What is the future? The question may seem trivial. But when you think about it, you understand better what St Augustine confessed: “What then is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I want to explain it to a questioner, I do not know”[1].
Dictionaries tell us simply that the future is what comes after the present moment, a definition that implies a linear view of time. But not everyone agrees. Mihai Eminescu said in “Gloss”: “Past and future, ever blending, / Are the twin sides of same page / New start will begin with ending / When you know to learn from age” because, he also said, All that was or be tomorrow / We have in the present, too”. This is a reference to Schopenhauer’s theory of the eternal present and suggests a cyclical view of time, where past and future merge into an endless present. Therefore, Eminescu would say, one should fear neither the past nor the future, because one has everything in the present.
Still, what is the future? Perhaps the new garment that the past dons every day? We often say that for parents the future is their child, for children it is their next dream, for writers it is the book they are about to write, for scientists it is the change they hope to bring about… Sounds good, except that the gap between what we expect and what actually happens is often unexpectedly wide. Sometimes it’s even painful, and that’s why we come to believe, out of fear of what might happen to us, that if we knew the future in advance, we could better prepare for it.
Others, also out of fear, prefer to ignore the prospect of the future altogether and sink into a mediocre and boring present, turning it into an illusion of porcelain happiness. Fear of the future now has a name: anticipatory anxiety[2]. It is, in fact, the same disease that Creanga’s characters suffered from when they were afraid that the cat would knock the salt rock from the chimney onto the baby sleeping peacefully. It is true that Creanga’s story is called “Human Stupidity”, but the author tells us at the end that his hero, who had persistently sought to see if there was anyone more unwise than his family, “returned home and spent time with his family, whom he considered wiser than those he had seen on his journey”.
Is fear of the future also a “wiser” folly than other absurdities that jostle for a place in our lives?
Us and the future
It’s been said so many times that it’s hard to remember who said it first—”the best way to predict the future is to create it”[3]. The statement sounds good, even exhilarating, but the way it is interpreted is far more complicated than we might suspect at first glance. It is generally used to describe the leap you make by going beyond your own limits and achieving things you never dreamed of before. I propose to examine some of the strategies by which people try to shape the future.
In 2019, the Reuters agency published an article on its website about witches in Romania who had managed to take advantage of the internet to promote themselves and even broadcast their rituals live. We learn from the article, for example, that a session to “read” the future using tarot cards costs 50 euros and that there were around 4,000 people practising witchcraft in Europe at the time. Is witchcraft a way of “creating” the future? It seems to be so for those who resort to it, and there are many people who turn to this form of knowing or influencing the future. There has always been an observable, even empirical, curiosity about the means of knowing or influencing the future. And many practices fall into this category, from horoscope reading to corruption and bribery. Anxiety about the future and the desire to control it, to make sure it doesn’t harm us, underlies many of the decisions we make every day, even if we don’t explicitly acknowledge it.
Every day we oscillate between fear of the unknown and the feeling that we can shape our own future, between accepting inexorable fate and changing it by the means at our disposal.
And the promises of religion subtly enter this dizzying dance of life, often offering convenient shortcuts. Gifts, donations, meritorious deeds or penance come to be seen as legitimate ways of escaping the punishment of a dreadful future. Even today, some seem convinced that they can buy God Himself.
Knowledge of the future is the fruit we desire with the greatest curiosity. Whether for objective or purely subjective reasons, or even for reasons that are completely unclear, this curiosity shapes our decisions, changes our perspective on the present, and fills us with fear or excitement when we discover that the future does not obey our good intentions. The future confounds our expectations, and the unknown outstrips the most accurate predictions. And often this is good news.
God and the future
From a biblical perspective, the future is not a realm of the unknown for God, but rather a domain accessible to His knowledge. Paradoxically, the Bible encourages neither a lively curiosity about the future nor a resigned expectation of it.
What, then, is not worthy of our interest concerning the future? First of all, we should not care about what will happen to others. The apostle Peter was reprimanded by Jesus when he asked what the future held for John, who said of himself that he was “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 21:20-22). Then Jesus also told His disciples not to worry about times and dates (Acts 1:7), although for anyone expecting an event as great as the return of Jesus, this is the greatest curiosity. Knowing when the end of the world will come, or the fate of our neighbour, does not really solve the problems of the present, nor does it free us from the fear of the future. Would knowing all that the future holds for us make us happier? Or, on the contrary, make us more anxious? Would we enjoy the present more if we knew that in five, ten or thirty years we would suffer great hardship or lose a loved one? Surely God has withheld this knowledge for our benefit and happiness.
Seen in this light, Bible prophecy is not a glass of cold water with which God quenches our thirst for knowledge of the future, but rather a testimony that this future is in His hand, that God’s foreknowledge is already there. Although there have been occasions when prophets have accurately predicted names or places unknown to them, sometimes hundreds of years in advance, this information has not caused the recipients of these prophecies to seek to add new details to the predictions, but has strengthened their conviction that their God is not surprised by events.
How not to fear the future?
Instead of convincing us that we can create our own future or that we are “the creators of our own destiny”, the biblical perspective is simple and practical: it is not knowing the future but trusting that “in all things God works for the good of those who love Him” (Romans 8:28) that can help us to have peace.
So what is the role of biblical apocalypticism? The answer lies in the first verse of the book of Revelation: it is a revelation of Jesus Christ (Revelation 1:1). The future is not about the horrors of the wicked, but about the goodness and wisdom of God, who offers grace and intervenes to defend His children when truth seems to be swallowed up by lies. Even if this grace means giving time and space to the wicked, it is God who is in absolute control and who will ultimately intervene in defence of those who have trusted Him. Even the signs of the times should not be interpreted as milestones showing the distance to the goal, but rather as markers showing that one is going in the right direction. For those who love God, the future is not merely a time yet unknown, but a place of encounter with Him, a time when God can be seen in His greatness and goodness. That is why they do not fear the future, just as they do not fear the present or the past.
Adrian Neagu believes that the future is not something to be feared, but a time in which God’s goodness and justice are revealed.
