There is a little known psychological syndrome which is common among some Christian brothers and sisters of the Baptist denomination, or other varieties of Protestants, known as A.R.A.S.
A.R.A.S. begins, as I understand from sufferers, about the age of reason. It is connected vaguely to the "Home Alone" movies which some of these brethren saw at impressionable ages. Children wake in the middle of the night in cold sweats, listening for small noises in the dark.
This syndrome causes others to play horrible jokes on the sufferers, jokes which exacerbate the illness.
These jokes involve laying a set of clothing, sock and shoes on the ground, dramatically drawing out one of the fears connected to the syndrome.
The full name of the anxiety-driven syndrome, which can only be cured by conversion to the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church is After the Rapture Anxiety Syndrome.
The intense fear and concurrent anxiety is caused by the overwhelming belief that one has been left behind after the rapture.
I have talked with former sufferers of this horrible fear and the anxieties of damnation and loneliness, who explained to me that only their conversion to Catholicism and the awareness that the Rapture was a Protestant aberration of truth-a heretical position-relieved them of the pain.
Sometimes, a teddy bear companion helped relieve symptoms. The cure is much more drastic. Total conversion.
