Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Apocalypse now?

I just got off the phone with my mom. I was expecting her to be having a nervous breakdown (she's been prone to panic attacks in the past) but she was actually doing ok, emotionally speaking anyway. Maybe I should give a little background. My mom is a Jehovah's Witness (insert your favorite "knock, knock" joke here, I've heard them all.) Her belief is that we are seeing the beginning of the so-called "Great Tribulation" that will signal the return of Christ. She heard someone bring up rationing cards the other day, and immediately thought of the scripture:

"and that nobody might be able to buy or sell except a person having the mark, the name of the wild beast or the number of its name. Here is where wisdom comes in: Let the one that has intelligence calculate the number of the wild beast, for it is a man’s number; and its number is six-hundred and sixty-six." (Revelation 13:17-18, New World Translation)

I couldn't help but point out to her that if households were rationed 13 gallons a week, that it would come to six-hundred and seventy-six gallons a year. Close enough? Don't ask me, I'm the atheist of the family.

But I worry about her financially. My step-dad is retired and has advanced Alzheimer's Disease, and my only brother is in Hawaii where he's having enough trouble fending for himself. I'm keeping myself in the black (for the moment,) but there's no way I'm going to be in a position to help them out at the rate things are escalating. I tried to tell her this, but she told me the same thing she always has: "Jehovah will provide." I'm glad her faith is keeping her spirits up, but I don't have such luxury...

2 comments:

Mister Roboto said...

I'm an Animist myself. Part of that is that I think we should have stayed in the Stone Age as hunter-gatherers, but I won't argue with you if you think that's deeply screwed up. Even with things going the way they have been, that tends to be the reaction I get when I "come out of the closet" as a neo-primitivist. Needless to say, I generally avoid actually "coming out of the closet" as a homosexual man. The way I look at some guys probably makes that obvious to some people, those mostly being the guys I look at "that way". With the law's arm becoming less and less long, I try to avoid doing that these days. Sorry, I'm rambling.

Mister Roboto said...

BTW, I wish more Christians knew just how close the early Church fathers came to leaving The Book Of Revelations out of the compilation of books that became Holy Writ.