Fear and Laughter in the Apocalypse

I grew up in the Southern Baptist Church on the northern edge of the Bible Belt, St. Louis, Missouri.  Sometime in the late 70's, I was introduced to the Christian Apocalypse films and then in '81 the Jack Chick tracks and comics (I still read "The Crusaders" series on occasion), and the "End of Days" writings of authors like Hal Lindsey with his "The Late, Great Planet Earth" and other such media.

What is the Christian Apocalypse?

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The basic theology of the Christian Apocalypse is that the prophesies of the books of "Daniel" and "The Book of  Revelation" with a spattering of other verses from around the Bible that foretell the end of the world and the beginning of the new kingdom of Jesus for a thousand years.

If you read any of the "Left Behind" Series or saw the films (the first was pretty good, the second was OK, but the last one SUCKED) then you have some background in the Apocalypse as they did tell the most popular view of the Christian End of Days.

In short, you have the following events taking place:

• The Rapture - the followers of Jesus will be removed from having to experience the seven years of the tribulation. (Some believe that the rapture will occur either 3.5 years into the seven years or later)
• The rise of the Beast/Antichrist a world leader who ushers in a one world government
• Signs a peace treaty between Israel and its enemies for seven years
• The Beast will rebuild the Jewish Temple then blaspheme in it by declaring himself to be God
• The above-mentioned peace treaty will fail after 3½ years
• The armies of the world will meet on the plain of Megiddo, often called the Battle of Armageddon, and attack Israel to end mankind, except...
• Jesus will have his Second Coming and save mankind, set up his kingdom for 1000 years and have the Day of Judgment for all mankind

Apocalyptic Fear

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People frighten me more than the idea of the apocalypse or the end of the world, actually. What does frighten me though is the collection of people that think if they destroy the planet enough, they can hasten the Second Coming.

Somehow, I really doubt that it works that way, but I have heard a few preachers allude to it, which would explain so much of what we see in the world around us.

Many self-proclaimed Christian Republicans fight tooth and nail to remove all restrictions on business and any type of oversight on environmental destruction. It is very likely that a lot of this mentality is just good old-fashioned greed, but I cannot help wonder what stops a person from destroying the world around them when they believe that their God will rescue them from dealing with the repercussions of their actions, frightening thought that.

Apocalyptic Laughter

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One of the more humorous and interesting trends in popular Christian Apocalyptic stories is the idea that in Post-Rapture society, those Christians that were not "real Christians" and those who accept Jesus during the Tribulation will be social pariahs. One of the best examples is Cloud Ten Pictures 4-films series "Apocalypse" where they are constantly referred to by the masses as "Haters".

I find this label of "Haters" for the Christians to be humorous when one looks around at the world of today and we see, self-described Fundamentalist Christians hating anyone and everyone that they do not agree with while trying to create a Christian Theocracy to enshrine their beliefs as the law of the land (yes, it is a bit redundant).

I am so often saddened by the behavior of (self-proclaimed) religious people and the directions they choose, or are guided toward, to show their faithfulness. We see those who claim to follow a teacher that taught Love demonizing others for having the audacity to love in a different way. We have people willing to kill others for every perceived slight, no matter how small, of a teacher or prophet. The saddest to me are groups that teach their children to kill themselves and others in the name of God for their faith.

So I wonder sometimes if these authors are actually making a statement about the failings of their churches or if they are just oblivious to why people might look back and ask if their religion should be abolished?

A Constitutional Preamble for the 21st Century

Today is the 4^th of July, also known as Independence Day.

Independence Day, commonly known as the Fourth of July, is a federal holiday in the United States commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, declaring independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain.

Wikipedia - Independence Day (United States)
Sadly, as the years have gone by and the dumbing-down of the masses has continued, Independence Day is quickly becoming the American equivalent to "Cinco de Mayo" with bar-b-ques and fireworks. Yes, I do know that Cinco de Mayo is not the Mexican Day of Independence, but in the U.S. it has become the Mexican equivalent St. Patrick's Day, basically a reason to get plastered, but since it is a federal holiday many get holiday pay for it.

As much as that is somewhat to be expected, what is actually much more sad is that the promise that many aspects of the foundation of the United States foretold, freedom, justice and this wonderful experiment in Representational Democracy, is in danger of falling to the wayside in the near future.

As a nation, there is what appears to be a very dangerous formula in the works and the outcome would be the destruction of the shining beacon that is the potential for a nation.

I was recently re-reading Baird T. Spalding's "Life and Teaching of the Masters of the Far East" and I was touched by how one of his guides on the trip was so enamored with the United States and its promise to the world for the future.

In recent years though, we have been witness to a fundamental shift in how America runs and the goals for which it appears to be pursuing, sadly from my perspective, they are as "Un-American" as anything Joseph McCarthy would have come up with.

I could go into detail on where we stopped being President Lincoln's vision of a "government of the people, by the people, for the people," and his belief that it "shall not perish from the earth." We have allowed ourselves to become a government of the Rich, by the Powerful Media Conglomerates and for profits at all costs without even thinking about the consequences of these changes.

