The Coming of God

The New Testament hope that Christ will come again is in some way earthed in our own expectations, fears, and desires.  If modern men and women are to be more than simply agnostic about the long term prospects for our race, their most fundamental hope must be that it will not end in meaningless destruction.  If we are going to blow ourselves out of existence as though we had never been, or make our planet uninhabitable without finding alternative accommodation, there is little point in hoping for anything else.  To believe that the human race will eventually reach the end of its earthly pilgrimage is one thing; to equate the end with total, blind destruction is another.  It is sad that the latter prospect is what moderns term ‘apocalyptic’, if they use the word at all.

The hope that we are traveling towards a destiny, rather than a mere collapse, is linked with the faith that our origins were already purposeful.  If we think our existence is a mere fluke, the result of some wildly improbable mix in some primal soup that threw up the conditions required to sustain life, then our whole human story is a chance bubble; it has no purpose and can be pricked as meaninglessly as it was formed.  But if there is a Creator outside the whole cosmic evolutionary process, and yet works his will within it by a wisdom and love that are present in every tiniest movement, then human life has a purpose.  It begins with God and is on its way to a goal which, however unimaginable, will give meaning to the whole adventure.

— from The Coming of God, by Maria Boulding, OSB (1929–2009)