The Real Pride People

I was born in 1980, which means I landed at the age of twenty in the glorious year of our Lord, 2000.

What a time to be alive! (For most people.)

In my family, the turn of the century meant the End of Time. Growing up in the 80s and 90s with a dad who had bought hook, line, and sinker into the Moral Majority/Religious Right--we're talking Falwell, Graham, Decision Magazine, Rush Limbaugh--my childhood was filled with irrational fears of the Coming Apocalypse. We were living in the End of Days; nothing could have convinced my father otherwise. It's the kind of stuff that still wakes me up in a cold sweat at night. While other kids were heading to soccer games on a Tuesday evening or watching MTV with their older siblings, my brother and I were reading the chunks of the Bible where God ordered the burning and destruction of some nations and people, while, despite zero difference in outer behaviors, allowing others to rule and survive.

Of course, we also learned about this Jesus character too, the Savior of (some of) the World, who out of great love (payment) for mankind, died and rose again. It would've been tempting to lean into THAT guy, all his healing, and mercy, his love for women and children, and his lamentations about the powerful systems that had broken the world. That guy made me feel seen and heard and--gasp!--even valuable. I might just have fallen in love with him, had God (the Bible) not made it so clear that I was a vessel of wrath, fitted for destruction.

Most Evangelical Christians talk about the End Times/ Rapture/ Apocalypse as if it's a given. The Bible is worshiped as God Himself to a lot of folks, although if you told them that, they'd argue (most likely, because there’s so much of it they don’t practice). I can't pretend to know what's in the hearts of men, but I DO know that a lot of Christians blessed with the charmed life haven't had to ponder the End Times and eternal conscious torment quite as much as the rest of us. They'll throw around the occasional "Lord, please come back soon!" with their hands raised during the Sunday worship set, but they don't actually mean it. Humans like life. We want to live.

With the exception of a few. I hear Pete Hegseth is fighting a Holy War in the Middle East, one that was "foretold" by the Ancient of Days. But... was it foretold? Was it really? Or is it simply that humans, never learning from our past mistakes, are determined to prove the quote, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results," true?

Power is an addictive drug, abused because we've yet to learn that it never equals immortality. There is a 100% chance not a single one of us knows when we’ll die, only that we will at some point. Death comes for us all, and the slightly exciting/super terrifying thing no one wants to admit? Not a single one of us out there knows what's coming after this.

Man has long tried to explain what's inexplicable to him. Science improves over time and we learn more about our place in the world, but the age-old questions, "Why are we here?" and “What happens when we die?” are never satisfied.

We write books and call them "God;" we build sanctuaries trying to find Him. In some cultures and olden days, we sacrificed animals--and even people.

We enact laws we can't follow and claim they're straight from the Great White Throne; we conquer lands and wipe them clean. Everything we do is an attempt to gaslight our minds into believing we're certain and correct because "certain" equals safe and "correct" decides who gets the power.

But our spirits know the truth. And you can't outrun your spirit.

America, absolutely founded as a culturally "Christian" nation (and no one should try to argue otherwise, as Western Civilization is Christian), largely believes that this historical figure named Jesus, born of a "Virgin and the Holy Spirit," adopted by an earthly father, lived a perfect life as all-God/all-man, then died as a "sacrificial lamb" and rose again.

As a "Christ-follower," a Christian is supposed to imitate his life.

Do we?

I don't. Don't really want to, either, if I'm being honest. I don't even like people I know that much, let alone strangers--like I want to invite some crusty guy into my home to share a meal!

And you don't, either. Because you know good and damn well, dear Christian friend, that most of our Perfect-White-American-Christian lives look nothing like walking, talking Gospel Jesus. It's why we've had to "invent" the Jesus that serves our agenda: some Aragorn He-Man Constantine who will slay all the "bad" guys, as if we're the good ones.

But be honest. Don't you find it just a bit suspicious that the "bad" guys are ALWAYS the ones who don't look, think, or believe like us?

I don't know much, but I do know that, since the beginning of recorded history, mankind has always believed he was living in the last generation. Always. Read the Good Book, and you'll see it jump from the pages, this quest to fulfill whatever role man is supposed to play in the ushering in of "The End." It's the ironic thing about humanity: we want to live forever, yet we destroy our bodies and our world in an attempt to do just that.

We don't know why we do what we do, but we should probably get to thinking about it before it's too late. Because if my End-Time-obsessed father taught me anything, it's that men will go to great lengths--build towers, usurp power, fight wars--to stay safe, too foolish to see that his fight for safety and certainty is nothing more than a blind pride that leads to destruction.

And the most tragic fact of all is that, too often, one man’s pride is the downfall of all men.