"Everyday fears are increasingly shaped and intensified by the threat of global disaster – climate change, nuclear attacks, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, droughts, pandemics – all reinforced by the media. In popular culture, we see it most pointedly in films which portray the apocalypse or life in its dystopian aftermath. Such movies, like Roland Emmerich’s 2012 (inspired by the assumed ending of the Maya calendar), expose human anxieties and reveal the yearnings for a better, more secure hope. Indeed, while the threat of the end is inevitable, hope that the final destruction of humanity is avoidable runs through virtually all apocalyptic films.
"For Christians, hope is not an optimistic belief in our capacity to meet every eventuality. Rather, hope derives its shape from trust in the God who has acted in Jesus Christ, who is working out his plan of redemption, and who will one day inaugurate a world free from ‘the old order of things’. Christians believe not in the end of the world, but in the beginning of a renewed world."
Anthony Billington, London Institue of Contemporary Christianity, 'Connecting with Culture' 21st December 2012
"For Christians, hope is not an optimistic belief in our capacity to meet every eventuality. Rather, hope derives its shape from trust in the God who has acted in Jesus Christ, who is working out his plan of redemption, and who will one day inaugurate a world free from ‘the old order of things’. Christians believe not in the end of the world, but in the beginning of a renewed world."
Anthony Billington, London Institue of Contemporary Christianity, 'Connecting with Culture' 21st December 2012