So I have decided that the Preamble to the US Constitution, which was ratified nearly 12 years after the Declaration of Independence and is the highest law of the land, should be modified to address the view of those who have been given the country on a silver platter as follows:

We the [Rich and Powerful] People [and Corporations] of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union [for the protection of our profit margins], establish Justice [based on Christian Sharia], insure domestic Tranquility [through mind-numbing mass media], provide for the common defense [against the proletariat], promote the general Welfare [when we absolutely must or their labor is needed], and secure the Blessings of  Liberty  [Profitability] to ourselves and our Posterity [only], do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America[, Inc.].

How “Religion” can save the world

The current destruction of the world as we know it IS actually due to our turning our backs on Religion and/or God.

OK, I will be the first to admit THAT is something I never expected to write, but in some ways it is very true; though not in the way most people think of it.

How many times have I heard some "Hellfire and Brimstone" preacher go on about how the decline of America is due to our lack of reverence to God and our evils in allowing such things as abortion and homosexuality (kinda sounds a lot like Rev Phelps and his cast of [self-censored]). Sadly, he and his like in Christianity are not alone as we have all heard it from certain angry Muslim teachers as well.

“Just look at your life, everything is backwards, they call darkness light and light darkness. Abomination is overflowing just as it was in Sodom and Gomorrah.”

an unknown Street Preacher
Similar statements are heard from many of the world's religious fundamentalists and though not as they meant it, surprisingly true and accurate. Things are backwards, we spend our lives ignoring the Truth within ourselves and instead chase after money and things that cannot and will not make us happy in the long run.

Malcolm X really summed up a lot of this reversal in his quotes:

“The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses.”

“If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”

I find it funny that from a Jewish Mishnah (traditional scriptural interpretation) perspective, the Sodom and Gomorrah portion is right on target, but not because of "the Gay Agenda", but do to the hardness of men's hearts and the crime of Sodom and Gomorrah according to the Mishnah was the violation of the Hospitality Code, caring and compassion for others.

Whenever the times get tough and it becomes more difficult to get by, we try to figure out why, it is human nature to search for answers. There is always someone out there that has no issues with creating a "wicker man" for you to throw your hatreds at, to pile all your frustrations into and set ablaze to take them away.

The ego of man is one that will happily look outward for another responsible party instead of looking within and taking on the truth of what it has created.

So just how is it that turning our backs on religion and/or God/Source may the cause of the destruction of the world around us?

Those with a smaller world view, are inclined to say that the difficulties of the day are a collection of punishments from this judgmental deity that seems to take great pleasure in collecting the evidence to condemn its creation to an eternity of separation and damnation. Now this is just my not so humble opinion, but what a harsh place to live, no wonder they tend to be so angry.

A basic central tenet of all "Religions" is that there is a higher ideal that mankind can and should strive for and through one way or another can achieve. Though by turning our backs upon this idea, we become selfish and myopic onto our own lives and concerns and often do not care about how our actions affect the rest and this tends to make us extremely short-sighted in the long run.

This is the seed by which our destruction will be brought forth if we do not awake soon. The destruction of the world will not be the punishment of God on his creation, but the aftermath of OUR lack of forethought and attention.

As an example, we have a world economy that is based on something completely unsustainable, petroleum; a finite resource that we cannot create in a lab that poisons our environment and may eventually make this planet unable to support our life form.

Without even going into the whole "Global Warming" argument, we are knowingly poisoning ourselves, if you don't believe me, let me ask you this: "Would you sit in a running car in your garage with the garage door closed? Of course not, you know it would kill you." So you know you are putting poison out into your ecosystem that you NEED to survive.

This is only one of an insane number of ways we are setting ourselves up for our own self-destruction, and we do it for such silly reasons, like money, convenience and just not beng willing to be bothered.

We live in a collection of cultures that have always felt reasonably safe due to physical distance from the "other". With the birth of modern information and communication technologies, those barriers of safety are quickly disappearing and many are panicking. If our interactions were just limited to "Cultural Contamination" it would be one thing, but we have entered a world where the actions in one place can have direct consequences on the opposite side of the planet.

Has Religion and/or God/Source given us a way out?

When you sit down and look into the teachings of the greatest teachers in history, Krishna, Moses,  Zoroaster, Lao Tzu, Buddha, Confucius, Thoth/Hermes, Jesus, Muhammad, Guru Nanak Dev and Bahá'u'lláh, they all share something in common, the expression of a higher state, called ethos, morality, spirituality and/or God.

Religions are the codification of the teachings that are left by the founder in an attempt to keep them alive, but sadly, those who come later rarely understand the original source and the teaching goes from a living expression of Truth and into traditions, theologies and dogmas.

When ego becomes the driving force of religion, Truth is put aside for numbers, power and glorification.

