Not On My Ride

[Laxman]

I was enjoying my ride home from work tonight. Eighty-five degrees. All the windows down. Probably the last warm evening here in the northeast until, I don't know, next May. I had on Fresh Air with Terry Gross. Tonight's subject, Christian Zionism. Terry spent the first half-hour with Pastor John Hagee. You can check out his web site at www.jhm.org. For those not familiar with Pastor Hagee, he's an "End of Days" guy. You know, when everything lines up just right all the believers are going to get themselves raptured, Second Coming, Armageddon, yadda, yadda, yadda. So convinced that that confluence of circumstance is happening right now, Pastor Hagee preaches to his congregation that right now we ARE (not may) be in the "final seconds" before the End of Days. In fact, its quite possible that they could all get raptured right there from the church. I guess tonight might have been the last nice night, period!

Now I am about as tolerant as a person can be. You can believe anything you want. If you want to believe that Jesus is coming next Tuesday flying the Hindenburg to pick up the chosen few and sail them on off to Heaven leaving the rest of us suckers behind, more power to you. I'm betting that I'll be seeing you next Wednesday. However, I have got to draw the line when you start trying to affirmatively bring about the Second Coming.

Believing is one thing. Taking steps to actually bring about the conditions necessary to cause the End of Days is quite another. The world that the rest of us live in is not some kind of mad religious-science experiment to see if these guys are right. This is especially true when the conditions that Pastor Hagee and his followers are looking for involve civil unrest, war, death, pestilence and other undesirable consequences. "You know, if we can really get them all blowin' stuff up over in the Middle East, it just might work and if it doesn't, well the donations will just keep rollin in!"

If he were just some fringe nut it wouldn't be so worrisome. However, this guy and his followers apparently have some juice with people who can actually make some of this stuff happen. His annual conference featured appearances from Ken Mehlman and Senator Rick Santorum and special greetings from the White House. All of which leads to the question of just how much our national foreign policy is influenced by guys who don't think that long-term planning for our earthly world is really a priority since we probably won't be using it all that much longer.

One of the conditions that Pastor Hagee cites as letting us know that the End of Days is neigh is that the United States will be so weak that we won't be able to help save Israel when Russia and the Arabs gang up on them. As a result, God will have to step in just like when Charlton Heston parts the Red Sea in the movie the Ten Commandments. That answers some questions about just why Bush seems to be deliberately screwing up the country. Thanks George, that's one step closer to our one-way ticket to the blissful afterlife. Hey, anything for a couple of votes.

Now maybe we can get some insight into how supposedly religious people support an administration that doesn't have a problem torturing their fellow human beings. Maybe we can figure out how these "Christians" can support people who knowingly lied their way into a war that has caused tens of thousands of deaths, even if that war brings us nearer to the Rapture. Now I may be cynical, but I'm thinking hypocrisy. Maybe I'm a bit harsh but check out Pastor Hagee's web site. They guy who is preaching that the end of the world is just around the corner is already planning his 2008 trip to the Holy Land.

Now if you want to believe that if the world gets screwed-up enough, Jesus will come back, that's just fine. If you want to start purposely screwing it up to see if you're right, that's the end of the line. You want to start messing with the rest of the world? Not on my ride.