Suicidal Eschatology
How Our Obsession with the End of Days Is Undermining Civilization, Church, and Sex
In his appearance on Saturday Night Live on March 29, 2014, Louis C.K. did an opening monologue that I remember to this day. He asked the audience:
“Clap your hands if you think you’re going to heaven.”
And much of audience applauds.
He set the trap, and some walked right into it. He spots a young lady and asks:
“How old are you?”
She replies:
“21.”
And he goes:
“21… and you’re a LOCK for heaven already? You’ve been a grown-up for three years and you couldn’t possibly make a mistake. Well, good luck!”
Then he imagines dying and meeting God:
“You die, and you’re like, ‘Hey, God!’ And he’s like, ‘Yeah?’ And you’re like, ‘Where’s Heaven?’ And he’s like, ‘I don’t know who’s telling people that! I’m supposed to make a whole universe, and then another whole amazing place for afterwards?! You guys are greedy ***** down there!’”
There’s another bit of his that I’ve tried to find again, and I couldn’t locate a clean clip of it. I’m paraphrasing from memory. It’s something like: a guy dies, starts explaining how busy he was with his “job,” and then God’s basically like, “What is a job?” The guy says, “You know… you go somewhere to make money.” God says, “What money?” The guy says, “You need money for a house and food.” And God says:
“Food? You mean… the **** that grows on trees?!”
That line has lived in my head for years.
Now, Louis C.K.’s point in the monologue is basically that it’s an arrogant thing to expect something amazing after you die—as if you’re owed it. And whether he means it or not, that’s actually not far from a Christian principle: heaven is not deserved.
I think the bit works for another reason too. It exposes something that’s genuinely uncomfortable: the assumption that this world is merely an antechamber for the real one. Like God made a universe and we respond, “Neat. What’s next?” We’re like kids complaining about a home cooked meal, and rushing to leave the table.
Indeed, this world is real, and whatever comes next I’m sure is real. But the joke lands because we recognize the appetite for “after.” We always want something not like what we have right now.
Collapse as a Spiritual Vibes
For a century+, large segments of Western Christianity (especially in American evangelicalism) have been peddling imminent-collapse eschatology.
Predictions and dates get thrown around, and people create rapture timelines. There are predictions, and lots of fiction books. I’m not sure the end of the world is here. However, I do think Western civilization has entered a downward spiral. Which is unfortunate, because I’ve enjoyed the good life I’ve inherited, and I’m quite content to toil to pass it on.
When collapse and extraction get treated as spiritual wisdom, you start to see a strange malaise toward creation. It’s as if being “serious” and tuned in to spiritual things gives you permission to be generally unimpressed with the world God made. I’ve called it Eeyore Christianity. We don’t fight for goodness and decent things anymore. We don’t push to reform our institutions. We don’t build cathedrals or hospitals. We barely even defend excellence in our academia or culture.
Christians enamored by end times often resign themselves to placing their hope somewhere else and conclude that this world is no longer really worth loving or serving. After all, you don’t polish brass on the Titanic. You don’t plant orchards on land where you’re scheduling a controlled burn. In this context, a lot of Christians start thinking of themselves as prophets: people who warn and endure.
There’s a certainty underneath it all: things are built to fail and made to be bad. And so, births a spiritual seriousness that starts to feel allergic to joy and delight.
Joy Becomes Suspicious
In this eschatological framework, joy becomes morally ambiguous, maybe even foolish. Wein, Weib und Gesang are reduced to temptations.
Wine goes from a celebratory drink to a temptation to monitor. The arts and music are no longer delighted in for their own quality. They become vehicles for didactic messaging or poorly written lyrics meant to emotionally manipulate the listener into “feeling” their way toward God.
We lose the world of feasting: real communal feasting. The early Christian and Jewish calendars are full of embodied celebrations. The American church used to have its own versions of that too: church potlucks, after-Sunday gatherings, families eating together and laughing together, sharing room-temperature potato salad.
But, when you agree to the terms that this world is basically a doomed waiting room, feasting feels like indulgence, and beauty starts to feel like bait. Even within marriage, making love can shrink into regulated necessity rather than joyful participation in creation.
As a side note, I can’t think of much substantial advice I’ve received from evangelical “influencers” about sex and marriage that actually sounds like good news. So much of it gets reduced to managerial tips: “schedule intimacy,” “don’t forget date night,” the classic “make time.” That kind of concession predictably produces depressed, sexless domestic partnerships where people feel more like roommates with a shared calendar than lovers.
It’s like having a beautiful pantry at your disposal, the finest ingredients in the world, and when someone hungry comes to you, you serve them pita bread.
Love, marriage, and sex ought to be decadent. Sumptuous. Joyful. Checklist sex is like walking on a treadmill. Passionate lovemaking is like hiking to a waterfall.
