Faith During the Apocalypse: Part 2- Battle Born
The world has ended. Laws are upheld by no one. People are reverting to their base nature—good and bad. It’s total chaos. Anarchy rules the day. The dead walk the streets. Aliens fly around in spaceships. Natural disasters have devastated the world. No laws or government stand between you and your deepest desires. You are free to do whatever you want—but so is everyone else.
Welcome to the apocalypse...
If you missed the first part of this blog, head over to Realm Makers and check it out here: https://realmmakers.net/?p=15704&preview=true
Last time I talked about what it would be like to have to kill to keep your loved ones alive. What it would be like to deal with that decision and how it played into a Christ-based faith. In this blog I’ll cover something different. The questions of whether you could hold to your beliefs with the atrocities you would see and maybe even commit; if God was still there and if He loved His creation; and if we could move past everything we would experience.
The end of the world is not going to be pretty, there will be no rainbows and unicorns. It will be messy, brutal, and bloody. The Greek root of the word apocalypse, means to uncover or reveal, and the last time that happened Eve took a bite out of that notorious fruit and sin entered the world. The next time it happens will be even worse as the end times are the climax of all humanity here on earth. Needless to say, it will not be appealing as it says in Revelation that between all the judgments half of the population will die.
My opinion, and it’s confirmed in Revelation, is that when the end of the world does come the Enemy—with a capital ‘E’—will have control. God takes a step back if, you will, and lets the Antichrist reign for a time. That doesn’t mean God isn’t there, or that he doesn’t love us anymore, in fact once we ascend we may even see that He let it happen for our own good. But the question still remains, could you hold on to your faith through it all?
It’s easy to know all this when we’re not in a fight for our lives with danger around every corner, and even if we were in that situation we may still know that, but what would we feel when experiencing it? What would it be like to be in the trenches of the world ending and facing death and pain each day while trying to stay true to our convictions?
Imagine sitting there holding the bleeding body of your child or wife or husband. How would your faith stack up to that? What about when that happened to your entire family one-by-one over the course of weeks or even days? I would be willing to bet your faith would be struggling, especially when faced with your whole life crumbling around you. I know mine would.
Now think about compassion, we’re meant to live for others, but when a compassionate decision during the apocalypse backfires and kills some of our loved ones, what happens the next time? My bet is you wouldn’t be quite as willing to do it again. These are just some of the questions and decisions that we would face in the end of all things. Every step forward would be met with resistance, death, and pain. We would have to constantly get up from being beaten down and continue on or curl up and die.
The things we would face would test our will to survive and our faith. Heck, everyday life tests our faith, can you imagine how much more it would be in those extreme situations? It would be brutally tough and it’d be so easy to give up. Take it from one who spent the last two years in the heads of a group of characters traveling through the zombie apocalypse, nothing was easy. They had to claw their way forward while struggling with the facts of what they’d done to get there. Some broke down, others buried it, and others didn’t have the strength to continue and perished along the way.
I like to think that when the time comes I would do what is necessary and be able to still keep my faith. But I know the guilt and the uncertainty would nag at me every day. I would have to constantly surrender it over to One who’s strength is so much more than my own. It would take us constantly leaning on Christ to make it through a single day and yet we’d still struggle with that.
As I dove into my character’s heads and their decisions, I came to a stunning conclusion. To make it through those times—those struggles—a person would have to become Battle Born. Urban Dictionary defines it as this, “When something is created or shaped into its current state due to conflict and/or hardship.” There would be no other way someone would survive if they didn’t decide to rise up and continue. Anyone see any similarities yet? We do this in our own lives, every single day.
As a Christian we face daily resistance—from the world, the “Evil One”, and our sinful nature—and we must overcome it with God’s strength. By that very definition we are all Battle Born. It takes strength, courage, and compassion for us to accept life as it is and move forward, but it takes more than we have in us. It has to come from a difference source. We cannot get through the apocalypse or even our own lives without Him. We would, and have, all come face-to-face with some horrible situations, but we don’t have to do it alone. And with Him, we can make it through anything—even the end of the world.
From my desk to yours,
Joshua C. Chadd
