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Email
Me When Armageddon Comes
by Mad Dog
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| There are companies near the Wailing Wall which are set up so
people can send faxed prayers which are then placed in cracks in the wall according to
tradition. This is an excellent use of technology as long as people aren’t sitting by
their fax machines waiting for a reply from God. |
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It doesn’t
take much more than a glance at the 78-year-old Pope to get the idea that religion is
stuck in the Dark Ages, which is generally defined as the years before Entertainment
Tonight. I know, it’s difficult to imagine such a time existed, but it did. And trust
me, it wasn’t pretty. The
Catholic church, more than most religions, catches a lot of grief for not changing with
the times. It’s true you don’t need to eat fish on Friday, say the Mass in
Latin, or confess to anything less than a venial—or is that a penile?—sin
anymore. But old habits die hard. Just ask any nun who still has to wear one. While some
things have changed, they still expect you to give up something other than going to church
for Lent, not to confuse Jesus with Santa Claus (HINT: Santa’s beard is white), and
at least try not to have impure thoughts about your girlfriend or wife wearing her old
Catholic school uniform.
Good luck.
While some religions are being dragged
kicking and screaming into the new millennium, others are embracing it. There was a
photograph in the newspaper recently of an ultra-Orthodox Jew holding his cell phone to
the Western Wall—one of the religion’s holiest sites—so a family member
could recite a prayer, which should do wonders to promote Cellular One’s new
"100 Prayer Minutes a Month Free For Life!" cell phone plan.
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"And in tonight’s breaking news,
don’t bother doing the dishes or taking out the trash, the Messiah is back and we all
have the rest of our life off. Details at eleven." |
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For some reason Jews
seem to be at the forefront of combining technology with religion. There are companies
near the wall which are set up so people can send faxed prayers which are then placed in
cracks in the wall according to tradition. This is an excellent use of technology as long
as people aren’t sitting by their fax machines waiting for a reply from God. Face it,
he’s probably too busy deleting his spam email, like the one offering him a chance to
get in on the ground floor of a multi-level marketing porn site program. Right, like
he’s not automatically on the highest level of everything. Then there are the Lubavitch Jews, another
ultra-religious group who have taken to wearing pagers so they can be notified immediately
when the Messiah shows up. Can you imagine all those pagers going off to the tune of
"It’s the End of the World As We Know It" by REM?
Okay, I’m just kidding about the song,
but it’s probably a smart move about using the pagers. After all, if the Messiah
shows up during the day the networks won’t cut into the soap operas lest they get
swamped with complaints. And if it happens at night it would be relegated to CNN Headline
News, the 5-Day Forecast on the Weather Channel, and those little news teasers which you
faintly hear coming from the next room as you hurriedly scoop more ice cream on the stack
of Oreo cookies so you can make it to the next commercial break without starving.
"And in tonight’s breaking news,
don’t bother doing the dishes or taking out the trash, the Messiah is back and we all
have the rest of our life off. Details at eleven."
The coming of the millennium and the much
hyped Y2K problem—so called because everyone will get so fed up with hearing about
potential computer crashes on January 1, 2000 that we’ll press Congress to pass
legislation and skip the year entirely—has spawned a number of religious cults. One
of these, the Concerned Christians, is a Denver-based group which believes the Broncos
will win the Super Bowl in the year 2000. Just kidding. No one really believes that.
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Think of it as the Blessed Galleria, a place where you can buy olive wood crosses,
mother-of-pearl rosaries, water from the River Jordan, and Jerusalem Cross clocks, all
without leaving the comfort of your ergonomically correct kneeling bench. |
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The truth is,
members of this group reportedly abandoned their homes and jobs, moving to Jerusalem where
they await the Apocalypse. But before that momentous event could occur, the Israeli police
picked them up claiming the group’s intent is not just to be cheering from the
sidelines ("Go, Christ, go!"), but rather to kick-start it by using violence,
fomenting unrest, and appearing on the Jerry Springer show in a segment called, "My
Parents Gave Everything They Had to a Silly Religious Cult and All I Got Was This Lousy
T-shirt." They, and others like them,
need to wise up and stay home. After all, this is almost the 21st century, so there’s
no reason to leave the comfort of your computer desk. That’s why we should all be
grateful to the people who started the Web site www.Jesus2000.com, the "Virtual
Pilgrim [sic] to the Holy Land."
Now these are people understand the mood of the
decade, which is why they have what they call "The Holy Land’s Largest Shopping
Mall on the Internet." Think of it as the Blessed Galleria, a place where you can buy
olive wood crosses, mother-of-pearl rosaries, water from the River Jordan, and Jerusalem
Cross clocks, all without leaving the comfort of your ergonomically correct kneeling
bench. They’re so certain this venture will be profitable (and soul cleansing) that
they’re planning to offer an IPO in the spring. IPO, in this case, still means
initial public offering, not innocently pure offering as you might expect.
With all these modern changes, don’t be
surprised if there’s an animated version of the Book of Revelation released next year
with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse renamed as Email, Pager, Cell Phone, and Fax. And
after all this, if you need still need something to pray for, pray that I’m wrong.
©1999 Mad Dog Productions, Inc. All
Rights Reserved.
These columns appear in better newspapers across the country. Read
them while waiting for that Messianic page.
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