khaosworks | The best thing about the Left Behind books is the way the non-Christians get their guts pulled out

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The best thing about the Left Behind books is the way the non-Christians get their guts pulled out

A Whore that Sitteth on Many Waters
What the Left Behind Series Really Means
by Joe Bageant
www.dissidentvoice.org
December 17, 2005
"Jesus merely raised one hand a few inches and a yawning chasm opened in the earth, stretching far and wide enough to swallow all of them. They tumbled in, howling and screeching, but their wailing was soon quashed and all was silent when the earth closed itself again."

-- From Glorious Appearing by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins

"The best thing about the Left Behind books is the way the non-Christians get their guts pulled out by God."

-- 15-year old fundamentalist fan of the Left Behind series
That is the sophisticated language and appeal of America’s all-time best selling adult novels celebrating the ethnic cleansing of non-Christians at the hands of Christ. If a Muslim were to write an Islamic version of last book in the Left Behind series, Glorious Appearing, and publish it across the Middle East, Americans would go berserk. Yet tens of millions of Christians eagerly await and celebrate an End Time when everyone who disagrees with them will be murdered in ways that make Islamic beheading look like a bridal shower. Jesus -- who apparently has a much nastier streak than we have been led to believe -- merely speaks and “the bodies of the enemy are ripped wide open down the middle.” In the book Christians have to drive carefully to avoid “hitting splayed and filleted corpses of men and women and horses,” even as the riders’ tongues are melting in their mouths and they are being wide-open gutted by God’s own hand, the poor damned horses are getting the same treatment. Sort of a divinely inspired version of “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.”

This may be some of the bloodiest hate fiction ever published, but it is also what tens of millions of Americans believe is God’s will. It is approximately what everyone in the congregation sitting around me last Sunday at my brother’s church believes. Or some version of it. How can anyone acquire and hold such notions? Answer: The same way you got yours and I got mine. Conditioning. From family and school and society, but from within a different American caste than the one in which you were raised. And from things stamped deep in childhood -- such as coming home terrified to an empty house.

One September day when I was in the third grade I got off the school bus and walked up the red dust powdered lane to my house only to find no one there. The smudgy white front door of the old frame house stood open. My footsteps on the unpainted gray porch creaked in the fall stillness. With increasing panic, I went through every room, and then ran around the outside crying and sobbing in the grip of the most horrific loneliness and terror. I believed with all my heart that The Rapture had come and that all my family had been taken up to heaven leaving me alone on earth to face God’s terrible wrath. As it turned out they were at the neighbor’s house scarcely 300 yards down the road, and returned in a few minutes. But it took me hours to calm down. I dreamed about it for years afterward.

Since then I have spoken to others raised in fundamentalist families who had the same childhood experience of coming home and thinking everyone had been “raptured up.” The Rapture -- the time when God takes up all saved Christians before he lets loose slaughter, pestilence and torture upon the earth -- is very real to people in whom its glorious and grisly promise was instilled and cultivated from birth. Even those who escape fundamentalism agree its marks are permanent. We may no longer believe in being raptured up, but the grim fundamentalist architecture of the soul stands in the background of our days. There is an apocalyptic starkness that remains somewhere inside us, one that tinges all of our feelings and thoughts of higher matters. Especially about death, oh beautiful and terrible death, for naked eternity is more real to us than to you secular humanists. I get mail from hundreds of folks like me, the different ones who fled and became lawyers and teachers and therapists and car mechanics, dope dealers and stockbrokers and waitresses. And every one of them has felt that thing we understand between us, that skulls piled clear to heaven redemption through absolute self-worthlessness and you ain’t shit in the eyes of God so go bleed to death in some dark corner stab in the heart at those very moments when we should have been most proud of ourselves. Self-hate. That thing that makes us sabotage our own inner happiness when we are most free and operating as self-realizing individuals. This kind of Christianity is a black thing. It is a blood religion, that willingly gives up sons to America’s campaigns in the Holy Land, hoping they will bring on the much-anticipated war between good and evil in the Middle East that will hasten the End Times. Bring Jesus back to Earth.
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The Left Behind books represent everything I hate about Christian fundamentalism. The blind literal adherence to Scripture where it suits their purposes, but at the same time they show no compunction in embellishing and interpreting it where it does not. The inability to see the contradiction between a loving God that sacrified His own son, and in a sense Himself, to redeem the sins of His creation and one that casually, and with deliberate aforethought, destroy those who do nothing else but not believe in Him. The incessant, ever-present and humourless drumbeat of conformity that continues to judge your every action, to the point where persecution comes from within the church community more than from without.

