The Future?

MANY science-fiction enthusiasts have an inquiring mind, a desire for change in human society, and a great interest in the future. The Bible has much to say about the future, but the Bible’s view of man’s fate bears little, if any, resemblance to the speculations of science-fiction writers.
Science fiction offers many, many different versions of what the future may be like. But would you stake your life on any one of these? On what would you base your choice? These scenarios, or projected courses of events, cannot all be true. Can you confidently say that even one of them is the truth? It is far more likely that none of them are.
Already, many science-fiction scenarios are coming to nothing. In what way? In that those that deal with how science could lead the way to a better civilization here on earth have not come to pass. Far from an improved civilization, the reality of today is the opposite. German writer Karl Michael Armer notes: “The future has overwhelmed us.” He points to “global threats of atomic death, environmental disasters, hunger, poverty, energy crises, [and] state-sponsored terrorism.”
In other words, the future for the earth and for the human family described in many science-fiction stories is not moving toward realization. To the contrary, as conditions deteriorate on the earth, the human situation is going in the opposite direction. In spite of any scientific or technical advancements, throughout the world human society experiences more and more crime, violence, poverty, ethnic hatreds, and family breakdown.
Some scientific endeavors have added greatly to man’s ills. Consider just a few examples: the chemical pollution of our air, water, and food; the disaster at Bhopal in India, where an accident in an industrial plant released poison gas, causing the death of 2,000 people and injury to some 200,000; the meltdown of the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl in Ukraine, resulting in many deaths and increases in cancer and other health problems over the earth that just can’t be solved. So what is the truth? I guess Faith is the only thing that is left. We will just have to wait and see.