Well, Harold Camping was wrong. Come to find out the world did not end last night at 6:00 pm. I suppose this means the estimated 200 million people (about 3% of the world's population) that his followers claimed would be raptured to heaven yesterday are probably waking up a bit disappointed this morning. To think this very moment they could have been traipsing along cloud tops with their great-great grandparents but are left, instead, to mow the lawn.
I joke but some people took this whole business very seriously. Faced with the awful task of a long distant move, some believers lightened their load by selling all their worldly possessions. Others, not wishing to get screwed by heaven's unfavorable currency exchange, decided instead to drain their savings accounts.
I prepared by not preparing. This was all a build-up to a party I knew I wasn't invited to anyway. Like the other 97% of the world's population I was just waiting for the righteous to leave so I could take to the streets afterward and raise a little hell. Literally.
But, alas, Harold Camping was wrong and now he is nowhere to be found. I can't wait to hear his excuse. Even more, I can't wait to hear the follow-up stories on those fools who sold their houses, left their families, or made pilgrimages to California to be near the wise soul who owns the multi-million-dollar Christian media empire.That empire, by the way, is sandwiched between an auto shop and a palm reader's store front.
I act as though I believe there will be some amount of vindication to be found in hearing their reactions. But of course there won't. Too many of them are blind followers who will be quick to rationalize this all as a test of their faith. I don't fault them their faith in a greater being. I do, however, fault them in allowing this greater being to be Harold Camping.
First, this whole ordeal made me wonder a lot more about spontaneous combustion. For instance, how and why does it happen? Is there a relationship between spontaneous combustion and rapture? I haven't read the book of Revelation. It freaked me out. So, I am not sure. I would think that fire would be involved somehow though. Any thoughts?
ReplyDeleteAlso, I agree with the last paragraph. There will be no vindication. When I was really involved in church, a big part of the faith thing was to see how many ways and how quickly you could justify and rationalize things that didn't fit into your world view. It made for a lot of theorizing off of someone else's theories that were developed to explain something away that they didn't like.