And hell, they're not even well written. The prose borders on the pornographically violent, the constructions are awkward, the characterisations both cardboard and patriarchal. I started reading the first book and threw it aside by the second chapter or so. It gave me the chills, and not in a good way.

There are churches that are not like this. There are Christians that are not like this. But this is the most public face, the most vocal face. Fundamentalism, as expressed and exemplified in these books, is so tremendously ugly, and the fact that they are popular, and digested at length by so many people makes it all the uglier. It's stuff like this that makes me ashamed on occasion to profess that I'm a Christian, as if by admitting it I am tainted by association.

My name is Terence Chua. I am a Christian. And we do not believe in fear or hate.

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You may be interested in this article on Rapture movies that I first read several years ago. Creepy stuff.

I remember reading Salem Kirban and Hal Lindsey's stuff when I was growing up. The Christian book store next to my elementary school had it (I was educated in a Methodist mission school). I was sufficiently terrified to turn into a Jack T. Chick brand o fundamentalist when I was 12-13, but luckily shocked myself out of it in a year or so, so I'm initimately familiar with this line of literature and movies. Brought back a lot of memories. Not necessarily good ones, but that's not your fault. :)

Yikes. I was brought up Catholic, so all of this seems extremely weird to me. Our local church was pretty conservative, but rationally so for the most part (still have a big ol' "Buh?" for the sex ed = evil thing).

As in all churches, the Methodists are generally rational, good Christians but with the occasional fringe element that they seem to tolerate, or seem unable to criticise, because, after all, "we're one big happy fleet." One day I really must sit down and talk about my religious development and how I got to where I am today in my beliefs, although I fear that it will confirm to my more conservative friends that I am truly damnned.

That is just ... disturbing. Makes me glad I didn't grow up with religious dogma.

I feel a bit the same about the american flag. Crosses and flags are both symbols that aren't as rigidly defined as some of the people waving them around would like to think. Hi, I'm one of those liberal socialist hippie type americans, and it's my flag too. (Besides, burning it is so 70s, and it's pretty firmly established by now that the map is firmly the territory in a conservative's mind.)

One thing that has always puzzled me about that particular form of the christian mythos; I can't imagine anyone outside of an HP Lovecraft novel buying into the idea of a schizophrenic murderous deity out to destroy the world and somehow thinking of them as the good guy.
Why aren't these fundamentalists researching ways to STOP armageddon? Sure, it would be just as crazy as what they're doing now, but at least it would have merit. If a god like that existed, we'd have to find a way to destroy it before it destroyed us. I know, because I saw it it in a movie/tv show/d&d module. Oh, wait. They hate those too. Never mind.
(Consider the above lightly seasoned with a grain of salt about the size of Lot's wife.)

Because of course God wouldn't be unhappy with *them*. *They're* the good children who will get to point and laugh at all the people being punished, because those people will deserve it. In part for laughing at them or telling them they're wrong or daring to point out flaws in their logic.

Fundamentalists in general.... not big on the logic. Really kind of going out of their way to supress any resorting to logic or questioning their interpretation, etc.

Kind of reminds me of the Puritan groups who were very much into saying that they believed in everyone reading the bible and interpretting scripture for themselves... until people started interpreting scripture in a way that disagreed with them - when suddenly those people became dangerous heretics and evil and inspired by the devil.

