End Of Days?

Japan, Churchchrist, Chile, Haiti, New Orleans. Earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, disaster. Unrest in the Middle East. The global financial crisis. The list goes on...

I have a friend who is certain this is the End of Days foretold in the Bible.

My view point differs... but how much?

I believe in global warming. I believe in the Gaia Principle. (Briefly stated, this is the theory that nature likes balance and finds a way to create and maintain a certain amount of homeostasis.)  I believe that while we tamper with the delicate balance of our ecosystem, Gaia finds a way to fight back.

Is this the End of Days? More properly asked, is God doing this?
............ I find that thought incredibly moronic.

The best way for me to explain my thought is with Jonah. I don't believe God made a bet with Lucifer and decided to torment the shit out of some poor guy just to prove that his love and faith were strong and pure. Once again, God is not a child on a bright summer day with a magnifying glass and an ant hill. Shitty stuff happens to good people. That's just life. How we persevere and deal with our problems??... THAT comes from within. Where do we get our strength, peace of mind, and the faith that gets us through??... well, I believe that those are the gifts that God gave us. Whether we choose to use them, that's up to us. It has nothing to do with whether you prayed enough, went to the right church often enough, tithed enough, or said enough Hail Mary's.

I've never understood how people can on one hand believe that God created man in 'Perfect Love', then on the other, placed them, with their 2-year-old's naivete, in their perfect home and said, "Oh, by the by, don't eat from THAT tree", thus setting up the 'Downfall Of Man' and necessitating the need for a 'Divine Son Of God' to live and die and live again to save us from 'Eternal Damnation'. There are only two possibilities: God had a 'Plan' (which seems a bit retarded) or God made one big forehead-slapping fuck up.... but this can't happen because God is 'Infallible'.

So, again the question, Is this the End of Days? ......... Do I believe that we've failed some crucial test of God's making and the result is the end of this existence? Not at all.

Do I believe that, within my lifetime, life as I know it will come to an end? Yes, I do.
We are running full-speed down a road of self-destruction, and I don't think that mankind as a whole has the wherewith-all to pull their collective head out of their collective ass in time to stop it. We pollute, over populate, and deplete natural resources. This isn't God's doing. This isn't any 'test' except in that in the area of "life in general", humanity is failing. F A I L I N G ! !

Look at the rest of the animal kingdom. When population threatens their resources, they quit breeding. They migrate. Disease and starvation regulate numbers.  They find a way to reconcile their place in the system. Humans just try to find a way around the system. We fight disease and starvation because the process is ugly and painful, both physically to the people affected and emotionally to those who witness it. But the truth is that these processes are Nature's Way. We have decreased infant mortality rates and increased average lifespans. Don't get me wrong. As a member of the human community, these are wonderful advancements. But the effect to our existence as a whole is devastating. However, to not attempt to preserve life has become an "inhuman" stance.

I'm not a tree-hugging hippy. I'm not an over-the-top environmentalist. I recycle. I try to buy "green" products when I can. But I believe in ecological homeostasis. I believe that nature tries to correct imbalances. And I do believe that humans are a parasitic plague to this planet. We are nutrient guzzling worms with the persistence of head lice. 

And Gaia, not God, will deal with us appropriately.