11/19/23. SUNDAY SERMON

This is the email response I sent to an online preacher who rambled on at great length about his belief in a “Rapture”, which is supposed to happen during “Armageddon”, when all the Christians, living and dead in the ground, will float up into the sky to be with Jesus.

Skimmed your rapture article. Have you ever asked yourself why you wholeheartedly believe the impossible is true fact and simultaneously doubt the proven, likely and probable? Did it ever occur to you that accepting supernatural tales as fact is not sane? We put people into mental institutions and treat them for delusions if they say they see and hear things that aren’t there, but not of those things are religious. People who see visions of Mary are OKAY, no problem there. Men who run around the streets carrying crosses and loudly proclaiming that Jesus is their lord, Jesus is king, they’re OKAY, nothing wrong with them.
The same is true with people who swear that if you merely believe Christian dogma, that is all you need to come back to life after you die, and live forever in a paradise, and be “raptured” up into the sky, just float “up, up and away, like a little toy balloon”, like the song. And this isn’t crazy, this is OKAY, because it’s religion.

I was raised as a Christian and the reason I believed in it was because I was told as a child by those I trusted that I would never die if I accepted all they told me as being the truth. So not wanting to die, that’s what I did. Before that, I was told that Santa Claus was real, and I believed that for awhile until it became obvious that it was a lie. The same happened to my beliefs in Christianity. Childhood gullibility should end for all of us but it doesn’t, we have been convinced through fear and we hold on to the fear with one hand and the promise of Heaven with the other.

For me, the need for Truth has always been greater than any fear and I eventually stopped buying into the dogma. Humans are not gods, we don’t come back to life after we’re brutally killed and we don’t float up into the sky like balloons. You can believe anything you like that makes you happy and less afraid. A lot of people do. I prefer knowing. There’s no fear in knowing, instead there’s certainty and that’s immensely stronger than any faith.