Rapture watch parties

People around the U.S., if not in other countries, have scheduled "rapture watch parties" for May 21 to mock Harold Camping's nonsense.

I've attended one of those before, back in 1988, to witness the failure of Edgar C. Whisenant's rapture prediction. Whisenant came through Tulsa some weeks before to speak to local churches and plug his book, so a lot of people in the area knew about his prophecy. A local radio talkshow host at KRMG set up her microphone in the parking lot on the evening of the fatal day, and until midnight she interviewed people who showed up to talk about the rapture. I went with a couple atheist friends of mine at the time, Graham Kendall and Dan Hannah, to witness the shenanigans. The talkshow host even played a joke on the audience at midnight when we all agreed to stop talking suddenly, which cued the radio tech back in the building to call her name on the air in fake panic, as if we had all suddenly disappeared from the face of the earth. As I recall, some people phoned the station to complain about its irreverent treatment of their eschatology.

Gary North, a christian kook of a different sort, has something interesting to say about the psychology of the rapture believer, and its practical, real-world consequences:

The Bible teaches that "a good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's children: and the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just" (Proverbs 13:22). The Rapture doctrine teaches that the wealth of the just is laid up for the sinner. So, why spend a lifetime of above-average effort and risk-taking in order to lay up an inheritance that will be confiscated by the sinners left behind?

A radical present-orientation afflicts Protestant fundamentalists. In 1970, Edward Banfield identified the primary origin of lower-class culture as its present-orientation. (See the original edition of his book, The Unheavenly City.) It is not a person's income but rather his time-perspective that best identifies his class position. Fundamentalists, by this definition, are lower class.

A person who has no faith in the long-term earthly future of his legacy is unlike to save, work long hours to build a business, advance his education, or do anything else that involves long-term sacrifice, other than foreign missions. Ludwig von Mises argued that people with high time-preference (low future-orientation) pay high interest rates to borrow money, and will not save unless they are offered high interest rates by borrowers. Cultures that are high time-preference societies experience low capital formation and therefore low economic growth, he said. They are unwilling to pay for it. They get what they pay for.

I suspect the rapture delusion also derives from many christians' worry that their religion will eventually disappear, yet humanity will go on about its business and not notice the absence. I, for one, hope to live long enough to see the "Jesus who?" era.