More on the Shemitah

For the first installment click here.

I understand why the more mainstream Catholic outlets, whether they be left, right or center, hesitate to bring up the Shemitah. As I wrote previously, we live in a very rationalistic age, even inside the Church, so no one wants to be thought of as being "out there." We ignore things like the Shemitah, because the main proponent is Jonathan Cahn, "Jew for Jesus" (not because he happens to be a Jew, but because he's Evangelical, and if there's one thing traditionalists and progressives agree on is that those guys can't be right, though not for the same reasons). We also ignore the steadily approaching 100th anniversary of the apparitions in Fatima, which many in the prophetic "underground" Catholic press see as being a pivotal moment in the near future (2017, the centenary of the Fatima apparitions is also the quincentennial of the Protestant Reformation). Again, I get it. It's hard to deny that the Fatima devotion has a substantial fringe element coopted by sedevacantists and conspiracy theorists. I also understand that chasing after apparitions and religious phenomenon while reading the newspaper in one hand, with the Book of Revelation in the other hoping to figure out the day and hour of the Second Coming is futile and foolish. It is fair to ask, "How many storefront preachers must come and go predicting the end of the world and getting it wrong before we stop listening to them?" 

But I think there is something happening right now, and as I've said, one doesn't need to be clairvoyant to see it. Some, including Time Magazine, have questioned if 2015 is the new 1968; a milestone year of cultural change, political discord and social unrest. Only time will tell. It's in hindsight that we can see '68 as being a crescendo to the tensions building in the society over the previous years. Who knows, could '15 be just the build up to even greater upheaval in the future?

It's hard to look at the early stages of the 2016 presidential campaign and not see a real upending of the political order taking place right now. On one side there's celebrity real estate mogul Donald Trump outpolling career politicians on the Republican side and Bernie Sanders, a self described socialist, making gains on the previously presumed Democratic nominee and Washington insider, the now very beleaguered Hillary Clinton. There are conspiracy theories, which I'm not ready to dismiss so easily, that the Trump candidacy is a Clinton plot to divide the Republican vote, similar to what happened with Ross Perot in 1992. The other is that Hillary's e-mail scandal only has legs because President Obama wants it to. The FBI and other governmental agencies don't investigate such things, so the reasoning goes, unless the president gives at least tacit approval. He wants to choose his own successor, and she's not it.

No matter what the truth is to such speculations, the public would not be responding the either "dark horse" candidate the way they are unless there was a deep unrest and frustration with the status quo. There are many people who don't believe that they are being listened to by the people they've elected. Whether they are progressives who believe Wall Street, major banks and big business run the country, or conservatives who believe the government is overly intrusive and coercive in the lives of the people, they don't believe the people they've elected to solve these problems are really doing anything about it. This has led to the almost chaotic situation we find ourselves in at this point of the election cycle. A year on the political calendar is like a century in real time, so much can change in the year before the conventions. But I won't be surprised if the respective party nominees aren't any of the current front runners, and might just be candidates who haven't even declared yet.

So where does this leave us with the Shemitah? 

I think there is a middle ground between a rationalistic approach to religion and one that sees heavenly signs in every thunderbolt streaking through the summer sky and burp in the stock market. As Christians Scripture supplies the foundation for how we should form our mind and conscience. It gives us an insight into how God relates to us which is not culturally conditioned, but eternal and universal. God speaks to us: through nature, through the events of our lives, both personally and corporately. He speaks to us through the rhythms of the seasons, and the ups and downs of the economy. If society is disordered, if it has rejected God's way, He doesn't have to send down fire and brimstone: the social structure will simply disintegrate under it's own weight. 

If the economy does go into a catastrophic free fall over the next weeks and months it will be because we set the process in motion by own greed and selfishness. The fall will come because we put money before people, convenience before respect of human life, political power before public service, our willfulness before the will of God. God won't be the cause of the reckoning, if anything He's been trying to help us avoid it. He speaks, and if we don't hear it's because some do not want to listen, and others simply haven't been trained how, much like when the child Samuel first heard the voice of God in the night, but didn't know what it was. 

I pray that the Shemitah ends up being like Y2K: something we'll look back on and wonder why we got so exited. I believe, though, that it would be unwise to look at the current world situation and act like everything is business as usual. We shouldn't be fearful: just alert, and ready with lamps lit.