This is what happens when Christianity becomes maintenance instead of joy, moral vigilance in a collapsing world rather than grateful participation in the one God declared good.
The First Command
Scripture’s first command is:
“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth…” (Genesis 1:28)
Before the fall, humanity is commissioned to expand the garden, cultivate it, and fill the earth.
But, how many Christians do you know who feel apprehensive about having children because of the state of the world? I know a few.
Though there’s been a recent increase of very apocalyptic-sounding headlines, this opting-out seems absurd to me. It’s not obvious, given the amount of information that bombards us, but we are living in an era of unprecedented safety and prosperity compared to most of human history.
Fruitfulness assumes a tomorrow. “Be fruitful and multiply” hopes for a good future. You don’t welcome children into a story you believe is ending in unavoidable ruin.
Across the U.S. and Europe, fertility rates have fallen below replacement level. Japan and South Korea have reached historic demographic lows. Birth rates are more civilizational than theological data, but when cultures lose confidence in the future, they stop producing children. But, the church ought to be an exception and remain fruitful: that command has not changed.
Obviously, eschatology isn’t a single-factor explanation for fertility. There are economic, educational, and cultural factors at play. But, cultural imagination shapes desire, and desire is the engine of generativity..
A society convinced that everything is irreversibly deteriorating will struggle to multiply—especially if it’s conditioned to believe history is winding down, and catastrophe is inevitable. When you believe that things are getting worse, it’s more sensible to conserve than to create. So, if you’d prefer to be tuned in to the truth, turn off the news and social media. But, more importantly, read your Bibles differently.
Even if I do think we’re likely headed toward greater civil unrest and a further decline of Western civilization, I’m not going to become an all-out-prepper. Because, my mandate is the same regardless of the conditions.
The Direction of Travel
In a 2025 interview, N. T. Wright argued that Western Christians have fundamentally misread the goal of their faith. He said:
“The problem is that most Western Christians today think that the whole point of Christianity is for our souls to go to Heaven when we die, whereas the New Testament concentrates on God coming to dwell with us… The direction of travel is wrong, and the result is wrong, and the intermediate stages are wrong.”
The New Testament does not reach its climax with souls escaping upward. Revelation culminates with this: “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them…” (Revelation 21:3). And Paul, speaking of God’s eternal purpose, says it is: “to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” (Ephesians 1:10)
Though much of our Evangelical worldview revolves around departing this life, Paul and John’s language describe renewal.
Wright points out that many Western readings owe more to Middle Platonism (the idea that the immortal soul escapes matter) than to the biblical hope of resurrection. In that same interview, he notes that “psuche” (often translated “soul”) echoes the Hebrew “nephesh,” which refers to the whole living person. The Christian promise, then, is the redemption of embodiment, not an ascetic life awaiting apocalypse.
My contention is simple: Christian hope is embodied resurrection and renewed creation. And if that’s true, then evacuation is not the goal. Union is, or… common-union. Communion is heaven and earth united in Christ.
How Dispensationalism Shaped the Mood
I’ve been reading some of Daniel Hummel’s work on dispensationalism. He exhausts how we inherited a particular eschatological framework and how it came to dominate American evangelicalism. He points out that the any-moment return of Christ, the priority of foreign missions, and the futility of efforts to improve global affairs shapes the American Evangelicals’ worldview. And, according to this Darby-inspired interpretation, “the Church’s purpose in the world is entirely Heavenly or otherworldly.”
That mood shaped real people and real churches, often without them even knowing it had a label (dispensationalism) that a deviation from much of traditional Christian thought. Regardless of whether or not they realized they were carrying a relatively recent theological framework, it drastically shaped the evangelical imagination.
I know Christians who speak about the end of the world with more enthusiasm than they speak about communion with Christ. The energy about tribulation timelines and the excitement for prophetic fulfillment is exciting and titillating. To me, it sound like people who are eager for collapse. That segregation from society (being neither meaningfully in the world nor lovingly for it) accelerates the demise of the very cultural good Christians claim to mourn. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: obviously, the thing collapses faster if you withdraw all your support from it.
A lot of the pleasure I see in worship music and Christian talk comes from joy that Jesus is coming to take us home, or joy that “this will all be over soon.” But there’s very little visible joy about abiding in Christ now. And yes—abiding includes suffering and the cross. It’s hard. But it’s truly beautiful.
Life is good! Yesterday, I watched my ten-year-old son raise his arms in the air as he came out of the pool after being baptized. I didn’t see his face because I was in the water next to him, but I was told he was joyful. Five days prior to that, I eulogized my mother. Still, life is good, and it is full and abundant right now.
Union with Christ is not a reward first bestowed at death. It is available in the immediate. The New Testament speaks of being “in Christ” and Christ “in you:” abiding, indwelling, and participating, here and now. Eternal life is not merely a chronological phenomenon: an endless duration. It is relational knowledge and intimacy with the divine in the present tense.
