My mom was really late coming home from work once, and cellular phones cost around ten thousand dollars adjusted for inflation then so I couldn't call or text her. It was my presumption that she had been Raptured and that I had been found wanting. Like, first thought.
The Bible was the first book I ever read, I learned to read by reading it. This probably comes across even to the casual observer; the baroque turns, the Byzantine obfuscations. I knew very well what it meant to still be here during the events of Revelations, the sores and the blood and the Anti-Christ and the star named Wormwood. My Evangelical Church was there to fill every remaining crevice not with cream, but with horror. Of course in retrospect the signs had been clear. Plus, I was a clearly a super bad person.
The operation of my mind was and is such that if a person professes a belief, they actually possess that belief. I understand that it's stupid, and leaves me wide open to harm, mostly because of the profound harms that have been visited upon me as a result of my stupidity. I grew up religious, very much so, and my substrate was defined under those conditions. Now in some ways I think of myself as a cage without a bird in it. I don't think that everyone can be okay with that. Me, I always like a little mystery. Where does the singing come from?
Until a few days ago I sorta thought I'd heard the end of all the Rapture talk. It was so tarnished as a brand after the eighties that even the most greasy goblin-man desirous of power was loath to take up this crooked rod. Y2K had some Apocalypse vibes; some people were trying to work a Rapture Collab there too. We had a book in our house called 88 Reasons Why The Rapture Will Be In 1988. We also had a book called The Final Shout: Rapture Report 1989. I was surprised to learn earlier today that this dude tried this shit again in 1993 and 1994, and I was like, you motherfucker. Once I read in his Wikipedia entry that he was a former NASA Engineer, I guess I felt like I knew my guy a little better. Edgar just likes numbers. Like, a lot. Too much? Maybe. He thought the Bible was a math problem. What a comfort that must have been. Did he arm psychopaths? Oh, one hundred percent.
I have a "compatibility layer" similar to Proton that allows me to derive utility from religion without subjugating myself to wicked men. The problem is that wicked men are in prodigious supply, clouded around the Light like Moths. They are never satisfied merely reflecting the Light, eventually coming to believe they are the source. Oh! And they want to fuck your wife. It always seems to get there somehow.
(CW)TB out.
