In a new AP/AOL poll, Americans were asked for their Predictions for 2007. Since this is the Land of Hope and Optimism, the results are predictable:
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Percent who think we'll be attacked by terrorists: 60%
Percent who expect another major natural disaster: 70%
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But what really caught my eye was this:
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Percent who think Jesus Christ will return this year: 25%
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Think about that next time you're walking down the street. One out of every four people you bump into actually believes that 2007 will be the year Jesus Christ returns to Earth.
This raises a number of questions for me.
How do they know that? What kind of tea leaves are they reading? Who told them? What month should we expect him? Will he need a place to stay or will he just kind of float around above our heads? Will he need to go through customs? Will we mistake his entry through the atmosphere with a Russian ICBM and blow him out of the sky with our Star Wars missile defense system? Who would be the one to break the news to God that we kind of offed his or her only son?
What if he looks less like the bearded guy from the annual pandering-to-the-fundies issues of TIME and Newsweek, and more like, say, Howie Mandel or Woody Allen? How will we know it's him? What kind of proof will we demand? Should we start small ("Here's a bottle of Poland Spring water...let's see you turn it into a box of 2005 Paso Robles Cabernet.")? Or do we make him go for the Big Miracle ("Let's see you glue the Ayles ice shelf back to the North Pole blindfolded.")? Once he proves he is who he says he is, what then? Do we just hand him the keys to the planet? Who has the keys?
Surely someone among the 75 million people who think Jesus is coming in 2007 would have these details locked down, right? Pat Robertson? Jerry Falwell? Ted Haggard? James Dobson? They all claim to have a personal hotline to Jesus but they missed this buzz on their Blackberry? Isn’t that odd?
This is serious stuff, wouldn’t you agree? Who gets to greet him? What do we say? What do we wear? What happens after the "honeymoon period" wears off and we get tired of him staring into our souls 24/7? What if he's a real hardass and forbids smoking, drinking, weed, gambling, pre-marital sex, swearing and TV? What if we find out through him that modern transportation is the devil's work? You got room for a horse in your living room?
What if he wanted to run for office? Should we change the 28th Amendment to allow non-natural-born citizens to run for president? What kind of protections would we need to make sure he didn't rig all the electronic voting machines with his mind? What if his dad went on the stump for him---how unfair would that be? What if he wanted to serve more than two terms? Who could stop him? And what would the consequences be if Schwarzenegger pulled off a major upset?
Who gets custody of Jesus? The Evangelicals will obviously call "dibs" first and the battle would soon be joined by the Catholics, Lutherans, Mormons, Episcopalians, Methodists, Unitarians and all the rest---but won’t the Jews trump them all? And what about the Muslims and Buddhists and Hindus and all the other non-Christian religious and non-religious people? Won’t that cause feelings of bitterness and accusations of Savioritism?
I'm not sure we're ready for this, are you? Shouldn't we get the brightest minds together right away to form a Second Coming Study Group? And could Ed Meese maybe add a little more meat to the discussion this time than the color of the coffee cups?
And perhaps most disturbing...what if he's gone all gay?
I'm scared, aren’t you?
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