Eschatology, Cult and Ideal Time
Eschatology
My own personal definition of eschatology is the meditation on the four last things—death, judgment, heaven and hell. The purpose of this is to gain perspective about one’s life in the here and now. Some people might think, “Oh, why would you want to meditate on such depressing things?” but they do not understand the purpose or that these things are not really depressing at all. There is nothing depressing about death when you follow it with the three other things—judgment, heaven and hell. To think of death as the final thing is depressing. But Christians of course think of death as just one of the four last things—and the first step to either heaven or to hell. Judgment sit in between death and the final destination and when one thinks about judgment one does not have time to get depressed. One can get scared, but depressed is not likely to be the feeling.
Eschatology is important because it gives the person an opportunity to put this life into perspective by showing that every action should be oriented towards the end that one desires because every action will be judged. Did you make good actions? You will be judged as good and be deserving of heaven. Did you think bad thoughts? Did you entertain them? Did you act on them? In that case, you may be judged deserving of hell. This is why eschatology is important. I do not think of it as Fr. Rodriquez does with his “end of time” chronocentricity idea, which is that the world is both and good and bad. Instead, I think of it somewhat in terms of the idea of cognitive dissonance, which was a term I was already familiar with. The idea that when one experiences cognitive dissonance, he must either change his thinking, change his actions or change his perception of the reality, is one that ties in with eschatology. For example, after meditating on the four last things, you are supposed to take action and change...
But if you do not then you are probably going to be left with some cognitive dissonance, and that has to be dealt with in some way or another, so you might just end up convincing yourself that the four last things do not matter and are not that important.
Cult
For me, the definition of cult that I think works best is that given by Stark and Bainbridge—it is deviant religious group that has new or novel ideas and practices (Defining Cults/Sects, n.d.). However, I view any new religion as a cult. Protestantism, which has many sects, could be called a cult because it was essentially a deviation away from the Catholic Church. The first Protestants—Luther, Calvin, Knox, Zwingli—they are professed novel ideas...…to everyone: love God and love your neighbor. If you can do that you will be creating the ideal time in your own life and in your own community.
That is what I like to think about the ideal time. The readings helped me to sort out these thoughts and put them into perspective. I do not get too concerned about the concepts of the sacred and the profane in terms of the ideal time. I know what is sacred and I know what is profane—but the world we have is full of both and that is the way God wants it to be. If He did not want it to be that way, He would change it or snuff it out of existence. So I think what He wants us to do is to just accept the world as it is and live according to the laws He has given us because that is what He has said He wants us to do. If we do that, we will certainly be living in the ideal time—and that is what I think God wants us to realize. The ideal time is the time He gives to us—and if we use it the way he wants us to use it we will be rewarded with heaven, which of course has no time because it is eternal—so it would just be called the Ideal.
References
Defining Cults/Sects. (n.d.). Digital…
