Some baby boomers are getting so self-obsessed that they assume the world will end when they do.

NBC’s new miniseries “Revelations” reinforces a steady drumbeat heard since the attacks of September 11th: that we are on the verge of “end days,” the apocalyptic affirmation of everything in the biblical book of Revelations which portends the end of the world.

It is a view popularized by the best-selling “Left Behind” book series by Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye. It is expressed in sermons, such as the one by the former minister of Westminster Chapel, R.T. Kendall, “The Day the World Changed,” which stated, “I believe that the cataclysmic day of September 11 2001 has set in motion a definite sequence of events to be unfolded in these very last days.” This week, MSNBC’s “Scarborough Country” devoted a show to exploring whether the tsunami and other recently harsh weather patterns were evidence of the coming end of the world.

Behind today’s millennial anxiousness it is not too hard to see the baby boomers confronting their own mortality. Because of sheer weight of their numbers, every recent decade has paralleled the baby boomers’ development – the innocence of the 1950s, the rebellion of the 1960s, the wilderness of the 1970s, the Yuppified-money of the 1980s. Now death has begun to come knocking with unnerving regularity and an apocalyptic perspective is shaping their landscape.

While I deeply appreciate baby boomers’ contributions to society from increased civil rights to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, this assumption that their end must also equate with the end of the planet is sort of offensive to all of us who expected to be next at bat.

America has always been a deeply religious country; it is one of our great strengths. With that has come occasional cults that organize around an expected impending end of the world. But rarely has the doomsday discussion reached such a wide and apparently willing audience.

So with all respect for the country’s deepening religious faith, let’s lay off the doomsday stuff. These are challenging times, but challenges demand responsible action and long-term thinking. Fatalism about the world on the part of the generation now in charge is not particularly helpful.

The essence of moral politics should be generational responsibility, and if increased influence of religion on our politics leads to a diminished sense of generational responsibility, then we are heading in the wrong direction and it’s time for an intergenerational sit-down discussion.

We can all agree that since the attacks of September 11th, history has been in high gear. But the assumption that it is heading to some apocalyptic end point is just selfish – and more importantly, in a world with weapons of mass destruction, it is potentially self-fulfilling.

History is not just something we are subjected to; it is something we each help create. Consequently, we have a collective responsibility to help build a better world, not eagerly prepare to abandon the current one armed with theological arguments.

A more constructive spirit comes from an even older source, the ancient Athenian Oath of Fealty recited by civic leaders in the age of Pericles, which reads, “We will never bring disgrace to this, our city, by any act of dishonesty or cowardice nor ever desert our suffering comrades in the ranks. We will fight for our ideals and sacred things of the city, both alone and with many … We will strive unceasingly to quicken the public sense of civic duty. Thus in all these ways we will transmit this city not only not less, but far greater and more beautiful than it was transmitted to us.”

What applies to the city in this case also applies to the nation. We have too much power and too much responsibility to give way to doomsday musings or expectant whispers about “end days.” Faith should help guide us to build a better world, not abandon it. In that way, we can perpetually pass it on to the next generation better than it was given to us.