For the past few months, American radio minister Harold Camping has been predicting that the Rapture would occur on May 21, 2011. Those of us who live in non-under-rock dwellings have all seen the billboards trumpeting Camping’s righteous prediction.

The Rapture, of course, is the day predicted in the New Testament when Jesus Christ will come back for another crack at the Earth, and will then take all the righteous Christians to heaven, leaving the rest of us here on Earth to suffer in a lake of fire, or a river of blood or an inlet of puss, or something like that.

Anyway, now that Harold Camping’s predicted date of May 21 has come and gone, everyone is laughing at the poor guy and saying that he was wrong.

I, however, have a different view of the matter. I believe that the Rapture has come and gone and none of us even noticed it.

Furthermore, I think that all of us left here on Earth can pat ourselves on the back, because we have dodged quite the holy and proverbial bullet: We’ve survived the Rapture!

This may sound a little strange at first, so in order to see why I think that surviving the Rapture is actually a good thing, let’s do a little thought experiment.

Imagine two people. The first guy, let’s call him Joshua, leads a life of pure goodness. He spends his days praying, building churches for orphans in foreign lands, and even goes door to door on Saturday mornings to try to help his friends and neighbours see the truth about the word of God.

He never drinks or swears, and never has unmarried or exciting sex.

The second guy, let’s call him Steve, lives a life of complete moral depravity. He spends his days getting high and drinking, never goes to church or prays, and routinely spends his nights being fellated by large-breasted women he barely knows.

Of these two, it’s not hard to predict which will go to heaven and which will be left here on Earth with the rest of the sinners. So as Joshua ascends up to be with Jesus and God and all them, he can look down on Steve, who is left down here with the rest of us.

Christian leaders would have you believe that the real winner in this situation is the heaven-bound Joshua.

But does this actually make any sense at all? What do you think is waiting for Joshua in heaven? Is he going to party? Is he going to listen to kick-ass music while large-breasted angels are fellating him?

Presumably not. If God allowed these kinds of fun things in heaven, then why would he punish people for them on Earth? No, I think it’s more likely that Joshua is in for a lot more of the same: Praying, building churches for orphans, and not having sex.

Steve, on the other hand, gets to live out his days, full of pleasure and fulfilment, and then gets to go to the same hot nightspot as all his dead friends.

To me, this is a no-brainer. So, go out and do what you need to in order to dodge the Holy Draft, because trust me, heaven is NOT what it’s cracked up to be. This is why I am so happy to have survived the rapture.

Also, how much would it suck to get summoned up to heaven right when we’re getting the Jets back?

Published in Volume 65, Number 26 of The Uniter (June 2, 2011)