Rapture

While reading The Folly of God by John Caputo, he mentions early on the rapture and how if it were true he would be quite content to see the “right wing” leave earth as long as he were left behind. It made me chuckle, and reminded me of a sermon by Bill Leonard where he said something very similar. Basically, he said that if the rapture were to take place, he would want to be left behind because he was certain that’s where Jesus would be found, among the hurting and forgotten.

While I chuckle at the quote from Caputo and nod in agreement with Leonard now, I also weep from my experience, and the experience of so many others, for whom the false doctrine of the “rapture” has caused so much religious trauma.

I can’t remember how old I was when our pastor decided to do a sermon series on Revelation, but that series, which was heavily influenced by the crap theologies of dispensationalism, tribulationism, millenarianism, and junk pop Christian hits like Left Behind, deeply traumatized my developing brain.

The God proclaimed from the pulpit was one of hate and rage, callously subjecting millions of people to torture and pain, and then throwing them into eternal fire. And because of an extreme emphasis on such concepts as the “unpardonable sin,” and those who think they’re Christian but really aren’t, people for whom their conversion wasn’t true or deep enough, coupled with an active suppression and repression of any doubt or questions, I was led to deeply troubling questions.

How can I be sure I won’t be left behind?

How can I be sure that God loves me?

How can I be sure I was one of the elect?

So I lived in torment and trauma. Will the earth open up and swallow me into hell? Will I be left behind because of my doubts (cause clearly they prove I’m not Christian)? Will God torment me for all of eternity?

I recall what felt like an almost nightly routine of waking in the middle of the night and being frightened by the silence in the house. I would then wander down the hall to check in my parents’ room to make sure that they were still there; that the rapture hadn’t happened and that I had been left behind.

My God, what trauma!

I swear that not one theology has done more harm to Christians and to the perception of religion as a whole than this unorthodox, unbiblical belief.

It casts God as a capricious, vengeful being that joys in the torment of his (intentional gendered language here) creation. Whereas the Bible, and mystical religion in general, pictures the Divine as a lover, or as a mother caring for her children at her bosom.

I have to admit I’m still bitter about the prevalence of these kinds of horrible theology in my upbringing, and the harm, deep trauma, they caused in my life and the lives of so many. I just hope we can learn to do better, and that eventually those who ascribe to such “theologies” will eventually see them for what they are, abusive tools of control and not creations of love.