Skip to main content

#RaptureAnxiety: Evangelical Torture of the Mind

For adults, belief in the return of a Messiah and imminent end of the world is crazy.  It leads to perpetual fretting and worrying, to wasting time obsessing over the future and forgetting to enjoy life in the present. At times it can descend into full-blown paranoia, seeing Armageddon around every corner and the Mark of the Beast in Bitcoin and every new technology.
For children, the fear can be paralyzing. Children report believing that they "missed the rapture" when a parent came home late.  "Oh, no! Mommy told me about the rapture, and she still is not home!  She must have been swallowed by the rapture. Now I am going to have to worship the 666 Beast!"



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Post

religious prejudice and superstition

"There is hardly any other sphere in which prejudice and superstition of the most horrific kind have been retained so long as in that of women, and just as it must have been an inexpressible relief for humanity when it shook off the burden of religious prejudice and superstition, I think it will be truly glorious when women become real people and have the whole world open before them." Isak Dinesen letter in 1923 to her sister Elle, "Letters From Africa: 1914-1931," ed. Frans Lasson (1981) Promoting Understanding of Religious Suffering
Post a Comment
Read more

complete absence of any supporting data whatsoever

"I've sworn off agnosticism, which I now call cowardly atheism. I've come to the position that in the complete absence of any supporting data whatsoever for the persistence of the individual in some spiritual form, it is necessary to operate under the provisional conclusion that there is no afterlife and then be ready to amend that if I find out otherwise." James Francis Cameron , interview with the Hollywood Reporter (March 23, 2010) Cameron directed two of the highest grossing films of all time: "Titanic" (1997) and "Avatar" (2009). Cameron has also written and directed several other blockbuster movies, including "The Terminator" (1984), "Aliens" (1986), "The Abyss"(1989), "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" (1991) and "True Lies" (1994). Promoting Understanding of Religious Suffering
Post a Comment
Read more

impulse toward revolt

“Man enjoys the great advantage of having a God endorse the codes he writes; and since man exercises a sovereign authority over woman, it is especially fortunate that this authority has been vested in him by the Supreme Being. For the Jews, Mohammedans, and the Christians, among others, man is master by divine right; the fear of God, therefore, will repress any impulse toward revolt in the downtrodden female.” Simone de Beauvoir, "Situation and Character," "The Second Sex" (1949, translated and edited by H.M. Parshley, 1953) Promoting Understanding of Religious Suffering
1 comment
Read more