America closed its last church in 2052. Most of the Republicans who, as Obama famously put it, had been clinging to their guns and Bibles had died off by that point. Still, America had maintained a place of worship for longer than any other country in the world.
It was after the second wave of COVID – the real COVID, the deadly virus released by the U.N. after the trial run of 2020, which reduced the world's population to half in 2027 – that people had just slowly stopped believing. It wasn't the massive die-off that had done it; it's that a few rogue doctors had figured out how to resurrect COVID victims – by injecting them with the new mRNA vaccines AFTER they had died – that put the final nail in the coffin of faith.
No one who came back reported anything on the other side, at least not anything like heaven or hell.
Instead, the COVID resurrectees reported a big space vessel hung in a colorless void. When the COVID dead peered inside the vessel's windows – and as disembodied consciousness floating in a void, that's what one did, it was the ONLY thing to do, after all – they discovered the black vastness of space, filled with all the galaxies known to man – and more.
It looked like a microcosm of the cosmos inside the spaceship.
But no pearly gates or fiery pit to be found. Just a big spaceship, piloted by an unknown force – some speculated it was guided by a blockchain-based algorithm – hanging in the void.
!LUV it! I'd love to read another 5 minutes of that story too. Cool idea
Me too!
It definitely has legs. Thanks for reading.
That's a great freewrite! And just close enough to possibility to be really scary.
Thanks! I was pleased with it.
My only challenge with this is that the place of worship for the Christian was defined before anybody ever had a cathedral ... see John 4:24 ... the Lord took us away from the temples of His day only to have us worried about buildings when all along, we are ourselves are the site of true worship to the Father in Christ, alone with Him or whenever and however we come together. We have only been worried about buildings to worship in since A.D. 303. The book of Acts and the Epistles have been telling us what Christians need to worship predate that for more than 200 years ... and no one there was even hindered by REAL persecution, unlike any the U.S. has generally seen (with one colossal exception, but let's deal with A.D. 30 and 303 for right now).
I agree with this 100 percent. We are also the site of access to the divine. The name of that which we commune with in our inner being might differ, but I think ultimately we all worship the same God.
I'm curious to know about the colossal exception to U.S. persecution of the church.
My ancestors could not even read the Bible, on pain of death, for about 246 years. The Bibles that they were preached to from were missing 90 percent of the Old Testament, 50 percent of the New Testament -- any possibility that they should know that God freed His people, again and again, was denied them, along with the restrictions on how Christian masters in all times were ordered to behave without cruelty or beating, and certainly never allowed to rape and murder their slaves (Ephesians, Colossians) and that a curse had been placed by God on those who had their fields reaped without paying proper wages (James 5). They could be lynched for even going into the wrong church building -- no less a person than Robert E. Lee had to prevent that once upon a time in Virginia, late in the 1860s. People went to churches in one place and bombed Black churches in the Civil Rights Era. Only two denominations -- the Quakers and the Mennonites -- had a track record of honoring their fellow African American Christians' right to read and worship and be with their fellow Christians from 1619 to 1865, and that can be pretty much extended down to 1965. Today, certain people are trying to deny the Christianity of African Americans if we vote Democrat -- Donnie Swaggart is a leading proponent of this idea, but he is hardly alone.
There were in 1865 approximately four million enslaved Africans in 1865, and the census numbers suggest there are 12 times as many African Americans now. We have primarily identified as Christian pretty much the whole way ... so there is your massive exception, well documented for 400 years.
I see what you mean. I would not have thought of any of that as persecution of Christians, but as racial oppression in the specific arena of religion. I mean only that it's happening not because of religion but because of race.
I see where you are coming from ... the challenge is that when we look at how Christians are persecuted in the world, it matches up ... denial of access to Scripture, denial of freedom to worship ... with this twist: because the humanity of Africans was denied, that made it possible for Christians to justify persecuting other people of the same faith with the same cruelty that Christians are persecuted in other countries now. It's not just religion -- but being a fellow Christian is no defense against the cruelty people who claim Christ were and are practicing. AGAIN: right now, there are big-time Christian preachers teaching their people that I can't be a Christian because I might vote Democrat on Tuesday -- that actually crosses race, and will allow certain Christians to justify themselves in mistreating -- you guess it -- fellow Christians of any race. Any Catholic who knows American history can tell you: it's not just race. It's a pool of people who claim Christ and think He left them as the gatekeepers to who can pass His gates -- enough of them have been in power so that YES, the U.S. has viciously persecuted millions of Christians under various pretexts.
I see that now. It's a new thought to me, a new awareness of what happened (and is happening).
It is not a pleasant thought ... but it relates to a deeper understanding of why the buildings are being abandoned ... but Christ's people will always find a way. My people gathered in the woods to worship for 246 years ... the Negro Spiritual is the record ... we had to form our own churches and denominations for the same reason, but, unfortunately, the building can still be a trap ... meanwhile, I find that I can meet Christians anywhere and still be in good fellowship, across races, because the worship place is US, not the building. In the U.S., the buildings are being abandoned for very, very deep reasons. Some are sick of gatekeeping Christians who hate other Christians ... some have been badly hurt because people come into the building but still do all the things there that evil does ... many are seeking the true old-time religion that does not burden the people with keeping up the institution that has not in this country even cared for all of the Christians.
I personally am still in church ... but mine is a church that loves the Lord and shows it by serving the community, without discrimination, and that is why I stay. But if that building was closed -- and it was, for 15 months in 2020 and 2021 -- we would find a way to keep doing that because that is what the Lord has called us to. It's not about the building. The building is not the Church. The people in Christ are, out of every tribe and nation, under God Who is no respecter of persons. Wherever that is denied, it does not matter how big and beautiful the building is -- no one will be safe with the gatekeepers.
Your story has been manually curated by the Inkwell.
Wow! I think some people would prefer hell to your concept of death. Some people fear nothingness more than anything else. I call to mind the end of Pier Gynt (Ibsen). The worst end Pier can think of being melted down by the button maker--of being dispatched to nothingness. There is a horror to that.
I loved this piece. I fault it only with its brevity. Fascinating ideas here.
Thank you for your curation and thoughtful comment. I did not expect the Inkwell to see this, since I did not publish in the community.
I'm not familiar with Pier Gynt; sounds like something to add to my reading list.
I did not consider fear of nothingness when writing this. It's a good point to though; I think if this scenario were to actually happen, it probably would not end belief in the afterlife. Actual reports of nothingness would probably cause people to hang onto that belief even more.
Pier Gynt: verse play translated from the Norwegian, author Ibsen. Some claim he was in a hallucinatory state when he wrote it. Absolutely inspired. Full of Norse mythology, but also profoundly existential. Great play. I wanted to learn Norwegian after I read it (brief impulse from which I recovered) so I could read it in the original.
Anyway--we curate quality stuff anywhere on the platform if we see it :)
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