NBC aired Y2K: The Movie on Sunday, November 21. It was a fictional account of what might happen on January 1, 2000 if the direst predictions become reality. In the movie, planes fall from the sky. Electrical power fails worldwide. The financial system collapses. Civil chaos reigns
According to one of the members of our church who works in a bank, she and other bank employees were cautioned to prepare for a possible run on the bank the day after the movie aired. It turned out to be just a normal banking day.
A couple of days later, the Democrat and Chronicle carried an editorial by Charles Krauthammer under the headline, "Y2K isn’t producing the expected hysteria." Krauthammer asked "Where is the panic Where is the hysteria? ...Why is the widely anticipated turn of the calendar being greeted with such apparent equanimity?"
He thinks one big reason may be that we had our millenium crisis early. We had our "apocalyptic dread" in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Bad times are required for millennial stirrings. Times are good now. Two decades ago we had an oil crisis, stagflation, Three Mile Island, and fear of nuclear war. On the religious front, Hal Lindsey’s book, The Late Great Planet Earth predicted the imminent return of Christ and was the No. 1 nonfiction best seller for the entire decade of the ‘70s.
Krauthammer speculated, "Perhaps every generation only has one millennial panic in it, and we’ve already shot our wad."
He raised an even more intriguing possibility. He suggests that the Y2K computer problem itself might be having a dampening effect on millennial fever. He suggests that the computer problem focuses our anxiety. He writes, "With everyone racing to fix their computers, there is very little time for idle speculation about the apocalypse." It keeps us "sane and focused on the plumbing."
I think there may be something to what he says, but my personal lack of anxiety is not due to the fact that I am focused on the plumbing (but thank goodness the plumbing is being fixed). Nor am I focused on what the future might hold. I am focused on the One who holds the future. I am not concerned about what might come at the end of the world, for I know Who will come. In Him, "the hopes and fears of all the years are met..."
©1999 C. David Hess
According to one of the members of our church who works in a bank, she and other bank employees were cautioned to prepare for a possible run on the bank the day after the movie aired. It turned out to be just a normal banking day.
A couple of days later, the Democrat and Chronicle carried an editorial by Charles Krauthammer under the headline, "Y2K isn’t producing the expected hysteria." Krauthammer asked "Where is the panic Where is the hysteria? ...Why is the widely anticipated turn of the calendar being greeted with such apparent equanimity?"
He thinks one big reason may be that we had our millenium crisis early. We had our "apocalyptic dread" in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Bad times are required for millennial stirrings. Times are good now. Two decades ago we had an oil crisis, stagflation, Three Mile Island, and fear of nuclear war. On the religious front, Hal Lindsey’s book, The Late Great Planet Earth predicted the imminent return of Christ and was the No. 1 nonfiction best seller for the entire decade of the ‘70s.
Krauthammer speculated, "Perhaps every generation only has one millennial panic in it, and we’ve already shot our wad."
He raised an even more intriguing possibility. He suggests that the Y2K computer problem itself might be having a dampening effect on millennial fever. He suggests that the computer problem focuses our anxiety. He writes, "With everyone racing to fix their computers, there is very little time for idle speculation about the apocalypse." It keeps us "sane and focused on the plumbing."
I think there may be something to what he says, but my personal lack of anxiety is not due to the fact that I am focused on the plumbing (but thank goodness the plumbing is being fixed). Nor am I focused on what the future might hold. I am focused on the One who holds the future. I am not concerned about what might come at the end of the world, for I know Who will come. In Him, "the hopes and fears of all the years are met..."
©1999 C. David Hess