When intimacy is kept at arm’s length until the afterlife, obedience becomes the primarily duty rather than delight. Many believers look at this world as merely a testing ground, and Christianity becomes preparation more than participation.
But, it is good to engage with the world. It is good to participate in it.
It is good to love the brisk snowfall—even to love the bitter cold wind stinging your face when it’s ten degrees outside and you’re directing traffic. That’s suffering and joy in the same moment: a joy I suffered an hour before writing this.
Our relationships with one another and with Christ are meant to be enjoyed. when Christianity is reduced to a test, people become assignments, and evangelism becomes a strategic deployment. For me, the good news should be welling out because I’m full of it. My neighbors should be people I genuinely enjoy, and I should be happy to share who I am with them.
In my job, I respond with a social worker to people in crisis (those instances where law enforcement is needed, but maybe what they need isn’t jail). I get to meet people with dementia, or freshly evicted couples, or someone in the onset of schizophrenia who doesn’t yet understand what’s happening to them. I’ve referred to those interactions as “shitty privileges.” That’s exactly what they are.
It’s a privilege to stand with people in suffering, even when the suffering itself is ugly. And oddly enough, at the end of a day like that, I can feel energized (joyful, even) after pouring myself out.
Jesus didn’t say the world would know his disciples by their ability to predict a prophetic timeline. He said we would be known by love. Love requires presence and embodiment. It assumes the person in front of you is just as real as you are. His loved ones are not temporary inconveniences in a doomed world. Nor are they freight to be smuggled onto a cargo ship headed for heaven. They are eternal image-bearers whose embodied lives matter right now.
Spiritual Warfare and Misidentified Enemies
Wright also reframes spiritual warfare. In Ephesians, believers are already “seated… in the heavenly places in Christ” (Ephesians 2:6). And when Paul gets to the armor of God, he makes it explicit:
“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood…” (Ephesians 6:12)
If eschatology becomes a purely apocalyptic spectacle, then we start manufacturing enemies. World leaders, nations, and other powers-that-be become characters in a cosmic fan theory. In my opinion, a worldview obsessed with a cosmic showdown will usually dehumanize the inhabitants of that world.
The Church Is Not a Bunker
Wright says the church is meant to be a “small working model of new creation.”
The church is not a bubble or a bunker. It’s like a movie trailer of the kingdom of God. Not the full-length feature film, but a series of real vignettes of what unencumbered life in Christ looks like.
If God’s purpose is the uniting of heaven and earth, then the church is called to embody that unity in the present across ethnic, cultural, and social divides. Ephesians 2 describes Jew and Gentile reconciled in one body, becoming “a dwelling place for God by the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:22).
What I Mean by Suicidal Eschatology
When I say suicidal eschatology, this is what I mean: I’m not talking about believing Jesus is coming back. I’m not talking about hoping in the resurrection. Rather, I’m referring to an eagerness for everything to fall apart. It’s a way of thinking that almost welcomes collapse. Over time, it drains joy and gratitude out of the present moment.
Doomsday eschatology is “suicidal” because it practices disengagement. It trains detachment from life, and trades incarnation for evacuation. The faith that proclaims God taking on flesh, becomes suspicious of fleshly joy.
Remember Christ’s first miracle: water into wine at a wedding (John 2). He sanctified celebration with abundance. He sounds like a guy who liked people and liked his life.
Don’t let the faith that celebrates resurrection become indifferent to embodied life. Jesus wept at Lazarus’s tomb (John 11), and then raised him, and gave them life together again in this fleshly form. I’d wager they even joked around a bit after Lazarus was alive again.
We ought not fantasize about new creation while acting as though the creation we’ve been gifted is disposable.
Remember the direction of travel.
We are not a people escaping up.
We are a people welcoming heaven down: to the here, and now.
Wine is to be shared with good company.
Lovemaking is so much more than mere biological necessity or a Christian-duty checklist. It is embodied participation in generative goodness.
Music and art are meant to be beautiful expressions of truth and creation, not distractions.
Feasts and celebrations are not indulgence. They are integral parts of communal life. Even when we are missing the ones we love. At Thanksgiving, when I look up and my mom is not at the table, we mourn, and we rejoice in the time we had, and we raise a glass to her absence—and maybe another glass to the presence of the ones we love.
So: make children. Plant trees. Love your neighbor like they’re actual people.
The kingdom is advancing, not just coming someday.
And if that is true, then we should be the least eager for collapse and the most committed to cultivation.
Civilizations and kingdoms rise and fall. History will not be smooth. But it is promised redemption.
And it is a completely shitty privilege to be part of that redemption right here, right now.
Shitty privileges ♥️
Absolutely positively 100% nailed it! Yes!