping, but do not have the means to do it or the resolve to assume all the negative consequences with the desired objective. Most of us realise we are a part of the system, and we have just to get through the few years allotted to us before the undertaker takes the last pennies from our families to bury us. Some of us can take some measure of independence and compromise – and assume the dilemmas and divided loyalties.

We often dream of escaping and surviving and ruining the world of those who remained in the system. I remember a James Bond villain who built a base at the bottom of the sea and sent two nuclear submarines loaded with ballistic missiles to nuke each other and start World War III. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to live at the bottom of the sea, but everything is wrong in wanting to kill everyone else! Another Bond villain did the same thing in space and the method for exterminating the world was biological. Hitler did the same thing in real life, trying to exterminate all the Jewish people, the Slavs and others for his so-called “master race”! Sometimes, the wrong we do is for the same reason, but on a smaller scale – for example, getting our own back on a person.

Mors tua vita mea – your death is my life.

All that seems to be the root of war, murder and all evil. The Old Testament is full of it, at least if read literally: babies dashed against rocks, people practising the wrong religion being sadistically executed for the pleasure of Yahweh and the true believers. Comments on blogs are full of the desire to get back the power of the medieval Papacy and the Inquisition, to do what Himmler and his SS goons did in modern times – and the commenter to be on the right side of the law!

Destructiveness is a part of human nature. That the Old Testament, especially the Pentateuch, is full of it is a sign of the need for a redeemer, the Messiah promised by the Prophets throughout the centuries of self-righteous killing.

Remember that if the world comes to an end or some cataclysmic event happens, we will ourselves certainly die. That is what we have to be concerned about. It will happen sooner or later. It is perhaps by meditating on this root of war and evil that we might begin to find the key to peace.