'The Rapture'

I grew up in the Assemblies of God church. If you don't know, the Assemblies (or A/G) are a charismatic denomination of the Christian or Protestant church that because that Jesus was the son of God and he lived and was crucified and died for the sins of the world.

He was the Messiah. He died, went to hell and wrestled away the keys to death making eternal salvation open to anyone willing to accept him as their personal savior.

We also believed that Jesus was a part of the Holy Trinity including God and the Holy Spirit. All being one and one being all. We also, famously, believed in the manifestations of the Holy Spirit, infamously the ability to speak in tongues, the physical, audible manifestation of the Holy Spirit, of God.

This was a deep, rich part of my life until college. I can't deny it and I can't hide from it. It sort of makes me who I am because I've been prayed over in hopes of speaking in tongues. I've seen with my own eyes crowds of people fall in the seeming overwhelming presence of the Holy Spirit.
I was taught to believe in the end of times. The rapture. The apocalypse. One day, we wouldn't know when, God was going to call to heaven his faithful. In the blink of an eye.

Then there would be 1,000 years of hell on Earth. The anti-Christ would emerge (supposedly Italian) and all Christians remaining would be beheaded whilst a great spiritual war waged on. Then Jesus and his troops would storm Earth and eradicate all that was bad and unholy and unrighteous.

Actually, the last bit -- The Revelations -- was also the sketchiest of our belief system. Nobody truly knew if the rapture would be pre- or post-trib (tribulation ... all the beheading and whatnot).

Back in 1998 whenever those kids stormed into that Colorado high school and started shooting, there was the apocryphal story of them coming into a classroom and asking all Christians to stand up. Apparently, some girl stood up and was shot, dead.

My dad (someone who never went to church) asked that if this should happen that I would keep my arm down and mouth shut.

I talk with a handful of other people my age that I experienced all this with. Most are cynics now either not believing in things altogether or seriously doubting all that had happened to them during this time.

I may not agree with them, but I completely understand where they are coming from.

Speaking in tongues for example, is something that I still believe is a gift from the Holy Spirit completely available to us today. Unfortunately, despite people telling me otherwise, I never experienced this gift nor any other gift from the Holy Spirit.

I tried. I used to pray and pray and people would pray and pray even more. I would pray and I think people misinterpreted this as speaking in tongues when it was just me praying so quickly that it sounded foreign. If it was even speaking in tongues, I never understood it nor did I gain some kind of understanding it from it. Above all, I don't think any of these gifts or religion in general is meant for window dressing or without some understanding.

I've known people like Mimi Rogers' character in The Rapture. I've known people that lived in the dregs and underbelly of the world and in a fit of frustration and confusion turned to God.

Most of the time, it didn't work out. The emergence of faith in people's lives come typically in tumultuous times in their lives. When they would accept a log as their savior if it could get them out of the predicament they were in. It's only when things are good, when you don't need God, is when salvation takes hold.

In the end, religion is its own worst enemy.