So Where Are The Christians?

By James Donahue

After all the news coverage we truly expected to awaken today to a different world. If Family Radio founder Harold Camping was correct, all of the Christians were supposed to have been “raptured” into the clouds with Jesus for the beginning of a seven year period of tribulation.

We looked out of our windows with caution, expecting to see automobiles crashed into utility poles, dogs and other animals roaming at large for lack of their owners, and a few empty houses, their doors hanging open and swinging in the wind. We had expected screams and sirens in the night as those left behind began to panic.

Alas, all appeared quiet and normal. It seems that Mr. Camping was wrong again. I don’t know why anybody really took him seriously this time. He had made predictions like this two times in the past  and Jesus didn’t come then either.

We did not expect all of the media coverage this guy got this time. We suspect he got it because there has been a lot of frustration among Christians in recent years because they are watching world affairs going quickly to ruin and a return of Jesus just now would have been, at least for them, welcome relief. A triumphant god-man like that, dropping down out of the clouds to rescue his flock of believers, would have been very good news, indeed.

But once again, Jesus never came. And the Christians are back in the same old rut, mostly of their own making, with all the rest of us.

As expressed in an earlier story, we were secretly hoping Camping’s prediction would come to pass this time. We concluded many years ago that the Christians have been the cause of a lot of the world’s troubles and it might have been a relief if they had all mysteriously disappeared.

Without fundamental Christians in our government we might see a relaxation of the harsh marijuana laws, the controls on stem cell research, and the murder of abortion clinic doctors. We might see the Moslems suddenly find no further reason to blow themselves up in defiance of the American crusades in the Middle East. We might see more tolerance for alternative forms of medicine and same-sex marriages.

Why heck, we might just find that those of us left behind are willing and quite able to join together in spiritual harmony, recognizing openly the god within, and peace might just come into the world at last.

A lot of that would depend upon the people of the Islamic, Buddhist and Hindu faiths, however. These have the potential of living in peace with one another, although we might worry about the bitter relationship between the Hindu people of India and the largely Islamic people of Pakistan.

Then there is the harsh relationship between the Communist Chinese and the Buddhist monks of Tibet.

Maybe we need a couple more raptures of religious fanatics on the other side of the world before we really can have peace.

Well . . . since it appears that the Christians are still here, these words are no more than sand blowing around in the wind. It looks like we are going to continue to fry in our own grease until we go extinct. Maybe after that the Mother Earth can start things over and maybe someday, maybe a few billion years from now, we just might get it right.