When evangelicals put the Rapture behind a paywall, you get subscription tiers for salvation, livestreamed ascensions, and angels running camera crews. Virgin Monk Boy roasts the holy absurdity of monetizing eternity.
If the Kingdom is within us (which is a way more cool concept! :D), why do we need to go anywhere else for the Rapture? Wouldn't we just become more of what we're ultimately destined to be?
"We are stardust, we are golden
We are billion-year-old carbon
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden"
(Always liked that song, though I was too young for the original Woodstock at the time... :D)
Nancy, you just cut through two thousand years of fear-marketing with a Woodstock lyric. Preachers will sell you jet fuel for the sky-exit, but you’re right—the Kingdom was never an airport lounge. It’s the garden breathing under your ribs. Stardust remembering it’s holy.
The only “ascension package” worth buying is the one where you stop forgetting who you are. Everything else is just ecclesiastical Pay-Per-View.
Pretty amazing that CSNY nailed that 50 plus years ago. I still remember the epiphany I experienced when studying physics and I made the connection between novae and life. What a freaking AHA that was 🤣😎
Brilliant as always, friend! The perfect balance of humor and truth, managing to skewer both post-modern social media monetization AND the 2000-year history of redemption for sale in the church. (Anyone remember indulgences?)
Ah yes, indulgences—the original in-app purchase. Luther nailed the receipts to the church door, and now Zuckerberg just hides them behind a paywall. Different century, same hustle.
I love everything about this. Anyone who believes that salvation is for sale has been reading from the wrong manual. As an agnostic, I make no claim to having grasped the ultimate, but I do know a grift when I see one. We call our beliefs "faith" because the nature of existence is uncertain. And how we respond to that uncertainty reveals everything about the kind of person you are. How do we act when we don't know whether anyone's looking?
I was so excited I hit “send” too soon. Best backstage experience of my life (don’t remember much past life stuff). The archangels running sound were the BEST (well maybe matched by the guys doing David Bowie’s “serious moonlight” tour 🤫.) Raphael got his coffee (i offered cream & sugar but he just takes it black 😬). Michael got his pizza with the cheese half slid off. (I have a picture but Substack won’t let me send 🥲). And Gabriel got some extremely hot gossip - I’d share but i can’t, sworn to secrecy, itz his alone (it just MIGHT have the word “files” in it). THANK YOU, VMB, for such a revelation of the Rapture! I never believed in it before, now just like the Monkees I’m a believer!!! 🙏😇✝️⛪️💒🌈😜
Love it! How much is the online coaching package for dropping our egos?
Seriously, you wrote, "But the mystics—the desert fathers and mothers, the contemplatives, Mary Magdalene herself—pointed in a different direction. They taught that the only “price” for union with God is your willingness to drop the ego. The only subscription tier is surrender." I would love some instruction - free or paid - that would give me some insight into how to drop my ego and surrender.
Tim, surrender is not a trick you pull off or a technique you master. It is more like unclenching your hand. The mystics discovered that silence, attention, and love gradually loosen the grip of the small self. You sit, you breathe, you wait, and slowly the need to defend and perform begins to soften.
Dropping the ego is not a one-time act. It is the steady willingness to release, again and again, into the larger Presence already holding you.
Hi Tim, In my experience, the harder I try to drop my ego the tighter I find myself clinging to it. For me, what works is to apply myself to some work so thoroughly I forget that it is I that is doing the work.
I love the idea of diminishing this nonsense by laughing at it and nobody does it better than you when it comes to satirizing the religious machine. I've been trying unsuccessfully to remember the story I read that really cracked me up (back in my college days) about some charlatan hawking a relic of the angel Gabriel. It was supposed to be a feather but someone went behind his back and replaced it with ashes. When he opened the relic case to show the sacred feather and saw the ashes, this grifter never missed a beat. "Glory be to God, here it is the feast of St Lawrence (burned at the stake) and the feather has been transformed into his ashes." Loooong history of religious foolishness aimed at money making under the guise of salvation, for sure.
Jane, that story is perfect—holy relic improv at its finest. The Church has been running a long con of ‘heads I win, tails God moved the feather.’ Nothing exposes it better than laughter. Blessed be the ones who see through the hustle and still keep their wonder intact.
If the Kingdom is within us (which is a way more cool concept! :D), why do we need to go anywhere else for the Rapture? Wouldn't we just become more of what we're ultimately destined to be?
