What we do today – as an individual, as the church, as our society, as our species – will have an effect on tomorrows world. We leave our footprints; some will fade with time, others won’t. It can take hundreds of years to replenish an over pumped ancient aquifer, thousands to restore a heavily damaged ecosystem – if it can be restored at all. The crude oil converted to the gasoline that we’ll convert to carbon dioxide and water vapor is gone forever. Every species that becomes extinct will diminish creation forever. Therefore, though it’s difficult, we are obligated to think about the future and how our present lives will influence it.
Of course in the vast majority of cases our footprints will merge with millions of others and whatever we can do will have a negligible influence on the larger future. However, there are those rare and unpredictable cases where some tiny step leads to another and another and in the end a major change occurs. Chaos theory (also see) provides some very necessary insights into any consideration of the future.
God works through chaos. Most real world dynamic systems (weather, the stock market, where we live, how a tree branches, the shape of a coastline, etc, etc) are chaotic. Chaotic systems, though they may look random, are not. They are fully determined, but their path is extremely dependent on initial conditions. As a result of this dependence, our ability to predict the details of the future is very limited – no matter how powerful our computers get! It’s the very often misinterpreted butterfly effect: “Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?” Basically, very small actions can trigger changes that over time result result in major – but totally unpredictable - changes and a dramatically different outcome. Do you set off the tornado or stop it?
Though the future is not predictable, sometimes, for long time periods, it can be reasonably safe to assume that the future will be defined by an extension of the present or the recent past. Obviously, this is not always the case. Civilizations eventually collapse and sometimes populations crash. However, there are lots of known forces at work, and though they can’t tell us the future, they can tell us a lot about limitations and possible directions.
I can envision little pieces of a future that is just and sustainable – and a lot different from today’s world. I’ve also experienced little bits of that possible future. The visions I’ve had or seen are not and cannot be universal – they are limited to particular regions, situations, and population density. However, the biggest stumbling block I see is not where we’re going but how can we get there in the least painful and most loving and just way!