Babble and Meddle

It should be ironically hilarious that there was no end of the world and no rapture. 

It should be, but it isn’t.  Really this pathetic desperation of some to avoid dying, at all costs, looks like a scene from the transporter room aboard the Starship Enterprise.  Essentially, that’s what it was, a human imposed contract with God to get out of a tough act easily.  Apparently, no one thought to ask God if It agreed.  Apparently It didn’t.  One can only assume the 89 year old self appointed VOG (voice of God) on the subject was left hugely embarrassed by God’s lack of participation.  Maybe not, but since his big meeting with the great, universal CEO must be fairly near, that particular arrogance may require some quick step explaining soon.

God condemned Adam, and Eve, to live, suffer, toil, and die.  Through “original sin”, we were all damned to die after them, forever.  God said; for dust thou art and to dust shalt thou return, Genesis 3:19.  It is probably one of the clearest statements in a book that’s often obscure, filled with man-made babble and meddle, and open for whatever interpretation from whoever feels moved by it, for good or ill. God didn’t moderate his condemnation by saying, except in the case of a rapture, which I’m still thinking about. 

The Bible is the perfect manipulative document. The concept of the rapture is an equally perfect example of people narcissistically attempting to go round the rule of death.  I knew a guy like that once.  He never met a rule he didn’t believe could be bent some which way to his personal advantage.  He simply didn’t get the integrity of following the rules that must be followed. He’s been dead a long time.  I struggle over what to have for lunch.  Old Mr. Camping, however, found it easy to announce the end of the world, presumably over lunch. Did he speak from secret knowledge or secret desire?  Perhaps it was fear, or greed. 

I’m not going into what death truly means because I don’t know.  I haven’t been there and therefore have no basis upon which to argue.  That doesn’t bother me, because you don’t, either, unless you’re already dead, which I very much doubt.  I can talk about its impact on living. Rapturists and other death escapists are like the saying, when an irresistible force meets an immovable object.  Apply all amount of pressure you want on God and bend every rule you can conceive of, but death will not be moved.  It is there, as firmly set as birth and taxes.  We all must one day accept its embrace. 

Certainly death isn’t that bad.  After all, everyone who was ever born, except those of us alive today, has died.  Every one living now, or will live, will do it, too, so it seems like a pretty popular gig at a 100% rate of participation.  I suspect that where we go after death is very probably the same place we came out of when we were born (go ahead imagine a dirty metaphor. I don’t mind).  Now, for the sake of fairness, and bowing to the infestation-like populating we do, maybe the newborns couldn’t wait to get out of there.  Maybe it ain’t such a swell place at all.  But maybe it’s something we are unable to grasp.  Something completely terrific. 

Most likely, I think, it’s that we are only visitors here from a wonderful, unknowable other place or dimension.  We come with no baggage, we leave with no baggage, but the imprint we make is indelible.  I believe that each of us was sent here to experience, take that back with us, and relay to the Great Mind what we’ve seen and who we’ve been.  Looking on it that way, I see that living is one great, hopefully long drawn out, rapture.  Those among us who would write it in shorthand, which risks befouling the legacy of Christ, only end up shorting themselves.  In the presence of the constant fear of death, one can’t live.  The fear of death, then, is really a fear of living.  No rapture could be as sweet as not fearing to live.

Beam me up, Scotty.

Kirk out.