Alan Hirsch - Red Skies: 10 Essential Conversations Exploring Our Future as the Church

Prophecy, of course, does not mean foretelling the future but knowing what Gods righteousness demands in any particular instant; knowing how, from the standpoint of God, to assign to things and to human beings, to events and their configurations, their place in the overall pattern. The tangled threads of time are unravelled, and the system is laid bare. But one cannot wish to play the role of the conscience of the age without being oneself involved centrally in it.

HANS URS VON BALTHASAR

As I write this foreword to a book exploring the possible future for the church in relation to various issues, I am convinced that within my lifetime there has not been a more appropriate moment to take these matters seriously. Way back in the 1980s, Alvin Toffler warned us of what he called future shock, but it is increasingly apparent that this is exactly what we are experiencing today. The future is coming at us so fast that we cant seem to readily integrate it, let alone respond to its challenges.

It appears that in our times we are experiencing eschatology at a conscious level. Certainly, I have little doubt that we are indeed in an era that can be labeled apocalyptic . Apocalyptic in the biblical sense simply means revelation; an unveiling of things previously veiled; an exposing of the way of life that we previously understood as normal but is now shown to be fragile, defunct, even blatantly unfaithful in light of that revelation. One doesnt have to look far to sense apocalypse.

Take for instance the painful apocalypse of the American soul in the last five years or so. Deep fissures, unresolved shadows, political ideological resentments are now common and have led America to something of an ideological cold warone that could no doubt turn pretty hot at any given moment. Who, reading this book, has not sensed this? And then there has been what I call the apocalypse of the evangelical soul , as vast sectors of the church are at times shown to be at odds with the person of Jesus, as well as his explicit agenda in this world. One only need do a casual reading of the Sermon on the Mount to get a sense of how much the contemporary church is at odds with the way of its Founder. Who now does not feel this to be true?

Jesus himself warned us that in apocalyptic times the powers of the heavens would be shaken and all kinds of distress and anxiety would ensue on earth. In some sense this is always true, but we are only seldom aware of it. In this post-truth world in which we live, one can almost feel that the very foundations of liberal democracy are being shaken! There is a rattling of the powers that underlie our sense of normalcy.

Am I alone in experiencing this? I dont think so. Our social media feeds are filled with conspiracy theories fueled by vitriol and fear. Each one of these conspiracy theories are in turn funded by radicalized ideologies that demand something akin to religious allegiance and action. Some involve an explicit call to take up arms and protest against apparent enemies that no one has ever really met. Its hard not to take Jesus warnings of apocalyptic madness on the earth with the utmost seriousness.

I want to introduce a word to somehow describe the intuitions of the future that we tend to experience in apocalyptic times. Eschatothesia is made up of the words eschaton (end time, the end of an eon) and esthesia (the capacity for sensation and feeling; the perception that is derived from the senses). Combined, these words describe the sensing of a future evolution within a dynamic system; where the shockwaves of the eschaton can be perceived as sensations, feelings, and visions. It involves a feeling of some hugely significant event that is fast approaching. It does not necessarily involve the absolute end of time, but rather the end of an eon, after which nothing will be quite the same. Can you feel it? As such, eschatothesia is a decidedly prophetic sensibility, andakin to what Michael Beck describes in the pages of this book as contextual intelligence one that looks to find the threads of meaning and of Gods will in the apparent chaos of current experience.