Remember when Rapture was just a Blondie song?

You know something is a big deal when it's satirized on The Simpsons. Anyone catch the one where Homer watches a movie called Left Below? Left Below is a take on the Left Behind book series, where Jesus comes back to Earth and takes all those who have been saved back to Heaven; the rest, are left behind (or below or beneath or under...prepositions are fun in a blog, on a blog, near a blog...). So, on The Simpsons, Homer gets totally sucked into doomsday theology and starts spreading the word that Jesus is a'comin' and you best be saved, lest you burn in Hell on Earth. He calculates the exact minute of the rapture using a complicated theorem and an abacus (we have one in the Planetarium; I'm still looking for a reason to use it) and he gathers everyone in Springfield on top of a mesa (where is Springfield?) to wait...and wait...and wait...but no one ever comes for them.

Eventually, everyone leaves, yadda yadda, Homer ends up by himself when, lo and behold, he is taken to Heaven. He gets to talk to God, and asks him why Jesus never came for him. God says something like, "You know, I sent my son down to Earth awhile back and he really hasn't been the same since..." -- cut to Jesus sadly twirling on a swing, staring at his feet. Poor Jesus.

I don't know why this scene slays me so or how I've been able to remember it so well in the year or two since it first aired. Can I remember how to properly wash a down comforter? No -- I had to call my mom every time I had to wash it in college (perhaps that's why I moved to Florida -- no need for a down comforter here). But two-year-old tv shows --man, I hang on to that junk.

It's definitely a sign, though, that something has made the mainstream when it's on The Simpsons. Does it terrify anyone that this 'something' is the Rapture? The idea that the end is nigh, that Jesus is watching and judging us, that He's coming to take the saved into the Kingdom of Heaven, leaving the rest of us to be crushed like the proverbial grapes of wrath is a little alarming to me. Perhaps that's why Evangelicals are so popular with the Bush administration: both keep their followers by instilling fear in them. What a great way to live.

I've been thinking about this rapturist theology, often, ever since I was lured into going to church with my born-again friend KW. She kind of tricked me. We were going to kayak afterward -- church is her Sunday thing, kayaking is mine. But she knew full well that the tide was going to be too low to kayak after church; she also knew that dangling a good paddling excursion in front of me would be the only way to get me to her church. Ah, those, tricky Christians.

We went to her church on Sanibel and I can safely say that I don’t remember the last time that I was that uncomfortable. Everyone seemed nice enough, but I just couldn’t shake the feeling that here are all these rich island folks, all Republicans as KW bragged (yeah, she and I don’t have much in common), meeting and greeting and chatting about their recent mission trips, and you know, I doubt that they’ve ever set foot in east Fort Myers or Immokalee, two really poor, underserved communities in their own backyard.

Anyway, KW and I went to the “contemporary” service. Looking at the program, I secretly wished that we had gone to the traditional service – it had the standard pastoral call to worship with the congregation response. And actual hymns! And an organist! I love “Inna-gadda-da-vida”! The contemporary service, on the other hand, featured a bassist, a drummer, a tambourine/maraca/bongo player, and more lite pop God songs than you can shake a Jesus fish at.

For those not hip to the tunes of Christ, flat-screen TVs around the prayer hall displayed the lyrics on PowerPoint slides so you could follow along. Plenty of folks did sing along – proudly, loudly and with an outstretched hand doing that Christina Aguilera thing. Behind me, I noticed a Jimmy Buffett type, with his hands behind his back, smirking just as I was. He clearly was on vacation and was dragged to church by his lady, who, while clutching her own Bible, seemed to be bewildered by the 30 minutes of tambourine-shaking preceding any words from the ministry.

The words of the pastors definitely stirred up my faith; indeed, my faith in my non-church-going ways was definitely renewed. I’ve never been one for organized religion; I can have my own relationship with God without being told what to believe, how to act, who to vote for (which is, yeah, totally illegal; great way to lose your non-profit status). Within the first minute of the sermon, the music director told us that “President Bush was chosen by God to lead us. All of our leaders were chosen by God and we must follow them.” I wonder if they made the same assertion when Clinton was in office...

The pastor’s sermon was all about the “Keys to the Kingdom,” or getting ready for the second coming, which, by the way, you better be prepared for now because He can come any day now! Really, any minute! So, quit living in sin and drinking root beer out of bottles that look like beer bottles unless you want to spend eternity in Hell! That was his example of Key #10 (from Thessalonians 5:12-22), “Abstain from every form of evil.” When he mentioned the sin of the root beer bottle, the woman behind me loudly said “Amen”; KW informed me that our holy neighbor was a “real prayer warrior.” I just wanted to tell our neighbor to pick her battles.

To further illustrate ways to abstain from evil, the pastor imparted a story about a new young male music director at a church he used to work at. The man was fresh from college, and one of his friends from school, a female, came to visit him and see his new church. Now, they were just friends, the pastor reminded us, but she was, sin of all sins, female and staying at the young man’s house. Oh, dear god, a male and female sleeping in separate rooms? I am appalled. The pastor told his young music man that this arrangement was not appropriate, as much of the congregation had to drive past his house and might think that “something sinful was afoot” with the young man and his female friend. The young man agreed, and told his friend she could stay with the pastor. She apparently got pissed off and left because she “didn’t understand the need to protect the Kingdom of God.”

KW nodded in agreement to this story. Keep in mind that KW preaches to me constantly about my sexual habits, yet she is the one who lives with her boyfriend (she did say, "Oh, I better ask my boyfriend to move out soon before Jesus comes."). I firmly believe that her chain-smoking is going to kill her a lot faster than my premarital sex is going to kill me, but that is no matter. Here she is saying that a man and woman living together – even just for a few days in a platonic relationship -- is a condemnable act, and yet she is doing that very thing. I do not understand.

Other than those morsels of wisdom, the sermon also contained a horribly inappropriate joke about a woman repeatedly trying to close her door on some Christian solicitors; she was unable to fully shut her door until the Christians pointed out that she was slamming the door on her cat. Ha ha, non-Christians are so stupid and hurting animals is hilarious. The congregation loved this “joke.”

My Sunday morning ritual of late has been an early morning kayak and I can tell you I feel much closer to God when I’m on the water than when I was at that church. I would trick KW into joining me at my watery “church,” but I respect her right to worship however she pleases. At least my method of worship lets me get a tan and doesn’t pollute my mind with amateur lite pop muzak.

More importantly, though, I don't live in constant fear. Granted, a lot of these rapturists are pretty pumped about Doomsday ("What, we're going to war? Woo hoo! Apocalypse, here we come!"), but I think they're overly concerned with appearances. That's all that matters -- not the content of your character or your good deeds (like, uh, helping those less fortunate; I'm pretty sure that's what the welfare system and social security are for, but that is an entirely different post). It was so evident when the pastor said, in a serious tone, "I don't even drink root beer out of bottles that look like beer bottles because Jesus may not know that there's only soda inside." Geez, give Jesus some credit.