The Covert Kingdom: Thy Will be done, on earth as it is in Texas

mzmolly

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Sat Jun-12-04 08:38 PM
Original message

The Covert Kingdom: Thy Will be done, on earth as it is in Texas

Edited on Sat Jun-12-04 08:42 PM by mzmolly

by Joe Bageant
www.dissidentvoice.org
May 18, 2004

snip

I'll Fly Away, Oh Lordy (But you won't)

Yes, when The Rapture comes Christians with the right credentials will fly away. But you and I, dear reader, will probably be among those who suffer a thousand-year plague of boils. So stock up on antibiotics, because according to the "Rapture Index" it is damned near here. See for yourself at http://www.raptureready.com. Part gimmick, part fanatical obsession, the index is a compilation of such things as floods, interest rates, oil prices, global turmoil... As I write this the index stands at 144, just one point below critical mass, when people like us will be smitten under a sky filled with deliriously happy naked flying Christians.

But to blow The Rapture off as amusing-if-scary fantasy is not being honest on my part. Cheap glibness has always been my vice, so I must say this: Personally, I've lived with The Rapture as the psychologically imprinted backdrop of my entire life. In fact, my own father believed in it until the day he died, and the last time I saw him alive we talked about The Rapture. And when he asked me, "Will you be saved?" Will you be there with me on Canaan's shore after The Rapture?" I was forced to feign belief in it to give a dying man inner solace. But that was the spiritual stuff of families, and living and dying, religion in its rightful place, the way it is supposed to be, personal and intimate -- not political. Thus, until the advent of the Reconstructionist Christian influence, I'd certainly never heard The Rapture spoken about in the context of a Texan being selected by God to prepare its way.

Now however, this apocalyptic belief, yearning really, drives an American Christian polity in the service of a grave and unnerving agenda. The pseudo-scriptural has become an apocalyptic game plan for earthly political action: To wit, the messiah can only return to earth after an apocalypse in Israel called Armageddon, which the fundamentalists are promoting with all their power so that The Rapture can take place. The first requirement was establishment of the state of Israel. Done. The next is Israel's occupation of the Middle East as a return of its "Biblical lands," which in the Reconstructionist scheme of things, means more wars. These Christian conservatives believe peace cannot ever lead to The Rapture, and indeed impedes the 1,000 year Reign of Christ. So anyone promoting peace is an enemy, a tool of Satan, hence the fundamentalist support for any and all wars Middle Eastern, in which their own kids die a death often viewed by Christian parents as a holy martyrdom of its own kind. "He (or she) died protecting this country's Christian values." One hears it over and over from parents of those killed.

The final scenario of the Rapture has the "saved" Christians settling onto a cloud after the long float upward, from whence they watch a Rambo Jesus wipe out the remnants of the human race. Then in a mop-up operation by God, the Jews are also annihilated, excepting a few who convert to Christianity. The Messiah returns to earth. End of story. Incidentally, the Muslim version, I was surprised to learn recently, is almost exactly the same, but with Muslims doing the cloud-sitting."

end snip

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/May2004/Bageant0518.htm

Good read here.

The article ends:

Pardon me, but religious tolerance be damned. Somebody had to say it.

This article is not a slam on christianity, it's an examination of the Christian Reconstructionist thought process, or uhm lack their of. ;)

It's frightening to think that our President subscribes to this train of thought. EEK! :scared: