Of the Rapture

May 21 was supposed to be the Rapture, at least that was the claim of a certain pastor and some of his followers.  These people gave up lives, money and time in the expectation that Jesus Christ was going to come down and wipe out all life on Darth and deliver them unto heaven.   Frankly as a Christian and a Catholic, I am very insulted.

I never understood the prophecies of end days.   People seem to gleam onto these stories with an almost mindless and slavering belief.  They give up all self-respect, all other doubt.  They listen with such attention to stories of such terrible death and destruction.  They hope, no, WANT for these things to happen; for fire to reign from the skies, for rivers of blood stream from every mountain top.  People want to see the four horsemen of the apocalypse ride up to their door and politely ask them to lay down so that they can ride over them.  I am sorry, but even as a believer of Christ I cannot buy into such a vision of the end-days.

If people want to see war, famine, pestilence and death they need only turn on the TV.  Violence and aggression is the word-of-the-day on the news.  Radio and TV announcers bicker back and forth, the sharing of equally important ideas diminished to one person shouting over another and then the first shouting over them.  Discourse has become a thing of the playground folly I see at work. Men and woman regress into little children with their thumbs in their ears singing "Blah blah blah" I cant hear you.  In other words, if we want to see examples of the end of times we need look no further than the present, not the future.

I sometimes wonder what Jesus thinks when he looks down at us.  Certainly all the worlds troubles are not limited to Christianity.  I don't doubt Mohammad and Moses stand beside him and shake their heads in disbelief.  I highly doubt any of our religious fore-bearers would want to see any of their followers so singularly fixated on the end of times.  Aren't many of the teachings in the religion about the preservation and the living of life?   Do we not have short enough spans as it is without wanting it to end sooner?

Certainly we all want to live a long and happy existence.  Were the end to come tomorrow, however, I think we would want to look back on both the good and the bad in our lives.  We wouldn't want to see a reflection of ourselves with so singular and narrow a purpose waiting only for that end-time.  As it is, I for one would like very much to wake up in the morning and be glad to do so.