As you know a certain religious organization announced that today would be the end of the world, that people who were born again and had faith in God would be caught up in the rapture that marks the end of the world.

This widely publicized proclamation reminded me of the following from Karl Marx's A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, 1844:

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

With endless war and apparently endless economic crisis for working families it is no wonder that people want a rapture so badly. However, we know that our struggle for freedom from pain, fear, and alienation is in this life. It is real and it won't go away by believing in the hucksters and carnival barkers.