The
Rapture Can’t Happen
Soon Enough To Suit Me
By Robert Weitzel
22 January,
2008
Countercurrents.org
As an atheist and a skeptic, I try to limit my magical thinking to occasional moments of vanity and revenge. But lately I’ve found myself wishing that if the Rapture is on the level, it would happen soon . . . I mean real soon.
The Rapture is the name given to a future event in which Jesus descends from heaven and gathers up all Christian fundamentalists [a.k.a. Christian Right] and swooshes them up bodily to heaven, but not before they’ve jettisoned their clothes and jewelry and all forms of prostheses, including pompadour hairpieces and inflatable bouffant support bladders.
Before I get too far into this, I want it understood that I’m not wishing these folks ill. On the contrary, I’m wishing them what they’ve always wanted—an eternity of enjoying the unchallenged moral certitude they were never quite able to fully enjoy here on Earth, but which nonetheless caused the rest of us no end of misery.
The signs for finally seeing the backside of the Christian Right are encouraging. According to raptureready.com, the Rapture Index (omens portending the Rapture) stands at 163, the highest it’s been since September 11, 2001 when it peaked at its all-time high of 182. I don’t know what the numbers mean either. But I’m not making this up.
It appears
Jesus is getting his transition team in place, what with the recent
raptures—albeit by conventional means—of the Rev. D. James
Kennedy, godfather of the American Dominionist [a.k.a. theofascist]
movement and hater of our secular constitution, and the Rev. Jerry
Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority and hater of all people he
could think of to hate.
I do wish the Lord would get his jesters assembled and move on this.
Think what the Rapture will mean to those of us left behind.
Twenty-three percent of the 208 million adults in America identify
themselves as either Pentecostal or Charismatic Christians [a.k.a.
Rapture-ready]. In the event of the Rapture up to 50 million workers
will be leaving their jobs without clocking out. The number of positions
vacated will be five times as many needed to wipe out the country’s
unemployment, leaving the rest of us in a workers’ paradise.
Affirmative action be damned! It’s “trickle up”
economics at work here.
Not only will our career paths be enhanced, but we’ll have a
chance at longer, healthier lives by taking the untold billons of
dollars President Bush is currently funneling into the Christian Right’s
faith-based coffers to save “Americans one soul at a time"
and reallocating them to stem cell research and universal health care,
which will save considerably more of an American than just his or
her ethereal soul.
Along with
vocational upgrades and improved health, we’ll no longer have
to wonder, “is our kids learning?” High school grads having
trouble gaining admission to one of our over-crowded universities
will have immediate access to the vacant desks—and possibly
iPods—left by the tens of thousands of Rapture-ready students
attending America’s 102 “Christ-centered” colleges,
which will be under new management and begging for warm bodies.
And guys, speaking of warm bodies, the universities will be flush
with coeds since far fewer teenage girls will be home taking care
of their babies—there were 435,000 teen mothers last year. The
hundreds of millions of federal dollars spent annually on abstinence-only
sex education [a.k.a. religious dogma] in our public high schools
will now fund comprehensive sex education programs that promote safe
and effective birth control methods. Let’s face it. It was only
the Christian Right who thought hormone-pumped primates would ever
stop “doing it.”
By the way, do I even need to mention that with the Rapture-ready
blissfully ensconced behind the pearly gates the rest of us will be
left in peace to enjoy our bedrooms and our most personal intimate
relationships on our own terms?
Unarguably though, the highlight of the Rapture will be finding out
which of the “born-again” politicians are left on the
ground. Unless someone has been lying to the American people—perish
the thought—we stand to lose 48 Senators, 186 Representatives,
four Supreme Court justices, seven presidential hopefuls, and one
hopeless president.
If it turns out—highly unlikely though it is— that the
2008 presidential frontrunners of both parties are missing on Rapture-plus-one,
we’ll enjoy the remaining election season with candidates who’ve
always been willing to talk about more substantive issues than their
most recent meet and greet with the Lord. The God-talk will be in
heaven where it belongs.
Consider this . . . with a smile. If the Democrats with Dennis Kucinich
and Al Gore—we can talk him into it—or the Greens with
Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader can’t defeat the unraptured
and unrepentant Ron Paul and Rudy Giuliani on their own merits, we’ll
now own the Supreme Court.
There is a downside. We know damn-good-and-well who’ll be sitting
at his Oval Office desk with a “fooled you again” smirk
on his mug on Rapture-plus-one. But keep in mind, we’ll still
have Section 4 of Article II of the Constitution and we’ll have
the votes and we’ll have the prison. Keep in mind also, gods
mostly help those who help themselves.
Having imagined all the above, my thinking is not so magical as to
believe there won’t be a few post-Rapture problems. After all,
according to Revelations this will be the time of the Great Tribulation
and we’ll still have Satan [a.k.a. your choice] to wrestle with.
But with the Christian Right enjoying eternity . . . well . . . who
cares where, we’ll have only one Devil in the ring at a time.
And he’ll be the one carrying a pitchfork not a Bible.
Author’s note: Hopefully Jesus is a not a strict sectarian and
swooshes up Jewish and Muslim fundamentalists as well. WHAT? I have
the right to hope.
Robert Weitzel is a freelance writer and contributing
editor to Media With a Conscience. His essays regularly appear in
The Capital Times in Madison, WI. He has been published in the Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel, Skeptic Magazine, Freethought Today, and on popular
liberal websites. He can be contacted at: [email protected]
