wfn.org | Commentary: Let's cut through foolishness about new millennium

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

March 10, 1999 News media contact: Linda Green*(615)742-5470*Nashville,
Tenn.     10-71B{131}

A UMNS Commentary
By Ezra Earl Jones*

"Foolish" is a word I don't use or hear very often. I have known it all my
life, however. I remember it was an important word in my grandmother's
vocabulary. She cautioned me against being foolish.

To be foolish is to be taken in by someone who is cunning or clever.
Foolishness has to do with things that make no sense; foolishness is
appearing silly or stupid to others. St. Paul used the word "foolish" to
describe how we may look to the world when we follow Christ and to describe
our state when we don't follow Christ. None of us wants to be the fool, but
all of us are at times. Sometimes we get "taken in," even when we try our
hardest to avoid it.

I am particularly aware these days of people who listen to the modern-day
"prophets" who use "turning points" in time to signal upcoming miracles or
unusual occurrences - doomsday, the Second Coming, famine and the like. How
"foolish" they seem!

How is it that the turn of the year 2000 can be believed to be a time for a
world-changing act of God or have any other special significance? It is
neither the beginning of the third millennium (that would be 2001), nor 2000
years since Jesus' birth (that was probably between 1994 and 1996).

Jerry Falwell is using the year 2000 to predict the imminent return of
Christ. Before the return of Christ, Falwell asserts, there will be an
Antichrist who will be a Jewish male. According to Falwell, it is likely
that the Antichrist is already living somewhere in the world. He could be
your neighbor, asserts Falwell. Falwell's claims would be very scary if they
were not so foolish.

A United States cult recently disappeared and reemerged in the Holy Land.
Cult members expect the world to end with the end of this century. The
tabloid press has stories every few days about how different people are
preparing to leave behind their old worlds and prepare for new worlds.

By the way, did you know that the month of February 1999 did not have a full
moon? Surely that was a sign of something!

Let's get serious now.

There is an extraordinary event approaching on Jan. 1, 2000, and it may be
serious. And then again, it may be not. We don't know, and we can't know
until 2000 arrives. It is Y2K (the result of the use of two-digit codes for
years in computer chips that could cause confusion when the year ends in
double zero).

Many people worry that major systems that affect many people will
malfunction or shut down. It is this technological issue that will either be
solved or it won't.

Thousands are working on it, at a cost of billions of dollars. Again, we
don't know and can't know if computer programmers will make the deadline.
Although some people are stocking up on groceries, buying generators, and
taking their savings out of banks, most of us are merely (prudently)
refraining from making plane reservations or traveling during the first few
days of 2000. From this vantage point in March, we have no way of knowing
who are the foolish ones.

The Y2K phenomenon is giving us humans an extremely rare opportunity to look
at ourselves, our world, and the ways we live in relation to our world and
one another. Is this a time to test human values and interrelationships in
the context of a world that may have let technology go unrestrained to the
point of binding us and limiting us rather than freeing us?

What is the role of the church in facilitating discussions sparked by the
Y2K issues? Is this not who we are: communities that assist people with the
basic relationships of their lives --relationships with God, one another and
the world?

As we approach Jan. 1, 2000, could bishops and pastors use the uncertainties
about Y2K to spark discussion and help people reflect on the character of
the culture we are creating for ourselves (or are allowing to be created for
us)? This year could be a time of being still and listening to God, to one
another, and to the sounds of daily life. We could carve out time apart to
contemplate who we are individually, who we are as families, and who we are
as groups, small and large. We could look at who we are in this nation of
the rich as contrasted with the poor of this or other nations.

Christians in 1999 need to look at the issues of civil war in Kosovo,
Angola, Congo and Sierra Leone, and ask what those issues should mean to us.
When mass murder happens weekly and daily, just how much a part of natural
law is national sovereignty? Technologies that produce guns, bombs and land
mines are not "value neutral."

Y2K is a problem that is requiring new systems, new configurations of people
and groups, and new ways for people to be together. Aren't new systems and
new configurations of people and groups required in these places of civil
war where the people directly involved are powerless to find solutions on
their own? Could we learn about the formation of new networks and
"careworks" as we pursue the Y2K agenda that could transform the patterning
of human relationships in other, more serious situations?

But beyond these global possibilities, there are crises that could develop
yet this year anywhere as alarms are sounded and as people with no models
for responding experience fear, greed, and isolation. What if some people
panic as they discover their lives threatened and they see no recourse? Some
could flee, while others may fight. Some may turn to survivalist solutions,
while others turn to religion. 

Robert Theobald, the futurist,  wrote recently in an e-mail message:
"Einstein said that you cannot solve a problem using the consciousness that
created it. Grasping this reality is central to our success or failure in
dealing with Y2K. We need to learn to work with each other creatively across
the boundaries which normally keep us apart. This is the true challenge of
Y2K."

Gayle White, religion writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, in a Jan.
23 article titled "Countdown Toward the Unknown," discusses the Y2K issue
and explores how various religions and nonprofit organizations are tackling
the problem. She quotes the Rev. John Hamblem, a Baptist pastor who is
conducting preparedness workshops: "If we're all working together, we'll get
through it. If you start into survivalist mode, it creates panic and doesn't
do anybody any good. We think  as Christians, we are to be in the midst of
any problem helping and encouraging, not running and hiding and scaring
people."

I am feeling uneasy -- foolish actually. Y2K keeps pointing me to cultural
norms and human possibilities that keep interacting in ways I only rarely
understand. Since what we don't know about all this keeps expanding faster
than what we do know, it seems like a good time to feign denial and try not
to look like a complete fool.

# # #

*Jones is general secretary of the United Methodist Board of Discipleship.
This commentary first appeared in the March issue of Dateline, the board's
newsletter.

Commentaries provided by United Methodist News Service do not necessarily
represent the opinions or policies of UMNS or the United Methodist Church.

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