I have a pretty good idea how my first day in heaven is going to go. Right in the middle of breakdancing with JR Tolkien and Kirk Cameron, a furry mongoose messenger will come up to me and say, “God wants to see you in his office.” I’ll shrug to Kirk and the Tolkster and then ride a unicorn to God’s office. He’ll invite me to sit down in a hammock, there are no chairs in His office, and then He’ll tell me which Stuff Christians Like posts He thought worked well. I think this is one of them, but some people won’t.
You see, I got an email last night from a reader named Kristin F. I get the coolest ideas from readers but this one floored me. When I opened it up and clicked the link they sent, I could barely believe what I was seeing. But it’s the kind of topic that deserves a brief disclaimer.
Please resist the temptation to think I am being profane about the rapture. It’s actually just the opposite. I’m trying to shine a light, admittedly sarcastic, on an example of people profiting from the rapture. People that are selling a really weird product that needs to be properly labeled as “wacky.” It’s not that I won’t mess up on this site. I felt like I was profane a few weeks ago to a minister and ended up editing the post based on some critical but valuable reader feedback.
This post is not about the rapture. I don’t feel qualified to write on that topic.
This post is not about my personal beliefs about the rapture.
This post is about a company that will send emails to your friends and family members after the rapture happens.
Please read that last sentence again, because it’s a little bizarre.
Basically, there is a company online that for $40 a year will send 62 of your friends that aren’t Christians emails six days after the rapture. I honestly don’t know where to start with this one. You probably think I am teasing, but here is a description of the service, straight from the website that sells this idea:
Imagine how taken back they will be by the millions of missing Christians and devastation at the rapture. They will know it was true and that they have blown it. There will be a small window of time where they might be reached for the Kingdom of God. We have made it possible for you to send them a letter of love and a plea to receive Christ one last time. You can also send information based on scripture as to what will happen next. Each fulfilled prophecy will cause your letter and plea to be remembered and a decision to be made. “WHY” is one last chance to bring them to Christ and snatch them from the flames!
When I read that, I was struck with a few questions:
1. Will people be checking their email 6 days after the rapture? Honestly, in every “the world has ended” movie I have ever seen, no one wakes up and finds millions of people gone and says, “man oh man, I better check my gmail and twitter a little.”
2. How can I verify that it worked? I mean, I’m in heaven and can’t exactly go try to get my money back if the whole thing fails. I’m just saying.
3. Remember how hard it was to choose who to invite to your wedding? Imagine picking the 62 people you write these post rapture emails too. And why 62? Why are we screwing guy #63?
4. What if you die before the rapture? Wouldn’t it be weird to get an email from someone that just died talking about the rapture?
5. How much would you pay to read one of those emails people write to be sent after the rapture? I would pay a lot of money. I have to believe that most sound like this:
“You blew it. I told you so Larry. Seriously, all those years we were married and you wanted to play golf instead of church. I’m in heaven Larry and I have all the pet cats I want and a really nice Cadillac. In heaven Larry. Get on board before it’s too late.”
6. Do they have a non Christian on staff that sends all these out after the rapture? My friend Jeremy wonders what that job description looks like. I bet the headline is “Hate God and good with computers?” Oh wait, here is how you say it works:
We have set up a system to send documents by the email, to the addresses you provide, 6 days after the “Rapture” of the Church. This occurs when 3 of our 5 team members scattered around the U.S fail to log in over a 3 day period.
7. What if the 3 people mentioned above go on vacation and don’t log in long before the rapture? Are my friends and family members going to get rapture emails randomly?
8. Be honest, did you decide to charge $40 a year for this service because you know we Christians like that number? The whole 40 days in the desert kind of thing? Come on, you can tell me.
Those are the questions I have and I hope that you have others. I’m not going to post the URL because I don’t want to swamp these guys with traffic and don’t want to give them more attention than they deserve. But I couldn’t resist writing about this one and I promise that I will never charge you to read Stuff Christians Like after the rapture.
Update: Fox News posted a story online about this site. It appears that they posted it a few hours after Stuff Christians Like. Did we scoop Fox News? Did they copy us? So many questions.
