08/15/21 - New Millennium Cyanide Christ
"I tear my worldly useless skin / staples to pin it over my ears"
Water shortages were hitting different parts of the city in patterns that were hard to track, and some time in 2019 it reached our house. Marikina got hit pretty bad. Showers and faucets wouldn’t run on most mornings. Pipes were capricious, trickles would come in the afternoon, and we’d have to let it run sludge-brown for a few minutes before the water cleared. We were lucky though. Two plastic drums sat out back near the washing machine, from which we’d scoop out water during the day and refill at night, for a few months. To be clear, I’m not trying to ballyhoo.
But for a very brief period I was hyper-fixated on doomsday prepper culture. I watched one episode of, well, “Doomsday Preppers,” a National Geographic series that followed the business transactions of a man whose consulting firm constructed bomb shelters for the fearful. He had like, this laboratory situation at his main headquarters, where he could man turrets to spread hot lead at thick steel. For testing. Families who wanted bunkers imagined the end of days as a violent race among individual civilians for arms and supplies, in which pillaging was the meta. These customers wanted a head start. I saw a dad take his kid to a shooting range, it was wild. Imagine a home makeover show for men who like Frank Miller’s take on Batman a little too much.
So yeah, not my flavor. But I watched that one episode totally fucking rapt and searched for similar content. Calming was the sight of non-perishables lined up on the cabinets, inside cold titanium bunkers. Soothing was the idea of waiting out the radiation of poisonous air, with a fuck-off supply of spam in the pantry. For my loved ones, and only them, I build a perfect cage of steel. Hoarded bounty under ten feet of earth. Outside: desolation.
The idea of the rapture is a recent invention, at least given theology’s time scales. Sort of invented by John Nelson Darby in the late 1800s, and popularized by Tim LaHaye and Jeremy B. Jenkins’ novel series, a contemporary interpretation of the rapture similarly imagines desolate landscapes. Those chosen (allegedly pious) are taken up into the air and disappear, while those left on Earth are left to grapple with the possibility that they have failed some cosmic test. The image of desolation comes naturally to rapture. We owe to this strain of eschatology (apocalypse studies) a phenomenon called “rapture anxiety,” the creeping feeling that one day, on the whim of a mysterious God, everyone will be gone and you will be alone.
There’s a possibility that some of your relatives have been referencing the rapture more often, whether in crowded Zoom calls that you’ve been strong-armed into, conversations on the family Viber, or on their Facebook walls. The pandemic, and observant media perceiving Zionism’s true colors, have emphasized end times discussion among evangelicals, and most have landed on ideas of rapture, dispensationalism, and tribulation. They’re probably going to cite 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17: “For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.” This is an easy verse to dismantle—most Christians know that God doesn’t literally live in the clouds, so the idea of us being taken into the air to be delivered upward into eternity should read as farcical. This probably never occurred to Darby.
The church my family attends, Christ Commission Fellowship, recently concluded a series of messages called “End Game” (really wanted a shoehorn a pop culture reference into the theme I guess) which posed two questions: “Are we living in end times?” and “Are you ready?” (I’m not even going to hyperlink the message playlist, the shit is all garbage.) The first question is surprisingly simple, and an answer like “Uhm, sure looks like it” suffices. The second question I think is more complicated. And whenever certain Christians ask it, they do so with this tone of insufferable smugness. “Are you ready? I know I am. My reservation in eternity is locked down.”
Eternity as a bunker. This is a theology that self-isolates.
I want to take about sovereignty for bit. Certain evangelicals tend to use the word as a catch-call term for any wide-scale, societally violent event as all part of the plan, one small turning gear in the machinery of God’s ways. The election of Trump, the Zionist project, and even COVID-19 can be and are often read as God’s mysterious will, leading up to Christ’s millennium-long reign, or something like salvation.
What’s frustrating is that such Christians are unable to accommodate other politically disruptive in their idea of sovereignty. A dictator waging a drug war is part of God’s plan, leftist-led demonstrations in the street are not; mass police deployment is part of the plan, food pantries are not; killing Palestinians is part of the plan, fighting for the oppressed is not.
Conservative Evangelicalism is nihilistic. Eternal life is all that matters, thus life on earth means nothing. Our home is not here but somewhere else, proclaim those who construct their theological bunkers and lock the doors. God is sovereign so I don’t have to do anything, say those who do everything to look out for number one. Here is a theological framework that turns away from suffering, and treats human life as disposable. The last time I posted on here, I shared a study that links this eschatological position to resisting the idea of climate change, and policy moves to address it.
Nothing else matter to them. What matters most is that they’re spiritually “ready.”
The phrase “survival of the fittest” is meant to encompass myriad strategies—cooperation, care, mutual aid, even softness. Brute strength, however, seems to be doomsday preppers’ favorite takeaway. Unfortunately, this interpretation is what survives and persists. And whether intended or not, the phrase tends to be used interchangeable with “sovereignty.”
Nebuchadnezzar’s dream statue is a paranoid vision, and it seems that the truth of Daniel’s prophecy has been scattered to nuclear winds. The head of gold, the breast and arms of silver, the belly of thighs and bronze, the legs of iron, and the feet of iron and clay—these are not epochs. The dream merely demonstrates that failure is built into empire’s design. The feet of iron and clay, I believe, are bunkers hidden cowardly under loose soil and shitty camouflage. Brittle and weak, the strategies of hoarders shatter under the weight of empire.
Sovereignty has nothing to do with it. You are the choices you make. Here’s the truth: if you’re fine with the destruction of the world, then it stands to reason that you want to destroy the world.
(Hey y’all, I’m back from my break. It felt good to take a step back from this and just do fun shit. I’ve been playing a lot of Dungeons & Dragons, and might write about the experience soon, maybe do a whole series on it! Let me know if that’s something you’re into. For now, here’s a bunch of media I consumed while I was on Substack vacation.)
I have been playing a shit-ton of Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Three divine beasts down, only the camel left.
A video essay, a brief guide to the genre and politics of Solarpunk.
The Orange Wave: A History of the Religious Right Since 1960, is a podcast documentary by philosophy and religion professor Bradley Onishi, for Straight White American Jesus. Here’s episode 1.
Centuries from Now I’ll Be the Archaeologist Who Digs Up Ferdinand Marcos’s Bones.
How the CIA Helped Shape the Creative Writing Scene in America
WHEN YOU NEED TO DO AN AUDITION, BUT HAVE ONLY ONE FINGER