Cheat Codes and The Rapture

I will admit that I was one of the folk that made several jokes about the supposed Rapture that was predicted to happen this past weekend. I don't want to dwell on the ridiculousness of trying to predict such an event if you are using the Christian scriptures as your basis because they (as many, many people have pointed out) even state that Jesus does not even know when it will happen. I don't want to dwell on the how dangerous and foolish it is to promote such a prediction that lead others to sell everything and potentially ruining their own livelihoods. I don't want to dwell on how stupid these predictions make Christians look especially when they always are wrong.

I don't want to dwell on these things, because I think the bulk of Christians have already talked about all of the above things and moved on.

I want to talk about my own personal reservations about the Rapture and ultimately the afterlife. One of the reactions I saw a few times over the course of the weekend was one of a certain wish for the Rapture to come. Even fellow Christian skeptics of the predictions gave a sense of mourning that they weren't wrong. They wished that the Rapture had come despite them knowing it would not happen.

I get why people would want to be taken straight up to heaven without ever dying. You get to circumvent one of the scariest moments in everyone's life. You go from living in a broken world and go straight to Jesus! For some (probably most), the best part about being a Christian is heaven. Not me.

One reason I don't want to experience the Rapture is that I would feel like I am cheating. You know when you play video games and you're trying your best to play through an impossible game. You sometimes wish that you could just get to the end and so you find cheat codes to allow you to jump to the last level or give you infinite lives or all the weapons upgrades and then you breeze through the game. The thing is, at the end of it you are left with no sense of accomplishment. You didn't really beat the game. You got to see the ending. That's all. What makes beating a game an accomplishment is struggling through it and ultimately triumphing over it. I feel like the Rapture would be cheating in certain regard. I leave all the rest of the world to burn behind me and I get to go to heaven? That feels cheap, doesn't it?

It seems strange to me that billions of people have lived and died and then I would amongst the few that skipped the last part. I don't know if you can truly appreciate a life in heaven if you have not experienced death. Death is not to be feared, but known and overcome.

The other thing that makes me not want to be "raptured" is that I believe I would have this sense of "we need to go back". Like I would be trying to convince God to send me back and get more people. I think it would be like Abraham pleading with God to not destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.

Why? I do not really deserve heaven and I know it. Not just because it's taught like that, but because I feel like it's my duty to continue to be a part of a rescue effort until I am not longer able to help. I have been taught that the grace of God will deliver me, but I don't want to rest on that. It gives me this sense that I want to bring the good news to those still in chains, whatever that may look like. And if I know that I just left the world and I still have breath in my lungs, then I don't feel like I should be leaving. I want to be like those people who have been given much and would do anything to pay it back as feeble as it may be to do so.

Another main reason that this whole afterlife business bothers me is that it seems to be such a distracting force in our lives here. We have this mindset that "Well, this is all screwed up and I am a messed up person and everything will be just better once I...". It's the exact same thing I hear with people now who have broken relationships and addictions and they figure once they move to another town that they can start over and everything will be fixed as opposed to starting the process of changing themselves now. They continue to wallow in their addictions or continue to bend to the will of those who don't have their best interests at heart because they don't want to alienate their friends despite the reason that they want to leave is because of the same people. I see it with the wishing for Heaven. "Once I get to Heaven, everything will be put right" and then we stay put.

Probably the people best equipped to adjust to Heaven are those who are working to bring Heaven about here.

To be honest, I am not sold on Heaven. In terms of how great it will be. In my human mind, I can not conceive of a way of living forever would be awesome. I do believe that the afterlife will be as it should be. That God has it handled. Maybe He has something up His sleeve that will blow my mind. That'd be great. I will happily eat the words I just wrote because I also know that it is unknowable.

I would rather live as though I don't care about the reward. I would rather live as though I am living this one life. I would rather spend my life helping people out of the hell on earth that they experience. I would rather not wait for me to go to Heaven, but rather be apart of the work to bring Heaven to earth. That way, when I stand before God I have offered my best case before Him. Sure, I have screwed up and I don't measure up and Jesus will have to vouch for me, but hopefully I haven't just wasted the gifts given me.

And if it turns out that when I die, that is all and my soul disappears into the ether, at the least I will have already experienced Heaven and know that Heaven is real and have given people the same before I went.

"And it feels now
Just like heaven's coming down
Your soul shakes free
As its conscience hits the ground
These signs, this fate
Takes a path you didn't choose
Stay strong, keep faith
There's a change that's coming through
Hold on my love, hold on..."
- "Heaven Coming Down" from the Tea Party album "TRIPtych"