Fine Careless Rapture
Tribulation. Got that? Think about it.
Yeah. That’s what I thought.
Don’t mind me, it’s just this rapture site I’ve been looking at. It’s inspiring – is that the word I mean? No, not quite. It’s – baffling? No, that’s not it. Hilarious? Pathetic? Oh, it’ll come to me.
Okay so down to business. What, you’ve been wondering, is wrong with homosexuality? The FAQ section has a whole page all on its own to answer that important question, so I hustled right along to it, excited and hopeful that I would finally learn just exactly what it is that gets Christians (and other religious zealots too) so frantic with rage about homosekshality while other, one would think more pressing and significant, human wrongdoing is neglected. What, oh what is it, I muttered to myself as I clicked.
A whole lot of things, but mostly this: It’s an abomination to God.
Oh. That’s it. Period. Flatline. Dead end. That’s all there is. No, no, don’t get all excited – he doesn’t say what ‘a whole lot of things’ refers to – he doesn’t say what those things are. Nope. Not so much as a hint, not even about one of the things – just one measly little thing, wouldn’t you think he could –
I’m sorry. But anyway, he doesn’t. No, it’s just that it’s an abomination to God.
Poor God. So that’s what he’s up to up there? Sitting around chewing his fingernails and fretting and making his stomach hurt because of all these rampant prancing queers? So why’s it such an abomination? Why does it bother him so much? Why isn’t he more worried about stuff like torturing children in the belief that they are witches or possessed by demons? Or marrying off little girls to strangers as punishment for something their fathers or uncles or younger brothers did, or as it sometimes turns out didn’t do after all? Or blowing people up to make a point, or ruining the lives of everyone in entire countries out of religious zeal or eagerness to fill one’s pockets with money? Why does he have such odd priorities?
Do you suppose it could be the guy who runs this rapture site who thinks homosexuality is an abomination, and that he’s just saying it’s God who does? That’s a very suspicious thing to think, isn’t it. Or maybe it’s somebody he knew when he was a little boy, and he somehow got that person mixed up with ‘God.’ Maybe that’s it.
Anyway – the great ‘why’ remains unanswered. He has a whole page to do it in, but he never gets there. He has some words on the page, but they don’t say anything except it’s an abomination. Abomination, Bible quotations, Sodom, abomination, Bible quotations. That’s it. So the great mystery – what? what? what is it? what is the problem? why is it such a big deal? why does it worry you so much? why is it worse than murder, torture, cruelty, exploitation? what is wrong with you? – remains a mystery.
However the guy does have a practical side – he does think ahead. (Whew!) He has an answer for the question ‘How do you plan to maintain this site after the rapture?’
I have no master plan for maintaining Rapture Ready all the way through the seven-year tribulation. After the big event takes place, I expect RR to last several months. After all, the internet was designed to survive a nuclear war. It should be able to survive the great catching up of all believers. It is unlikely any one domain will be able to service the massive traffic surge that will be directed at all prophecy sites. The best hope for achieving enough bandwidth to allow for millions of people to view Rapture Ready’s content is for tribulation saints to mirror the site dozens of times.
So he’s quite sensible after all! Except for maybe just this one thing about being so obsessed with homosekshuality. Other than that he’s got his Arkansas (yes) feet on the ground.
Dang, I’m glad he’s in Arkansas. That’s a good two thousand miles from here, I think – maybe more. That’s very good. He probably won’t be knocking on my door or throwing stones at my window any time soon. I’m really pleased – well, relieved – about that.
Ophelia, you are selling this site short. There is all sorts of useful information there – about whether Adam and Eve had navals and when daylight saving starts.
And now we know that masturbation is OK so long as you are not lusing aftyer someone else’s spouse while you are doing it. I think that is a very liberal view compared to what my sunday school teacher tried to teach me.
Probably says something about the site owners preferences for sexual relief, too.
Another one somewhere between the dangerous and the just dopey categories, I think.
I suppose it is just yet more evidence that this god bloke can’t be the intelligent designer they keep talking about, otherwise he would have – presumably – designed things like homosexuality out at the prototype stage if it bothered him THAT much.
No, no, no, David Hadley – you’ve got it all wrong. You see, the world was designed as a dark and evil place after a certain incident involving a woman and a talking snake. Which is why we have queers prancing about and lusty neighbour’s wives and an endless variety of ways to fit objects in body orifices in ways that arouse the Lord’s wrath and vengeance. And it’s a good thing really. There’s no fun in awaiting to be lifted up during the Rapture and enjoying the view of the agonizing, torturous demise of the rest of the world’s population, if _every_ yokel gets lifted up, is it?
