Saturday, May 21, 2011

My Last Words: A Bedtime Story

The pictures from our younger days are always so embarrassing

Dear Young Photos,

This might be my final post. Any moment now, according to a certain portion of the Christian community, Judgment Day will be upon us. Had I realized that The End of Times was fast approaching I might not have been so cavalier about my decision to conceive and raise a child. I am so so sorry. In my defense, part of the reason your mother and I were caught unawares is really part and parcel with the eponymous judgment we're possibly about to receive.

See, humans have spent a lot of time and energy trying to understand life. Questions like how did we get here? and what does it mean? have proved particularly vexing. Despite great strides in science to identify ideas like evolution, Big Bangs, and natural selection, our research falls far short of providing a real nice meaty answer. As far as we can tell: before there was nothing, and now there is everything.

So where did everything come from?

In short, a lot of people think it came from God.

The idea of God is complex and has undergone many changes over the years, but the basic idea is always there—God is an invisible and all-powerful boss and you really need to follow His (and in some cases Her, and in some cases Their) rules because, despite being able to build planets and oceans, He/She/They cannot control what we think, and this just irks them to no end.

God's rules are also somewhat in flux depending on who you ask, and this is a real hot-button issue throughout history. Countries invade each other, slaughtering their people, more or less because they disagree about who God is. It happens over and over. The thing is, in all that time no one has ever really turned up any evidence to sway the public once and for all. It's an argument with no end in sight.

Why, you may ask, does God not just appear and set the record straight? Would we not welcome his omniscience into our lives, especially since Oprah is about to go off the air? You would not be the first to wish for this. It would certainly settle a lot of bets.

In God's absence, humans continue to hope and have faith that He/She/They is/are out there, and they organize groups that get together and go over the details of what they think God wants from us. They call them religions.

It's a nice idea really, to look back and discuss ideas, to lay out guidelines for proper interpersonal conduct, to form the foundations of a like-minded community. What I personally do not like is the rigidity of most religions (see above mention of slaughter). Even though there are many religions, often with many overlapping concepts, each religion claims to have the straight poop on God. There is often a subtext of I-am-right-and-you-are-wrong between the groups. But, since no one really knows anything, I find their insistence intolerable and silly. Mostly I avoid the topic and mind my own business.

Oh, but my young child, I can't be let off the hook so simply. The religious groups saw me coming. Built right into their beliefs (in many cases revealed from a source close to God) is the caveat that you kind of have to believe, or at least you are strongly advised to do so. If you do not, it is not taken as an act of free will to bravely question authority. You are not seen as "philosophical" by most. No, there are words for people like me--heretic, infidel, poor lost sheep. And it's not enough to pity or accuse me of wrongdoing. My beliefs cannot be chalked up as confusion or a simple mistake. According to believers, to not believe, Young Photos, is pretty much the worst thing you can ever do. It means if and when Judgment Day arrives we will be in big big trouble.
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In this country the majority of us are known as Christians. Christians vary in their beliefs, but they all concur that God is a masculine spirit, that he created the Universe in one week, and he lives in a kingdom in the sky called Heaven which is just a really great place. And of course there was the time he caused a virgin to give birth to his son. This man, God's son, is called Jesus Christ.

Jesus, as historical figures go, is fairly important. He is so important that just by being born he caused the western world to reset their calendars to differentiate the dull and terrible time before he was born from the wonderful and enlightened time since his birth. He is so wonderful that his birthday is in many ways an even better holiday than your own. For one thing, some of the most beautiful music ever written was in observance of his birthday. I cannot say the same thing for the off-key mewling that will occur just before you blow out your candles.

It is this Jesus fellow that is the real key to modern Christianity. Before he arrived, God was pretty hands on; he was smiting folks and telling people to murder their first-borns and flooding the planet because he didn't like the direction it was heading. If you read the Old Testament, God is actually pretty terrifying, so it could have been doubly bad when he decided suddenly to have children.

But Jesus turned out to be a pretty cool guy. He preached nonviolence and love and acceptance; he healed the sick and fed the hungry and he even brought a dead person back to life before we knew about CPR. But his real coup de grace is that he let a bunch of Romans nail him to a large wooden pole, an act of selflessness of which we are still feeling the effects.

These effects concern the fate of our souls. The soul is a tricky concept but it is similar to the mind in some ways, the main difference being that it goes on thinking and feeling and stuff after you're dead--an important difference because your mind may only be around for 100 years at most, but your soul goes on forever. Christians believe when you die, if you are Christian, your soul ascends to Heaven where it remains alongside God in eternal ecstasy, while your body is stored in the ground until it is exhumed to make space for condos.

Christians also believe that if you aren't Christian, you cannot get in to Heaven. And let me be clear, there is no wiggle room on this. It's like Costco: you're either a member, or you have to go somewhere else. They don't give you a pass for being a super nice guy and always doing the right thing. You have to believe. Even if you're a fairly good person that was not raised as a Christian, or you're a well-read intellectual sort that asks a lot of questions about literacy and translation, or you're weirded out by the amount of wars and persecutions and molestations that have occurred under the flag of Christianity and can't at this late stage possibly see how it can be real, well, off you go.

