An Anti-Christ?

Last fall—I don’t remember when—I mentioned to my wife, while watching a pundit extol the virtues of Barak Obama, that he had all the major characteristics of the fabled Anti-Christ mentioned prominently in the Bible— mostly in the book of Revelations. I was being facetious, tongue-in-cheek, having a little fun with the guy because I found him a bit of a popinjay, and she asked me what I meant.
Well, I said, he came out of nowhere, is a bit of a mystery, he has at least a twenty for charisma—people love him and don’t know why—and he’s taking the country by storm. He is seen as a savior by many, as America’s last, great hope. And no one knows anything about him. Or something like that. She gave it a moment’s thought, said I see what you mean, gave me her approving, that’s-a-good-boy smile, and went back to something or other. Dishes probably.
Since then, I have heard and read several other people make the same comparison, although with a little more serious intent than my own good-natured jab. I didn’t for a moment think Obama might be that infamous scion of doom, and I still don’t. I think he’s just another power-grabbing Marxist feeding an elegant line of bull to gullible people who desperately want someone to run their lives for them. He doesn’t measure up to the Anti-Christ. But it got me thinking.
The notion, silly as it may be, is out there now, in the multiverse, the blogosphere, where people often take such notions seriously. This means that a good number of people are aware of the idea, and whether or not anyone believes it (and you can bet many a conspiracy dooms-dayer does), apparently we’ve all accepted the idea and gone on with our lives. And therein lies the problem. An Anti-Christ is a pretty big deal—in the abstract at least. Armageddon, Gog and Magog, end of the world, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, all that end-of-everything kind of stuff, and we seem to be willing to accept it without a second thought. I doubt anyone, even the ones who believe this kind of horse-pucky, gave it any serious thought. “Really? Anti-Christ? My goodness, I’d better go buy some more milk!”
And isn’t this the way it seems to go? (to quote Jim Croce) Evil, world-altering events, war mongers, despots, greedy, duplicitous, conspiring monsters, come along, and wherever they are, the people believe them and love them, over and over again. And even those who don’t, who see through it all, just shake their heads in disapproval and go about their lives, glad to not be one of the “gullible ones”. While the monster plots and plans and lies and eventually causes a reign of blood and horror, subjugating entire peoples, stealing unalienable rights as if they were stale bread, and creating misery, mayhem, and hopelessness. I wonder why we do that. Is it just a matter of “oh for heaven’s sake, he’s (she’s) not that bad?” Or do we just fall prey to the cheap, pretty words and ignore the malevolent intent behind them? And of course there’s the “he might be a little extreme, but he’s got some good ideas, he makes sense.” It’s the frog-in-the-pot syndrome, again and again.
And finally, there are all those people who don’t believe a word of that religious mumbo-jumbo, and laugh at the very mention of an Anti-Christ and at all those poor, deluded Christians. We’ll see who has the last laugh I guess. But forget the actual A-C, concentrate on all the actual devils we’ve allowed to come to power. Shall we have a roll call? Can’t, not enough paper in my printer, but we might mention a few all-stars. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Hugo Chavez, Akminadejad (and yes I know that is spelled wrong, and no, I don’t care) ad nauseum. History and I consider all these guys evil. There were others. Even more numerous are the ones who did not rise to the level of evil, but managed to ruin lives and make things worse with the best of intentions. We can argue all night about who these are, but it wouldn’t get us anywhere. I’d say Chamberlain and you’d say Churchill, I’d say Carter and you’d say Regan. It never ends. (By ‘you’ I have no idea who I mean).
The point is we let it happen, again and again. I wonder why we do that. But how would we stop it? Half of us accept every one of them, while the other half rejects them, but does nothing to stop them. It wouldn’t be ‘civilized’, and we might be wrong. Then it reverses and the other half accepts while the other, other half rejects. Only after the fact do we ever know if we were right or wrong. And some people go their entire lives in denial, believing their monster was a good guy. Everybody has their apologists.
So when the Real Deal comes along—and again, I don’t think Barak is it—we’ll let it happen. We will sit in the pot of water and let him turn the heat up a little at a time until we’re good and cooked, food for the beast.
I wish we could all discern the intent of a person’s heart. But that would mean nobody would like me I guess . . . .