How to Survive The End of The World (Part 3)
Fearing the Apocalypse
Throughout 34-year-old Leo Caldwell’s youth, he contended with a breadth of intellectually and psychologically challenging questions. Caldwell is a trans person who always had a sense that he was different, and while his identity questions were difficult, he was plagued most by other anxieties. Like millions of people around the world, Caldwell was Pentecostal, a Christian denomination that largely centers on fire-and-brimstone preachings about the apocalypse. More than worrying about his future as a queer or trans person, Caldwell was vexed by thoughts of the end of days.
The apocalypse, also called the rapture, is predicted in Revelations, the final book of the New Testament. But to fully understand this event, one has to go back to the life of Jesus. In most Christian denominations, Jesus Christ is believed to be the son of God come to earth to save humanity from their sins and offer eternal life after death in heaven. The rapture refers to the second coming of Christ, when Christians believe the faithful will be transported directly from earth to heaven. Nonbelievers will be left to contend with the reign of the Antichrist. This is not a lighthearted scenario, to say the least.
So it’s not hard to see how this story, taken literally, would scare a lot of adults and certainly…