And that's really it. It's beautiful in its simplicity (if a bit churlish. After all, why does God—a man that created the Universe—and his relatives need our acceptance so desperately?).

The real bummer is your soul still has to go somewhere. So, instead of going to Heaven, if you're a nonbeliever your soul will go to Hell, which is a place of permanent suffering and torture, again, like Costco.

For obvious reasons, I'm glossing over a lot of things, but the point is that, up until today, we humans have always been able to live out our lives, so to speak. We would have the entirety of our lives to sort of weigh our options and decide whether or not to repent and accept Christ, an act that is effectively stamping our ticket to Heaven or Hell.

What is different about today is that today is (possibly) the cutoff line. A group of Christians believe that Judgment Day has arrived. They believe this because of a prophecy in the Old Testament that says the world shall end several thousand years after The Great Flood, and according to one man's math that day is today. (Of course, he also thought the world was going to end in 1994, but hey, we all make mistakes.)

It is thought that, on Judgment Day, Christ himself will return to Earth to summon the souls of the believers to Heaven, an act known as The Rapture, and imagined by me to resemble the tractor beam that sucks humans into flying saucers. After The Rapture, the rest of the people of Earth (including all the plants, animals, and stuff the believers used to own) will remain here to perish and just make a royal mess of things.

According to an article in the New York Times, "Nonbelievers will endure five months of plagues, quakes, famine, and general torment before the planet's total destruction in October." (Honestly though, minus the Christians, you might just as easily be describing pre-Rapture Earth).
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As a nonbeliever, it was pretty surprising to find a story about the end of the world on the front page of the paper, especially since I only read elite liberal media.

But what should I think? How am I supposed to know? Is it best to just throw a hail mary to Jesus in the event that The Rapture is real? And, if so, wouldn't he see through it as a feint to save my soul's neck? In other words, isn't it already too late?

At this point, two things can happen. First, the world really could end and I'll be super pissed that I spent my last hours wiping geriatric asses for $9.50 an hour. Second, the world will keep right on chugging, some of the believers will die of embarrassment, and a certain REM song will have enjoyed its best week of airplay in quite some time. (Sing it with me now: Leo-nard-Bern-stein!)

Honestly, I don't think the world is about to end, so I'm not all that concerned. Then again, I do believe the world will end at some point, so maybe today really is the day. All I can do is wait and watch my Facebook feed for updates like Erin has suddenly developed leprosy.

One reason (but certainly not the only reason) I'm not worried is because we've lived through Doomsday prophecies before. On the eve of the new millennium we thought that a massive computer crash was destined to bring about total financial/societal collapse. (This event was known as Y2K, and it amounted to little more than a programming glitch on the scale of a digital clock at Daylight Savings Time. The world didn't even come close to ending, despite the fact that I'd just been dumped by my girlfriend of two years for no discernible reason and really, in a way, wished it would have). These portentious predictions are happening all the time. In fact, if this Doomsday doesn't take there's another one scheduled next year!

So, why do people so desperately want the world to end? Why are they quitting their jobs and spending their life savings to spread the word? And why do they seem so pleased about it?

I think it's an ego thing; these people believe that they're the chosen ones who will witness the destruction of humanity, that they are the last people to live here, like the Earth couldn't possibly go on without them. They don't consider the gajillions of people before that felt the same way. They don't consider that they're just ordinary and the human race will outlast even the memory of them.

Anyway, I hope they approach life with a bit more humility if it turns out they're wrong. Still, there's an outside chance this is it. I confess that I woke up in the middle of the night and, laying there in the dark, became gripped with the fear that they'd been right and the sun had burned out. I was afraid to look at the clock lest it should confirm a late hour without any light. It would be pretty awful. And what really sucks is that here, at last, is the proof I have been hoping for. Finally Christ gives me something I can hang my hat on. Only, by then I've missed the ferry. I will not be allowed to reap the rewards of my convictions. The Real Christians will be gone already, sent to Heaven to laugh and sing and enjoy the heck out of the afterlife, and I'll be here with everyone else trying not to get killed by roving gangs and hoping I freeze to death.

Long story short, my son, the world you are born into may not be such a great place and I can't help but feel responsible. I wish I had planned ahead more thoroughly and considered whether the planet would still be intact on your due date. I am not clear on the policy for entry to Heaven concerning those born after the apocalypse, but it seems unlikely that you'll have the wherewithal to accept Christ at three months. Maybe they make exceptions for tiny babies, even if your soul's brain is still too undeveloped to be able to remember or appreciate how much fun Heaven is.

Goodnight my child. I'll see you in Hell, if not the morning.

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1 Comments:

Blogger Tara said...

I didn't know you had a blog John! I just spent quite a while reading this (lengthy!) post while listening to The Sundays and thought I would comment. I liked that you tagged Y2K.. haha!! If you are into reading and have never read "Traveling Mercies" by Anne Lamott, do yourself a favor and check it out. I think you would end up agreeing with her on lots of things. Keep up the great writing!

July 5, 2011 at 8:48 PM  

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