Through A Glass Darkly...

1 Corinthians 13:12King James Version (KJV)

12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

 My friend Aaron as a theory "This wasn't an election, it was a 'Going out of business' sale for the Baby Boomers." So, basically, fear of death is what's driving this whole Trump thing. 

I've been considering this since he said it last week.

An awful lot of the human drive regarding religion is the struggle with death, acceptance (Buddhism and Hinduism, along with many other Eastern traditions) avoidance (Rapture-believing Christians) control/martyrdom (Early Christians and today's Fundamentalist Muslims) and transcendence (Christianity, Judaism, most Muslims) being the most common responses. There are other answers to this dilemma, but that's what came to mind right now.

Much has been said about conservative and Evangelical Christian support for Trump, but the simple fact is that most of the people I know who fall into those demographics is that they might claim the label, but they fall short of fulfilling the meanings of those words. Most of the Christians I know who support Trump seem to be the kind who regard Christianity as little more than their tribal identity, or worse as a framework on which to hang all the stuff they want to do anyway. Add to that, that modern American Evangelical/Fundamentalist Christianity is basically the gospel of "Fuck you, I've got mine" and there you go.

Not all people who follow those forms of Christianity are that way, but a lot of the ones I've met are, and that's the truth.

For seven years, I was a staff member on a forum for ex-Pentecostals and ex-Fundamentalists, and an awful lot of people at one time or another spoke of fear of death, or of a dying relative's fear of death. Well, my answer to that is, if you think God is some kind of cosmic bully who's just waiting for a chance to send people to hell...and so, you fear death...then that's YOUR problem.

I was not taught that way.

Of course, an awful lot of the same people will tell you in the next breath that they think we're living in/near the End Times and Jesus is going to come back and the Rapture will occur and they'll all get teleported up to Heaven (without the inconvenience of, ya know, death) and get to watch the rest of us suffer for the next seven years.

Does any of this sound fucked up to you yet? 'Cause it sure did to me the first time I heard it. 

The doctrine of the Rapture was invented by a British nut job theologian named John Nelson Darby, and popularized in the United States by an Alcoholic former Confederate soldier (and, for the record, deserter) named Cyrus Ingersoll Schofield. If this sounds like some kind of 19th Century equivalent to Duck Dynasty, well it pretty much is, just without the ducks, and with some financial and political scandals and crazy religious bullshit thrown in.

America has always had a thing for cranks, and that fucking guy was no exception.

In any case, in the latter half of the 20th Century his doctrine of the Rapture became the great hope of those who were seeking to avoid death. In 1996, after some bad things happened in my life, I became a member of the End Times Prophecy movement. I have to say though, that I never really bought into all the Rapture stuff. Probably, this is because I was raised as a mainstream Christian and that doctrine is not a part of mainstream Christianity. In any case, my affiliation with that movement died off in early 2000 when the Apocalypse failed to materialize. I wasn't going to move the goalposts or look for the next big thing, I was just done with it all.

But, a lot of people weren't. Interest did more or less die off for a while, but then 9/11 happened and inflamed these people's imaginations again and they've not looked back since. I remember all sorts of religious craziness in the days immediately following the attacks. Oh yeah, and I heard ALL about it from my ex-wife, who was convinced that this was some kind of major event on the prophetic timeline.

Funny thing, but now I hear the Daesh are saying the same thing about Donald Trump's attempted Muslim ban...which they think of as a blessed event. While the rest of the world reacts with anger and confusion and rage and legal wranglings and court orders, they sit back and chuckle at the human suffering because it'll prove their "point" and net them a few more recruits for their imagined holy war against the West. (How they view it that way when they are mostly killing other Muslims, I'm not sure I understand. But, like with the Trump Supporters...I cannot fit my head far enough up my own ass to see their point of view.)

If we don't get a handle on it, if we don't overcome our fears, they will kill us.

Fear of the other, fear of Black people, of Brown people, of gay people, people of other religions, you name it. People say all type of dumb shit about the people they're afraid of...and of course very little of it is true. But then, if somebody has never been further than a hundred miles from home and watches FOX News all the time, how would they know? right?

We as a nation used to have an antidote for that kind of backwardness and a cure for that kind of fear, a guy would get drafted and probably sent to some other part of the world for a couple of years. Hell, long after THAT went away, when I was growing up in my small Northern Michigan hometown, most people my age couldn't wait to leave there and go out into the world and DO something.

I'm not sure what the hell changed, except that fear became more socially acceptable and 24-hour news cycles had to talk about something, so they went with shitty negative stuff. Fuck, I can remember when PBS and a couple of other local channels went off the air at Midnight and when the only thing on after Johnny Carson and David Letterman was bad reruns on the regular TV channels.

Truth be told, I kind of miss those days, I work third shift and I get really tired of some of the shit we get treated to on the break room TV's by CNN, FOX News and the damned infomercials, but hey, that's just me, and I can't hear Tucker Carlson speak without wanting to punch him right in the mouth so he's got something other than that smug sneer on his face for a while. I get a bad vibe from that guy...even Bill O'Reilly or Glenn Beck did not set me off like he does.

Get the fear merchants and the haters off the air, and I bet a lot of this shit calms down...

But even if they never do, let me explain what the real problem here is.

It's not Black Lives Matter or the Liberals or the Mexicans or the Muslims or Obama or whatever the Bogeyman of the week is, if you're a conservative.

Hell, for ya'll liberals the problem really isn't Trump, or the Republicans, or Hillary or Both Parties Are The Same, Man. 

It all comes down to fear, ultimately, fear of change, and fear of death.

Well, the idea of gradual change got rejected by a well-placed minority of those who bothered to vote, so now we're in for massive, uncontrolled change and whether we will even survive it as a whole country, none can say.

That said, overcome your fear. There's a reason I chose the verse that I did as a header.

Look, people, we're all going to die. Whether death comes by economic chaos, social collapse and war or simply by old age after a nice long, comfortable life, we're all going to die.

Death is the great equalizer.

You could, theoretically, destroy every threat or thing you see as a threat...

But when you are alone, and there's nobody else around, and it's just you and that bathroom mirror...

For most of us, at least people my age, that's when a little honest self-reflection is usually a requirement. When nobody else is around is when shit gets to you.

The simple fact is, eliminate all outside threats, and then you'll fear the mirror.

I don't see a lot of things around myself as threats, but then I wasn't taught to be afraid of everything either.

I still gotta look at my aging face and whitening beard every damned night before I go to work.

I'm going to die, eventually, and I'm just fine with that. No outside force, no God, no medical procedure, and no politician, will ever be able to prevent it. Nor would I want them to.

Death is that door we all have to walk through in order to reach Eternity, and we're all just travelers here.  To love this life too much is to risk spiritual death. When you're dead, nobody in the afterlife is going to care how much money you have. What determines where you go after you're dead is what you DO in this life.

I want to see how it ends, and if I have to die to reach that point so be it, when that time comes we're supposed to be ready, that's all.

What we do in life, echoes in eternity. ~Maximus Decimus Meridius, Gladiator.