Had I Ever Dreamed

With children comes the prospect of grandchildren, great grandchildren, and so on. I’m thinking today of the hours Mary and I spent deliberating whether or not bearing children in the Atomic Age was the right thing to do. Obviously, our two beautiful daughters attest to the correctness of our decision. This does not, however, relieve me of the misgivings that still persist. I’m not happy with the world that Rachel and Rebecca were born into, although I see them as part of the promise for a brighter future. Three generations past the first detonation of a nuclear weapon doesn’t seem to have brought us any closer to a peaceful resolution, to a world resonating with harmony. Indeed, as the human population continues to grow unchecked we seem daily to draw nearer to that eschatological precipice which so many ignorantly yearn for. First-century apocalypticism was perceived from a far different worldview in which it almost made sense to think of a redeeming Parousia, but a Twenty-first century apocalypse bodes the end of the human experiment. Had I ever dreamed that evil idiots would prevail, I might have decided differently about having children. Had I ever dreamed that these evil idiots might well spark the second American civil war, the third world war, etc, I might have decided against bringing innocents into such folly. Had I ever dreamed that the hope of the world rests in the hearts and minds of my children and their children, then I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.