Exceuse me for lowering the tone, but, see, my problem is I can never get round to researching whether the Bible (1 or 2 test.) actually says these things explicitly, or whether this is all malign misinterpretation by no-good miscreant, frock-wearing bastards. (Same goes for the Koran. )
I hear both arguments frequently. Evangelists on the one hand, ‘liberals’ on the other; neither too convincing it has to be said. Either way, and more to the point perhaps, what I can’t understand is why sexual orientation and religion are both so overwhelmingly important to some people as to make them want to be stomped on… if I had been born gay, but indoctrinated ‘Muslem’ or ‘Catholic’ at childhood, I would leave the area of subrdinate, bigotted worshipfullness to all the other creeps at around adolescence, rather than show up at a predetermined pointy building each weekend to have my balls kicked in.
(It really is another argument in the direction of the faith gene… unless all homosexual believers are masochists, which is of course, another way to go…
I expect that once you understand why serving young goat cooked in the milk of its mother is forbidden that everything else will make perfect sense.
Selling the site short, Ken?! Did I not say it is inspiring? (Well, no, I didn’t, exactly, but I used the word, anyway.) Of course that one page was only that one page; there are, as you point out, many others. Hours and hours of fun.
“why serving young goat cooked in the milk of its mother is forbidden”
Family values, obviously.
No, Ophelia, I can’t agre that it is inspiring.
Just informative in so many ways.
Including some that the site owner probably did not intend to be so informative about.
And it added to my (not very long, really) list of people I don’t want to meet.
I know, I know. On the one hand they’re funny – but in reality it scares the hell out of me that these people think what they do and are out there in the real world. So I go in for denial a lot.
They don’t think. To some degree when your religiously programmed you are in a sense an automaton. Using a portion of the brain that puts one on automatic pilot.
Otherwise it’s hard to explain away.
B&W is never a good place for a polemic, because OB is guaranteed to point to some prior post where all has been revealed, but the point about faith being the antithesis of enquiry, or scepticism, is well made. Religion, ideology, conviction, communalism, all these are lazy excuses for what is surely the essence of humanity – the spirit of free enquiry and objective appraisal.
Oh dear – the only reason I do that predictable pointing to previous posts thing is to say that I realize I’m repeating myself. I wouldn’t want people to think it was unconscious unconscious, in case they thought I was losing my marbles marbles.
Slogan I wish I’d put on a t-shirt before someone else did: “In case of Rapture, I get your car.”
[Young-goat meat in cream sauce based on goat’s milk, alfredo maybe…wait a minute, I don’t like goat’s milk or derivatives thereof…]
And this guy’s opinions are so critical because…
The whole rapture thing is a kind of rescue fantasy; but who needs to participate in the apocalyptic fantasies of rapturists, green extremists, survivalists or whatever?
Despite your getting this from a fruitloop site, your one-sentence summary DOES seem to capture the nuances of the Christian position against homosexuality.
Remember, Christians assume that God exists; and that the Bible reflects in detail his views. Where are you going to go from there?
Seems to me that the tension between changing social standards and unchanging biblical ones is working out to the favour of the social ones. Just accept gay people as they get along, enforce and/or adjust the law and get with living. The extreme positions will either fade out of sight – or be vindicated.
As for the kid seethed in its mother’s milk, if you had lived with and by your herds you would understand that people cannot help applying some of the moral positions that rule people, to their behaviour toward animals.
Goats, especially kids have big and pleading eyes. It is affecting to slaughter a creature you have protective emotions toward.
No surprise if a rule based in this emotion came out a bit odd.
What is really interesting about that site is the “interesting email” section, where moderately cogent critiques of the author’s position [why did they bother?] are up there with the most inane supportive drivel, all just arranged without commentary. Clearly the guy has both a blinkered viewpoint and a mind so “open” you can hear the wind blowing through…
“And this guy’s opinions are so critical because…”
Because they’re extremely popular? Because fundamentalism is growing, not shrinking? Because the single most powerful human on the planet is a fundamentalist (and unreflective with it)? Because it’s not safe to just assume that this kind of thing is harmless?
“Seems to me that the tension between changing social standards and unchanging biblical ones is working out to the favour of the social ones.”
Well that depends on where you are. Not in Nigeria it isn’t, not in any number of other places subject to religious domination, and not even in many large swathes of the US.
All true, OB. I particularly like ‘it’s not safe to assume that this kind of thing is harmless’.
But there is a difference between us agreeing the ideas are irrational ones perpetuated by idiots and making a case supported by reasons to, you know, show us the likely harm.
Reminds me rather of the anti-GM ‘Precautionary Principle’, which coinage offers far worse harm to thinking and intellectual advance than ‘intelligent design’. We can’t assume fantasist beliefs are harmless? I am old enough to have seen a few fall by the wayside without harm.