My kids don’t have any idea what “Y2K” was all about. They were either too young or not born yet. Perhaps you don’t know much about it either.
At the end of the last century, there was enormous concern that the computer systems which ran, well, everything would freak out because of the way they stored dates.
12/31/99 plus 1 day = 1/1/00 right?
But which “00” would the computers think that meant? 1900 and the end of the industrial revolution? Or 2000 and the beginning of the 21st Century?
If the computers injected a “19” (because up to that point every date that a computer had ever operated used “19”), we could be in trouble.
Being someone who worked in IT, I spent several years of my career working on fixing big software programs to be explicit that we wanted the year 2000 not 1900.
Then on New Year’s Eve 1999 I sat around and waited to see if the Apocalypse had been averted. Yes, “the apocalypse.” Many voices had been crying that all our computer systems were going to crash and not come back up because of this little “bug”.
As you are currently reading this on a computer of some sort and have no knowledge of “the great disaster of the year 2000,” it’s safe to say that we did not encounter the worst case. Whether because of all the time spent fixing the date problem or because it was never such a big issue in the first place, life went on just about like normal.
Fast forward 20 years and we had this little thing called “Covid 19.” I’m pretty sure EVERYONE knows what I’m talking about with this one. It resulted in some temporary disruption of our society. I say “temporary” because for the most part, we’ve gone back to mostly normal now. Although a few of us may still sing “Happy Birthday” while we wash our hands.
But in the middle of the disruption, there was serious concern if we would ever go back to anything like normal. We wondered if we’d end up in semi-isolation as the new pattern of things…
Why do I bring these events up?
While sitting in church the other day, I had a realization that as a society we face disruptions that have terrible worst case outcomes. BUT THOSE OUTCOMES AREN’T WHAT COMES TO PASS.
We have become conditioned (I suppose) to hear that something terrible could happen, but expect that it really won’t. Because in our life, that’s not what we experience. We always seem to find a way through and things return to something resembling normal.
But here’s the catch. The same thing doesn’t work with what God tells us. When God says something (“the soul that sins will die”), that’s exactly what the outcome will be. There won’t be any adjustments or compromises to find a similar new normal.
The passage that was being discussed as I had this thought was 1 Timothy 4:16:
Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.
There are 2 commands in this verse and a consequence.
Given our experience with Y2K and Covid 19 (and many other crises), it’s pretty easy to think that the consequence of “saving yourself” probably isn’t going to be as dire as it sounds. Based on that, the commands become more like suggestions.
Wow. That’s how I felt when I had this thought. I’ve been conditioned by my own life experiences to disregard the serious warnings of God’s Word.
It’s a sobering thought. Thinking about how I’m inclined to sabotage myself when reading Scripture is kind of frightening. It’s a way of lessening God and relying more on myself and circumstances. And it strips power out of God’s commands.
I’m sharing this with you today because it feels big and important. I hope you’ll take some time to think about how you react when you hear something terrible is going to happen. Do you take it seriously, or do you apply your own experience to say that it probably won’t be that bad?
Do you do the same with God’s Word?
Probably a good topic for meditation and some prayer.
Until next time,
Dennis
