When I speak out in favor of skepticism, whether respecting religion or other magical thinking (such as quack medicine) people often ask me “What’s the harm?” When this question is meant sincerely, it is a useful inquiry, since skeptics need to have at least a rough sense of which sorts of faith-based behavior should be considered the most pressing in any given context.
When the harm question is put to the field of Christian eschatology (end-times theology) the answer is often obscure. Does it really matter to the rest of us if a few people pack up, move to the mountains, and take up doomsday prepping? Other than their families, what’s the harm?
I’d like to suggest that the harm in this case is, perhaps surprisingly, geopolitical. For the sake of illustration I’ve included a banner ad that I’ve been seeing around Christian websites of late, here on the left. Notice the conflation of American and Israeli patriotic imagery at the bottom and the conflation of Jerusalem with the initialization of “D.C.” which Americans see as representative of centralized political power and global military might. These conflations are intended (somewhat unsubtly) to help persuade the reader that Jerusalem ought to be to Israel as Washington is to the U.S. Of course, I should mention at this point that the political status of Jerusalem is a matter of significant international dispute, even though most of the major national institutions are already located in Givat Ram.
What does this have to do with the end times, you say? There are two threads here that I’d like to bring together. Firstly, there is a theological thread. Oddly enough, there are a few points here on which many modern evangelicals have retained elements of Jewish eschatological doctrine relatively unchanged, such as the idea that God will return the Jewish people to Israel and restore the Temple in Jerusalem prior to the end of days, which will feature a general resurrection of the dead followed by the creation of a new heaven and earth. Of course, most of the actual details differ, but the point here is that certain American Protestants have retained several end-of-days doctrines inherited from first century Rabbis back when the Jesus movement first originated as a branch within Judaism. Modernly, this puts them on the same page with a select few theological descendants of those Rabbis, who similarly desire the establishment of a glorious Third Temple in Jerusalem.
This sets up the second thread, which is political. American evangelicals who read too much Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye are too willing to support political movements (like the one illustrated here) to restore Jerusalem to full Jewish control, thereby paving the way for the Third Temple and the fulfillment of prophecy. Ironically enough, by outraging a billion Muslims who consider the Temple Mount to be their own holy site, such real world political action really could precipitate a regional conflict, perhaps even a nuclear exchange.
Sam Harris memorably wrote that “if the city of New York were replaced by a ball of fire, some significant percentage of the American population would see a silver lining in the subsequent mushroom cloud, as it would suggest to them that the best thing that is ever going to happen was about to happen: the return of Christ.” I would add that this would be even more applicable if we replaced New York with either Jerusalem or Tehran.
What then is the harm of indulging fantastical end-times prophecies? In short, there is the genuine risk that they may become at least partially self-fulfilling. Even a little Armageddon is far too much.