Religions relate to God/Source in the same way that facets relate to a diamond, every facet shows you the glory of the whole, but the whole will always be more than any one, or collection of some facets. Yet we are willing to judge, condemn and kill in the name of our particular facet.

Underneath these schools of thought is a general idea of interconnectedness of all of us to each other, to all life on this planet, the cosmos and eventually to Source, Deity or God. This is where our self-imposed separation has begun to manifest our destruction.

Collins celebrated while Tebow ignored

I saw the following picture on the Facebook page for the church I grew up in.

Below is what started as a response to the page...

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You know, I've been thinking about this cartoon all day long and I know my parents are not going to appreciate this, but I just cannot sit back and say nothing.

If this were 300AD, then there would be something other than just a whiny claim of victim-hood here, but the truth is that this is nothing more than a attempt at claiming an inadequacy where none exists.

In 300AD, acknowledging that you were a Christian would have been dangerous to your future, even the Apostle Paul wrote about "soft", the real meaning of the word μαλακός (Strong's G3120), Christians, later we came to associate it with effeminacy.  Affirming your Christianity could have meant your imprisonment, torture and eventual public execution in the games by wild beasts.

In today's world Christianity is not persecuted in the US, oh I know some people thing there is a war on Christmas and this is "a Christian Nation" but this is nothing but a claim of victim-hood and an attempt at creating a Christian Theocracy, neither Jesus or the American Founders would have wanted that.

In today's world, one can still be terminated from their job, thrown out of their home and have a lifetime of loving relationship denied and trashed in the name of the person who said "Love each other as I have loved you." We seem to think that love should be limited to the pairing of 1 chromosome, otherwise that love does not count.

We have lawmakers creating laws that validate the attacks of others in the name of religion and then have the gall to name it for the victim of such a crime (though the first time a Muslim attempts to use it for a perceived offense of his religion, I suspect the tune will change). The saddest part is that we do these things in the name of Jesus when what it really is is nothing but our own fear run amok.

So when you cry crocodile tears that the declaration of a sports hero as a Christian is ignored in a predominantly Christian culture, maybe you should ask yourself why it is perceived as being courageous to stand-up and be counted as one of the victims of that same culture's lack of understanding and in some cases hatred that has left many victims in its wake in the name of God and Jesus.

Ask yourself when the last time that someone was fired from their job for loving Jesus, attacked publicly for holding a Bible, or beaten and left for dead for being a Christian in America? In much of this country and, sadly, in many Christian minds, all of these can, and have, happened in the name of being publicly honest about being gay.

PS
Before you start throwing around the "claimed" anti-gay verses from the Bible, do your homework, don't just bird-talk what someone told you as you will make a fool of yourself.

• The story of Sodom is not about Homosexual rape, it's about the Jewish Hospitality Code
  
  
• Leviticus may or may not be as direct as you think (and to only enforce the parts that don't effect you while invalidating the inconvenient parts does nothing but make you a hypocrite)
  
  
• Paul's list uses one word that more likely refers to those without a backbone, μαλακός (Strong's G3120) and a phrase that is never found anywhere else, ἀρσενοκοίτης (Strong's G733) which is the conjunction of two words, male and couch/bed

You might consider looking at:

• King David's declaration that he loved Jonathan more than he would ever love a woman
  
  
• The culturally unheard of relationship between Ruth and Naomi
  
  
• Jesus' response in Matthew to the Roman who's servant, παῖς (Strong's G3816) which many scholars think would imply a sexual relationship between them, and Luke uses the the term δοῦλος (Strong's G1401) which can also carry a sexual undertone as in a sex-slave.

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I have often thought that if and when humans become the great masters of Love, that then and only then God might give us permission to determine what is acceptable as love. So far we can barely love those who are like us, little less anyone or anything that is different.

I suspect we have a ways to go before that even becomes a possibility.

Meditation: A Historic Cure for the ADD of the Human Mind

I had a chance to make it to Lake Shrine today, for those who live in Los Angeles, it really is a spiritual treat not to be missed.

I was sitting in the chapel meditating when I heard a mother and her kids outside. The young boy was apparently interested in entering the chapel since "it's not labeled private." Mom dissuaded him with the fact that it was a quiet place.

The following scene played itself out in my mind; I'm asked why the chapel is a quiet place and I say, "because we all hear so much all of the time. Listen for a moment to the world around you, the cars on the street, the birds chirping, the water in the lake.

"But that is not all, if you close your eyes and listen, you will hear the constant yattering of your mind with things like, ooh, that's pretty, I don't like broccoli, and Susie tried to kiss me, ick, girl cooties!

"We go into the chapel to help us quiet all the noise in our lives so that we can finally hear the most important voices, those of our Spirit and our big brother, God. Quiet places like the chapel help to make it easier to find that space."

So I guess we all suffer from a touch of ADD in our lives, it is just part of the human condition. Meditation; a cure for "One sheep, two sheep, cow, goat, Old MacDonald had a farm, Heyyyyy Macarena!"