Crapture

But of that day and hour knoweth no [man], no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. (Mt 24:36, KJV)

And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power. (Acts 1:7, KJV)

Anyone planning on participating in the Great Rapture Prank tomorrow? It's circulating around Facebook right now. Grab some unwanted clothes and arrange them in outfits, all over town, viz.

It continues to amaze me, years after I shed Christianity, how selectively literal so many of its adherents are. I'm tempted to say that nearly all Christians pick and choose passages from their Bibles to focus on, or ignore, as they see fit. Moreover, many believers seem to pick and choose the exact same passages to fixate on, or ignore.

You ask a Christian to tell you about the creation story in Genesis, and odds are pretty much certain she won't ask you which one you mean. But there are two, and they diverge on a number of key points...including how many Gods there are doing the creating.

(And for God's sake, ha-ha, don't start looking for historical antecedents to either creation account. Else you'll find yourself all of two chapters into the first book of the Received Word of God, wondering if it is in fact a collection of mythmash. (Hint: yup...along with some poetry, some genealogical tables, some absolutely appalling smut--read Song of Songs sometime if your porn collection has you feeling a little jaded--and tales of sadistic and senseless violence.)

So put most of that firmly in the "ignore" category. But zero right in with laserlike precision on Leviticus and its proscription against homosexuality. (Laserlike is right: there are a number of other interesting things Leviticus prohibits, absolutely none of which hold a candle to the EVIL BUTT-SEX.)

(For those of you who choose to cloak your bigotry in the relative purity of the New Testament, I'd ask you to kindly show me anything that Jesus of Nazareth might have said about homosexuality or homosexual acts. You'll keep running up against the apostle Paul--who never met Jesus except by "divine revelation". I think Paul missed the whole "love thy enemies" spiel that pretty much defined Jesus, though. (Remember, Jesus was the dude who supposedly asked God to forgive the people who were torturing and killing him, whereas Paul hated married people, gays, and anything with a vagina.)

In the "ignore" column as well: the two verses (and a host of others like them) at the top of this blog entry. Every few years I hear about the impending Rapture, and I notice that everyone I know, including some people I believe to be paragons of virtue and obvious candidates for Rapture, is still here. Either God is pretty freakin' selective or these predictions are wrong. (The source of the current craze, Harold Camping, previously predicted Rapture Day for September 6, 1994.)

Will YOU be "Left Behind" tomorrow?