"We are stardust, we are golden
We are billion-year-old carbon
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden"
(Always liked that song, though I was too young for the original Woodstock at the time... :D)
Nancy, you just cut through two thousand years of fear-marketing with a Woodstock lyric. Preachers will sell you jet fuel for the sky-exit, but you’re right—the Kingdom was never an airport lounge. It’s the garden breathing under your ribs. Stardust remembering it’s holy.
The only “ascension package” worth buying is the one where you stop forgetting who you are. Everything else is just ecclesiastical Pay-Per-View.
Pretty amazing that CSNY nailed that 50 plus years ago. I still remember the epiphany I experienced when studying physics and I made the connection between novae and life. What a freaking AHA that was 🤣😎
Brilliant as always, friend! The perfect balance of humor and truth, managing to skewer both post-modern social media monetization AND the 2000-year history of redemption for sale in the church. (Anyone remember indulgences?)
Ah yes, indulgences—the original in-app purchase. Luther nailed the receipts to the church door, and now Zuckerberg just hides them behind a paywall. Different century, same hustle.
Indulgences, bits of the Cross, saint's relics, etc., all available in the Gift Shop... :-/
I love everything about this. Anyone who believes that salvation is for sale has been reading from the wrong manual. As an agnostic, I make no claim to having grasped the ultimate, but I do know a grift when I see one. We call our beliefs "faith" because the nature of existence is uncertain. And how we respond to that uncertainty reveals everything about the kind of person you are. How do we act when we don't know whether anyone's looking?
The comments here are as great as your writing! Haha. This for me might be your best one yet! So happy I have met you😊
I was so excited I hit “send” too soon. Best backstage experience of my life (don’t remember much past life stuff). The archangels running sound were the BEST (well maybe matched by the guys doing David Bowie’s “serious moonlight” tour 🤫.) Raphael got his coffee (i offered cream & sugar but he just takes it black 😬). Michael got his pizza with the cheese half slid off. (I have a picture but Substack won’t let me send 🥲). And Gabriel got some extremely hot gossip - I’d share but i can’t, sworn to secrecy, itz his alone (it just MIGHT have the word “files” in it). THANK YOU, VMB, for such a revelation of the Rapture! I never believed in it before, now just like the Monkees I’m a believer!!! 🙏😇✝️⛪️💒🌈😜
OMG!!!! BEST RAPTURE I’VE EVER BEEN TO!!!!! (also the first one)
I’m soooo glad I have a subscription, the perks were astronomically amazing 🥳🙌🤩😇
Psssst.......I've got a fragment from the true cross, fast track to heaven, no strings, you want it? Only £4000 to you, discount for a quick sale 😉
Steve, toss in a sliver of Noah’s Ark and a vial of Mary’s tears, and we’ve got ourselves a starter pack for the Deluxe Pilgrim DLC.
Careful though. Last time someone tried to peddle a “true cross” that cheap, three different popes showed up with receipts.
Love it! How much is the online coaching package for dropping our egos?
Seriously, you wrote, "But the mystics—the desert fathers and mothers, the contemplatives, Mary Magdalene herself—pointed in a different direction. They taught that the only “price” for union with God is your willingness to drop the ego. The only subscription tier is surrender." I would love some instruction - free or paid - that would give me some insight into how to drop my ego and surrender.
Tim, surrender is not a trick you pull off or a technique you master. It is more like unclenching your hand. The mystics discovered that silence, attention, and love gradually loosen the grip of the small self. You sit, you breathe, you wait, and slowly the need to defend and perform begins to soften.
Dropping the ego is not a one-time act. It is the steady willingness to release, again and again, into the larger Presence already holding you.
Hi Tim, In my experience, the harder I try to drop my ego the tighter I find myself clinging to it. For me, what works is to apply myself to some work so thoroughly I forget that it is I that is doing the work.
I love the idea of diminishing this nonsense by laughing at it and nobody does it better than you when it comes to satirizing the religious machine. I've been trying unsuccessfully to remember the story I read that really cracked me up (back in my college days) about some charlatan hawking a relic of the angel Gabriel. It was supposed to be a feather but someone went behind his back and replaced it with ashes. When he opened the relic case to show the sacred feather and saw the ashes, this grifter never missed a beat. "Glory be to God, here it is the feast of St Lawrence (burned at the stake) and the feather has been transformed into his ashes." Loooong history of religious foolishness aimed at money making under the guise of salvation, for sure.
Jane, that story is perfect—holy relic improv at its finest. The Church has been running a long con of ‘heads I win, tails God moved the feather.’ Nothing exposes it better than laughter. Blessed be the ones who see through the hustle and still keep their wonder intact.