Post Non-Apocalypse: We're Still Here? What do I do with all These 55 Gal. Drums?

Personally, the only thing I'm stocking up on is SPF-100.  

A collective groan was heard from depressive sorts everywhere.  Another failed apocalypse left Earth haters kicking rocks.  "Now we have to find some new false promises of destruction to cling to!"  they were heard saying as they unloaded their shotguns. Already, crack-pot archeologists, failed ministers, and a few guys who spent two weeks in Israel are digging up evidence that doesn't align with anything that rational people believe, in an effort to be the next big end-times prophet.  And somehow, they will get people to believe it.

I've never understood the fascination about end times.  Personally, I do believe that the world will end before our own Sun's expansion gobbles it up in some billion years, but as to the when, or how, I have no idea, and I don't care.  I have too much living to do to worry about the random ways I can die.  And if some major event happens, and the world ends, I'm fairly certain I know where I'm going when I die.  If I'm wrong about that, well, who cares, I'm dead, and so are you probably.  So nobody can dance on my grave and say, "What a moron...he chose the wrong faith!"

Michelangelo's Last Judgement (Sistine Chapel). 

Many of my faith, spend hours analyzing things like the book of Revelations, trying to piece together when it will all go down.  As an English teacher, and somebody who loves to investigate complex literature, I have to say that Revelations is a lot like James Joyce's Ulysses.  A hundred people can read it, and come to different conclusions as to what it really means.  Personally, I don't find a lot of joy in that, unless the writing is phenomenal.  And whatever John wrote Revelations, he certainly was no Joyce.

I know some really intelligent, neat people who love End Times theology, and this blog will probably annoy them.  I'm sorry.  But this has to end.  Not the world...but these silly predictions.  It's making us all look like quacks.

I realize that this latest one wasn't a Christian theology.  The Mayans, a people so amazing, that they simply walked away from their civilization and disappeared, predicted this 2012 thing, and many took it hook, line and sinker.  Tons of businesses made a heyday selling them powdered food products that will last years.  Others built fortifications and arsenals stronger than Greenland's military. Billions of dollars went into survivalist goods and services, for a survival that doesn't exist yet (or maybe ever).

Survivalism looked so cool because of movies like Tremors, where
Reba McEntire's character had an arsenal of Elephant guns in her basement

And I'm not going to call those people crazy.  Because I don't think they are.  Just misguided.

You see, I'm a moralist and a Christian.  Even if I didn't have a spiritual connection with my Savior, I still think I would believe in being a good person.  I think most people want to be good people.  We all just have different ideas as to what constitutes a good person.  I do get sad when people around me make bad decisions.  Sometimes I want to shake them, or yell some common sense that their parents didn't, and rarely (sadly), hug them and tell them it will be okay, eventually.

But some moralists and/or Christians are so convinced their morality is the right morality for everyone, they get depressed when the world doesn't look the way their ideals look.  When sin is everywhere, they start getting the urge to build an Ark.  Convinced that God above will look down and say, "Vince, you're the one.  Like Noah, I like your style, and I'm choosing you to be my survivor to re-impregnate the few ladies I found worthy to escape my carnage."  I think there is some innate Vince in all of us.  We all want to be the one with the perfect world-view.  Or we would like to be the only option for the ladies around us.

I always thought I was like the mouse
in this story.  The moral influence of
great men like Ben Franklin.  

Back in my younger days, I thought I could possibly be that type person.  But being older, I realize I would suck at being the genetic material for the rest of humanity.  I don't even want to go caroling with my family this Christmas.  How could I possibly be joyous enough to be God's chosen one.  That's just one of millions of flaws I have.  I think if other moralists/Christians looked truthfully at their own lives, they would find enough faults to re-evalutate their judgment of other's follies.

The good news is that many of us Christians will have ample planks around to build an Ark.  We simply have to pull them from our eyes, for determining that Judgment has to come on this Earth; "I mean, look at all those sinful "specks" in other's eyes, surely God has to smite them for that!"  (with liberties to Matt. 7:5).

Again, I'm no expert about end times.  I've merely "survived" the last four or five major Armageddon dates that have come across the Evangelical circles.  Each time, there appeared to be "evidence" despite the fact that Jesus said in Matt. 24:36, that no man, angel, or even He himself knew the "DAY OR HOUR" when the end will actually come. But, hey, if you think you are higher on the spiritual ladder than angels and Jesus, predict away...someone will misguidedly believe you.

Jesus does say, though, that in the end times, that "because lawlessness is increased, most people's love will grow cold.  But the one who endures to the end, he will be saved."  I don't know if there's enough evidence to say that lawlessness is any worse now across the world than it ever has been, but it does appear that love has grown more cold.  So go ahead and buy your guns (like David Koresh), and stock your shelves full of dehydrated carbohydrates and build yourself fortifications to keep out the zombies or Chinese or whatever it is that survives the tribulations.  As for me, I'm going to try and follow Jesus's advice, and let love endure, despite the atrocities around me.

Cats.  Why'd it have to be cats.  

Of course I believe in my Faith.  But there's also a chance I'm wrong.  So if the end doesn't come via anything Biblical, and it turns out that some newly discovered Egyptian hieroglyph correctly predicts man's downfall, well so be it.  The Egyptians worshiped cats, and cats, thanks to our pop culture, are enjoying a great moment in the Sun (another Egyptian god). If the end comes, and feral cats roam the world attacking wayfaring human survivors... you know what...I'm not finishing that thought.  That's my next book Cat Scratch Fever Fiends.