The End Of The World? We're Sooo Looking Forward To It!

"God has given sooo much information in the Bible about this, and so many proofs, and so many signs, that we know it is absolutely going to happen without any question at all. 

 - Harold Camping

When the End Times come, I want to be living in Kansas. It's always twenty years behind."

 - Mark Twain

Imagine this scene:

Sunday, May 22nd, 10:15AM, families in church pews singing praises of the Lord very languidly, with  no exuberance at all. They've gathered in churches out of fright and despair. The day before, a few people they knew had disappeared - in broad daylight!  It happened! It actually happened! Old Harold Camping was RIGHT!!

After the initial worldwide chaos, all those worshipers had come to the realization that they had been "left behind," and their fate was sealed: in six months, their bodies and souls would cease to exist. No hell, but no heaven either. That's the way Camping envisioned it. Why were they singing hymns at all? Maybe hope, maybe habit. The cruelty of it all was still impossible to comprehend: only 3% of the population were raptured. What was wrong with the other 97%?

Yes, it's an odd scenario that focuses on the torture to come: billions of people left on earth, knowing that in six months they would cease to exist. Of course, it's not the only picture of the End: so many elements and permutations make for an interesting (if confusing) mix-and-match game: the Rapture, pre-millenialism, post-millenialism,  Armageddon are but a few. But no matter what the eschatology, they all involve the End of the World, a Judgment of human beings, unification with God (heaven) or separation from God (hell or non-existence) all with a heavy dose of ... sadism. One wonders if God created man just to toy with him like some cruel child: whatever the outcome of the World, somebody, some soul will suffer.

Gone Are The Sandwich Boards

"REPENT! THE END IS NEAR!" When's the last time you saw some sad, unkempt person wearing front-and-back placards declaring the end of the world? Most of them have been retired to YouTube heaven and they've been replaced by young people in tee-shirts with handouts or misspelled signs held by very in-your-face adherents. Today's End Timers seem more definite, more aggressive, and more condescending than sandwich board messengers. Why? Is it because they know they will be going to heaven very soon? Or is it because they know you won't be going to heaven (unless you listen to them and act quickly)? Watch the 40-second video at the bottom and wonder why the young man has such fervor in his voice and stance. When asked what he will do if the world still exists on May 22nd, he is absolutely certain that THERE WILL BE NO MAY 22nd! The force at which he puts up a mind-block to any alternative is unsettling.

Of course, websites like The End.com and  End Time Ministries also exude a matter-of-fact quality about a Second Coming, but they merely act as enablers to a group that is going one step further: naming an actual date.

I realize that calling today's End Timers cruel and sadistic may be going too far, but not far enough for people who actually push for Armageddon, e.g. the followers of Pastor John Hagee. His group, CUFI (Christians United For Israel), actually rallies for the concept of Armageddon. In the video below, the actions of the faithful seem almost surreal: they're so very happy that an Israeli-Palestinian conflict would bring about their cherished Armageddon, they seem oblivious to the fact that they are inciting a war, with people dying in the process.  Former U.S. Representative Tom DeLay looks almost giddy at the prospect of a cataclysmic war.

So what will happen to the May 21st End Timers on May 22nd? Will they experience profound disillusionment? Will they be ridiculed mercilessly? Will they switch to another date? I fear the answer to all three questions is a resounding "yes". We are experiencing people who (badly) need  a vast and spectacular change in their lives and who cannot deal with the human condition, whether in themselves or others. In other words, they will always want the End Time to come in their lifetime: be it in the form of the Rapture, the Second Coming, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse or whatever, End Timers will always strive for an immediate vindication, a current vengeance, a present emotional and physical relief with something as universal as religion.   

Past "signs" of the End Time show us just how desperate people are when they put their beliefs and their hopes for a cataclysmic change on the line:

Mormon: Babylon will be established and fall, Rev. 17-18.

Jehovah's Witnesses: All religions, represented by the Babylon the Great, except Jehovah's Witnesses, will be destroyed by the United Nations.(Revelation 17:16-18)

Islam: the Sun will rise from the West instead of the East.

So what will happen on May 22? After a great wailing and gnashing of teeth, the world will go on as it always has, people will still practice virtues and vices, and history will (unfortunately) repeat itself in the form of desperate people hoping for the End Time.

PS: With a nod to conspiracy theorists: the billboards stretching from Connecticut to Louisiana are extremely pricey. Camping may own some media outlets, but nothing on the scale to produce enough income for the advertising. So who the hell is funding this stuff?

The American Family: Sacred or Profane?

