There's Finger Popping, 24-Hour Shopping in Rapture

You guys, the world didn't end! I'll be honest, I didn't post about this last week on the off chance that things went south on Saturday as predicted. I figured that I should just wait and see how things played out, because the line to apologize to Jesus for snarky blog posts about how the apocalypse wasn't going to happen would probably be pretty long.

Man, I'm gonna be here all day, guys!
How about I just send you all to Hell and we call it even? 

Look, religion is a tricky topic. I am not going to pretend that I have any answers, because I don't. Just so you know where my slanted view of all that follows is coming from: I was raised in what I think was a typical Protestant household with church on Sundays, and Bible study on Wednesdays. While one of my parents could easily have been classified as a Bible thumper, the other took a fairly humanist approach to the whole thing. At a bare minimum, I believe in something to the extent that there appears to be a limited order to the chaos of life. And honestly, years of dogmatic teaching by various religious instructors make it really hard for me to outright say that there's no possibility that some stuff in the Bible might be right.

 

Except for that whole leaving out evolution thing. Swing and a miss, Bible.

I also get that there is a long history of trying to impose individual beliefs/religions on the masses. But here's what I don't get: Harold Camping. Camping is not the only guy who has ever predicted the end of the world. Various religions have told the world that the end is coming, and so far no one has quite hit the nail on the head. But I am totally fascinated by this guy. In some ways he is probably just your average bear of a cult leader who uses his position of religious authority to rile people up. My guess is he does it because it makes him feel important, and because there's likely some money in it. But he has also predicted the exact date of the apocalypse TWICE, and has been wrong TWICE.



Although logically, you can probably only be right about the date of the apocalypse once.
It's kind of a one time only production, from what I can tell.



The weird part isn't that other people believed in him. I mean, people love to believe in weird things. (I, for example, totally believe that Richard Gere/gerbil rumor despite all evidence to the contrary). And on top of that, the United States has a very long history of religious outliers finding or making themselves at home on its soil.



Let's just say those Mayflower dudes weren't exactly "mainstream."



But what fascinates me is that even though Camping got it wrong the first time, he had the balls to do it again! It can't be a fun experience to name the exact date the world is ending, and then be wrong. I can't imagine that it feels good, or makes you a lot of friends. But Camping just dusted himself off and said, "Oh, I just forgot to carry the one in my complicated apocalypse equation. We're all good now." And even though he got it wrong again, it seems like he doesn't plan on taking a break from predicting the End Times.



At least take a nap or something, Harry. You are looking grim.



I guess I am mystified because I don’t understand his end game here. Why didn’t he just escape to a private island the last time he got it wrong? Can any one person truly believe in themself, and their abilities that much? If so, is his therapist taking new clients?

If you remember, I could use the help.

As far as the frenzy this created, I expected the religious fanatics to get on board, but what I didn’t expect is that so many people would pay attention to it. Granted most people were making fun of it. But if they were anything like me, it got them thinking about how many extreme natural and cultural events have occurred in the world lately. It seems like most of those events have been really scary.

Although now that Trump isn't running for President, my nightmares have been fewer.

So there is one guy out there who has predicted that the world was going to end incorrectly a couple of times, and that is pretty ridiculous. But religious douchenozzle or not, I think the reason we were paying attention is because of how off kilter everything seems out there right now. It definitely got me thinking about changes I can/should be making in the world.

All this said, I’m glad that the world didn’t end before I got to see Bridesmaids, because I’m seriously excited about that shit.

xoxo
zuzu