I posted this on my Facebook page a few days ago. I found that the words I had heard read by Dan Bongino have become haunting to me. As I said in my post, this speaks today as to our current state and in light of where we find ourselves in history. This is from C.S. Lewis “On Living in an Atomic Age” (1948) in Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays
In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”
In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.
That last paragraph I just cannot get out of my mind. We face as a nation and as individuals things that appear to be capable of our total destruction. Like an atomic bomb as is the place in history that Lewis found the world in 1948. He was right in concluding that we cannot lead our lives in fear waiting for the end to come. The end will come no matter what as our lives come to an end here on this earth. War may not cause our death or any other horrific event might. Most pass into eternity in a much less dramatic way. It is interesting though that many fear the possible horrific and forget the definite end that will come.
There is the next world and as I have so many times asked before, where will you spend your eternity? In Heaven with the Lord God and His Son Jesus? Or forever removed into hell where the worm never dies and heartache exist forever? Today, believe in Jesus Christ, that He died for your sins, that He rose from the dead and you shall be saved.
Then in the meantime, follow the words of C.S. Lewis when he says-
If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.
Don’t live in fear of the unknown but rather in the peace of the here and now through Jesus Christ.
A thought to ponder,
Elbert Nasworthy
