When the World Is Always Ending, Nothing Matters

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It was the early 2000s, and Kirk Cameron’s Left Behind had just arrived in evangelical households like scripture with a Hollywood budget. To parents already primed by a decade of fire-and-brimstone VHS tapes, it landed like a trumpet blast from heaven.

My parents were the type who wouldn’t eat at Chinese restaurants because, in their view, demons had settled in with the MSG. Tattoos marked the spiritually rebellious. Disney was the devil’s favored missionary, selling witchcraft to children disguised as cartoons.

The first time I remember being told about the end of the world, I was eleven. My dad, turning into our suburban driveway, said flatly, “We’re lucky if we’ve got two more years.”

Not in the sense of a military threat or a family diagnosis — but in the eschatological, sky-ripping-open, Jesus-descends-with-a-sword sense.

Two years. Maybe less? What is a child to do with that information? I wasn’t equipped for that level of cosmic urgency. I had just learned how to multiply.

I remember staring up at the moon, wondering if it had turned to blood. If it had, I reasoned, I should probably take a few days off school — stay home for the apocalypse.

The fear was intense, but it wasn’t the worst of it. Worse than the fear was the apathy…