Reflections on Life and Faith,
by David Keating

 A Sense of Proportion

August 12, 2006

     Let the trumpets blare! Let the prophets speak! The end of the world is nigh! Or so declared the televangelist.

     I missed the CNN special with Paula Zahn giving us the exclusive scoop on the arrival of the Four Horsemen of Revelations. But I did watch the aforementioned televangelist nod sagely as his companion solemnly declared that we were seeing obvious indicators of the imminent conclusion of history. He quoted a number of chapters and verse. I guess he missed the part about seeing signs but "the time is not yet." He did mention "no one knows the day or the hour," but he seemed to kind of figure that just meant we wouldn't know if it was Tuesday or Saturday. Either way, there was no question in his mind that it's definitely very nigh.

     So if it's so nigh, why did he still need to make a tearful plea for money to keep his program on the air?

     Let me say that there are many televised ministers who offer sincere encouragement to our faith. Those who are attempting to capitalize on the tragedy in the Middle East are not among them.

     The media's emphasis on violence, disaster and other just plain bad stuff makes it easy for us to get the impression that the world is moving steadily and ever more quickly toward destruction. But is that accurate?

     Canadian political scientist Andrew Mack is principle author of the Human Security Report. The Report was sponsored by five countries including Canada and presented to the United Nations. It drew some surprising conclusions.

     Apparently, political violence (war and such like) is way down since the Cold War ended. The number of conflicts, and the number of people who die in them, peaked with the Korean War and has been declining ever since. That's scant consolation to the people who have been blown to bits or hacked to pieces of course. Even one death is too many. But it does tend to weaken the "going to hell in a hand basket" argument.

     Mass media, newspapers, magazines, and especially television, tends to allocate reporting space in proportion to the level of sensationalism. So things that go boom get top billing. Given the Human Security Report's findings, though, perhaps we should encourage the media to allocate space based on number of people affected. That would mean that the Bill and Melinda Gates/Warren Buffet humanitarian fund would be front and centre, and not because of the names associated with it. Lead stories would be about the volunteers in thousands of humanitarian organizations who have distributed medicines, built schools, supported agriculture.

     We would get a different perspective on our often maligned doctors through live reports about Doctors Without Borders. We could embed reporters with Lifewater Canada to give us on-the-ground interviews on the results of their program to train local people to drill wells.

     A bomb going off may be a more spectacular image, but it can't hold a candle to the number of people affected by just one village well.

    I don't want to minimize the horror of war, nor should we ignore its potential to spiral out of control. However, those who cry Armageddon forget a basic principle of biblical prophecy. The prophets in the Bible were sent out to warn people so that they would change. The destruction they prophesied was not inevitable.

     So we can make a choice. We can allow constant images of death and destruction to make us run around and scream with those who say that the sky is falling.

     Or we can join those who are, without making the headlines, saving lives and changing the world.

David Keating