I've often asked myself what kind of organizations with the words "American" and "Family"* support someone like the Christian Right's Bryan Fischer: Fischer fulminates against gays Muslims, feminists, Native Americans and, of course, immigrants. So that begs the question: what is the American Family?

The portrait of today's American Family is not exactly Norman Rockwellian (at least not one of his earlier works). The American Family** still sits down to dinner together (over 85% do), reveres "family time" and even communicates with each other more than ever before. The problem the AFA has encountered: the American Family is more diverse than anything the AFA could have imagined. And even though groups like the AFA have taken up hate-broadcaster Michael Savage's mantra, "Diversity Equals Perversity," it looks like diversity is here to stay. 


Today's American Family may consist of various combinations: mother-father-biological children; single-mother-children; single-father-children; divorced-parents-children; single-gay-father-biological-children; gay-couple-biological-children; gay-couple-adopted-children; lesbian-couple-in-utero-children; mother-father-dependent-grandparent-children; single-man/woman/caregiver-parent. 


Add to any of the above, families with close extensions of aunts, uncles, cousins and life-long friends. Now mix it all up with different races, ethnicities, philosophies, sects and religions: now THAT is the American Family.  It's turned from the mythical nuclear rock to a snowflake: each having the same bonding of love, yet each being distinctive in its form and diversity. 


Unfortunately for America, however, the AFA and its compatriots are unable to see the beauty of these snowflakes (the new family units) and are hammering away at pockets of Right Wing America with such vitriolic determination that some people may come to believe in the superiority of being part of a rock, albeit the kind that never really existed in the first place.


If you go to the AFA's website, your first question usually is: so why isn't it called the Christian Family Association? Simply because a dynamic exists between the Right Wing concept of Christianity and the Right Wing concept of Family: they are too interdependent - one cannot live without the other. Yes, there are Right Wing Jewish families, but if we're playing a numbers game here, their number is very small; with the exception of CUFI (Citizens United For Israel - a Zionist organization founded by Pastor John Hagee), the Christian Right rarely concern themselves with Jewish (family) matters.


On the AFA website:

OUR MISSION

The American Family Association exists to motivate and equip individuals to restore American culture to its moral foundations.

To achieve their lofty goals, the AFA:

1. "Restrains evil" in the media, particularly film. 

Sort of a latter-day Catholic Legion of Decency.

2. Convinces "men of sin" to be driven to Christ. 

And that means absolutely EVERYONE. America MUST be a Christian-only nation.

3. Encourages Christians to live-out their new "holy identity."

Bludgeoning your co-workers with biblical passages and righteousness around the water-cooler is definitely OK.

4. Strengthens families and protects them from "government intrusion" and "preserves the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of a husband and wife." 

In other words, we're anti-liberal and virulently anti-gay, get over it.

And Above all, "AFA defends the rights of conscience and religious liberty from infringement by government and from subjugation in popular culture."

Since we defend RELIGIOUS liberty, atheists aren't protected by any law and it's OK to hate Muslims because, as Bryan Fischer put it, they're not really protected by the First Amendment. Oh, and Lady Gaga is our sworn enemy.

That is the AMERICAN FAMILY Association: an anti-gay, anti-Muslim, Christian-only organization that wants to mold everyone into virginal TV sitcom characters using, as Rick Warren puts it, "Whatever It Takes." 

And these days "it takes" one weapon to achieve what the AFA defines as The American Family: fear. A quick look at its website can show us disdain and fear-mongering.

Yes, their definitions are skewed in the extreme, but groups like the AFA don't realize just how many people they turn off with their UN-American, ANTI-Family (and anti-reality) stances. America has progressed (horrors! such an ugly word!) into greater acceptance and greater love of mankind through its diversity and the diversity of it core family units. In its own way, the AFA is trying to destroy the American Family.

So will Uber-Christians like Bryan Fischer ever go too far and be chastised? 

Probably not. The failure of the Christian Right to ever effectively monitor their own resulted in the unfettered rise of Fred Phelps. The damage done by Bryan Fischer has only elicited a lofty and disingenuous "we are not responsible" dismissal to such thoughts. 

So the real American Family is now under attack by organizations with "American" and "Family" in their titles; under attack by groups dedicated to the motto of "whatever it takes." And if we want to defend the sanctity of its beautiful diversity, we might have to start being as profane as our enemies. 

Sad, but true.

*E.g.: Family Research Council and American Family Association 

** The Pew Forum research done in 2008 of the "Networking" of the American Family shows just how much and how little the American Family has changed: the majority of families still eat dinner together and prize family time over all other activities. However, the makeup of the family has changed: single mothers with children, grown children with elderly parents, gay couples with children, extended families. Groups like the American Family Association will always denigrate these groups by saying that they not "real" families.