For people not familiar with the Christian scriptures, whether some atheists, or some Xns both liberal and fundamentalist or conservative evangelical, that's Matthew 24:40 I'm referencing. And, whether riffing directly off Pauline material or not, the "Great Apocalypse" of the synoptic gospels at least arguably supports Rapture-type ideas, contra, oh, an L.D. Burnett at S-USIH, the Society for U.S. Intellectual History, who claims the Rapture is un-Christian.
Baptism for the dead, of Mormon doctrine, is also Christian, L.D. and others. Deal with it.
But let's get back to why that header I have us up there.
In the fairly small town to which I recently moved, a lady announced earlier this week that she had officially been pronounced cancer-free by her doctor after a fairly severe cancer with arduous treatment process.
She took this all as a gift from Jesus, etc. She also went so far as to say, even for comment to the newspaper, that she was using this as a tool to try to convert her atheist doctor.
Erm, not so fast, ma'am.
The very next day, a young firefighter, or rather, a young ex-firefighter on forced medical retirement due to extensive radiation-induced heart damage due to an infancy neuroblastoma cancer, died.
And, where was god then, when in an existential Rapture-like sense, one was taken and one was left.
Was it better for the firefighter to die as gain than live for Christ?
Well, the conservative Christian apologists will offer up the tender mercies of god, the inscrutability of god, silver linings that we can't see, etc.
Then, when the likes of me counter with Ye Olde Problem of Evil?
Some of them will counter with "original sin."
Do not go there, unless you really want your biblical literalism to be that repugnant.
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