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I think I know when the thief is coming …

Judgment Day? Yes, it’s coming, but judgment by whom? I have long perceived the judgment involved as largely one’s own, as beautifully pictured near the end of C.S. Lewis’ The Last Battle, one of the most meaning-full books I’ve ever read:

As the land of Narnia comes to an end, its inhabitants stream out through the stable door past Aslan the Lion’s gaze. Some choose to go “further in and higher up” into the bright light of Aslan’s country, God-ward, we are given to infer. Others choose to turn aside and go into outer darkness. The most striking thing to me about this two-pronged parade is it’s not Aslan who’s doing the judging; it’s each one leaving who chooses the direction to take (193).

Lewis summarizes this understanding of judgment elsewhere saying, “Either you say to God, ‘thy will be done,’ or God must say to you, ‘thy will be done’” (The Great Divorce, 72).

Some in Narnia are caught in a dilemma, unable to cleanly choose — the circle of dwarfs sitting inside the exit door. They keep telling themselves they’re in a dark stable where things are at least familiar; meanwhile those around them see they’re sitting in broad daylight. Aslan says of them that they are in a prison of their minds’ own making, “so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out” (186).

It’ll be a surprise. As in unexpected. Paul says an interesting thing: “You know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, ‘Peace and safety’” [as in “The American people are safer, safer, safer” (GWB)] “destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape” (1 Thess. 5:2-3).

Matthew reports Jesus’ similar comments on this timing, “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. … Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him” (Matt. 24:36-44).

Here’s my hunch. The unexpected surprise is that judgment has descended from the lofty theological realm with its talk of salvation, heaven, and hellfire, and been made concrete, even mundane: U.S. election day is judgment day. (It will certainly be a judgment day.)

On that day, will we lose our shackles of fear and choose to go “further in and higher up” to a future committed to justice and to bringing all our will to bear on being blessed peacemakers, as Jesus commends?

Or will we choose to continue down this road of endless war [as in “I’m a war president … with war on my mind” (GWB)] with its accompanying inattention to God’s concerns: poverty, injustice, and hypocrisy?

Might I be overstating the gravity of the situation? Maybe.
Do I think I am? No — I think this is a pivotal moment in human salvation-history.

Let’s keep watch. WWAD?

2004-07-20 update:
I like to hope this Judgment Day choice is as evident to a resounding majority of us in the U.S. as it is to me. I mean, if we’re unencumbered by ideology, paying attention, and thinking, how much more clear-cut could the choice be, even for those of us who don’t habitually think in theological terms?

Yet today in my workplace breakroom I heard a colleague wet his lips and exclaim at the TV, “I don’t have to listen to a word that guy says to know he’s a liberal dipshit.” Personally, I don’t think any Bush supporter who stares open-mouthed at Fox News for minutes on end needs to be calling anyone else a dipshit.