Fundamentalists in general.... not big on the logic.
True of course. But faith does not have to be logical. It's faith, not proof. My criticism would be along the lines that the contents of Christian religion is forgiveness. If Jesus has been born to disembowel all those that do not think of themselves as being "THE RIGHTEOUS" I must have missed some vital information in the bible. I also seem to recall that he died for the sinners and not unilaterally for "THE RIGHTEOUS" - which would have made no - logical - sense at all, for those (theoretically) without sin would not be in dire need of forgiveness. For what?
So basically the image of Buddy Jesus surfing in on the Apocalypse to eviscerate some billion sinners is - in fact - highly blasphemous. So if there's some disembowelling to be done and maybe a little list of possible prospects available, it should be headed by authors and readers of that particular crap. Sorry for my blunt way of putting it.
Or rather. Not sorry.

Sure, He died for all sinners, but the catch (there's always a catch) to not being filleted is that you have to believe. The Bible is actually pretty clear on that point—the infidels are gonna suffer.

Where it's significantly less clear is exactly what constitutes a sufficient demonstration of faith to be among the saved.

It's sad that the non-fundamentalist -- or should I call you folks non-evangelical? -- Christians are the ones who don't get as much press as they should. It's like the Muslims -- all we seem to hear about are the extremists. And as for pagans, it's "Oh, it's Halloween, let's go to Salem and trot out Laurie Cabot for the masses".

It's the same way with SF fans, I'm sorry to say.

The media has created stereotypes for groups outside the mainstream, and won't do anything to break the stereotypes they create.

In Catholicism, there is or will be no such event as the Rapture. (Hmmm...could this be biblical fan fiction, perhaps? :) )

I may be wrong, but I'd like to boil down Christianity thusly:
1) There is a spark of divinity within each and every one of us. This may be thought of as "the inner Christ".
2) Be Christ-like in your words, thoughts, and actions.
3) Acknowledge the inner Christ in yourself and in other people.

As for the Robertsons, the Falwells, the Phelpses, and the LaHayes, I just wish their type would just go away. But that's not likely to happen anytime soon.

And as for pagans, it's "Oh, it's Halloween, let's go to Salem and trot out Laurie Cabot for the masses".

Ach, don't get me started. If I read ONE MORE article about how we don't wear black pointy hats or have warts, I'm liable to beat somebody with a broom.

These stereotypes do have demonstrably bad effects. There's a new professor at my (Christian) university who said he hesitated about applying for a biology faculty position because he wasn't sure they'd want an evolutionary biologist. (They did, of course.) Argh.

No, no, the rapture is in Revelations.... kind of. I'm pretty sure these people have never, ever read what it actually says there, though. Because, honestly.... unless you're of Jewish decent, theoretically you're not going. It's specifically something for the tribes of Israel. And only some subsection of them. There's a number given. It's a lot smaller than the number of fundamentalist Christians in the US. For people all into literalism you'd think some of them would have noticed these issues.

Though I think there was some other passage in Revelations that they've twisted into extending this to cover them. But.... yeah.

There's a lot of really nasty stuff in Revelation. In Chapter 19, Jesus comes across as a super-villain, riding forth on a white horse, his cloak "soaked in blood."

"But the beast was taken prisoner, together with the false prophet who had worked miracles on the beast's behalf and by them had deceived those who had accepted branding with the mark of the beast and those who had worshipped his statue. These two were hurled alive into the fiery lake of burning sulphur. All the rest were killed by the sword of the Rider [Jesus], which came out of his mouth, and all the birds glutted themselves with their flesh."

Well, as least Jesus feeds the birdies. :)

I don't know exactly what the doctrine of the Rapture is based on. Some Web pages refer to passages by St. Paul on the resurrection of the Christian dead and the calling of the Christian living into heaven, but this doctrine adds the assumption that there's a significant passage of time between this and the end of the world.

Actually the idea of a "Rapture" comes, not from Revelations, but from the old canny politico Saul of Tarsus himself. He says, in 1 Thessalonians 4: "For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words."

From there it all comes. Not from a divine vision, not from prophecy or established Scripture, but from a leader of the Church offering words of comfort and advice to a new church.

And even then, look at it - in context, it doesn't even talk about a rapture prior to years of tribulation. It talks about the resurrection of the dead and the ascension of the living when Christ returns to Earth. As far as Revelations is concerned, the faithful will suffer along with the damned as the apocalypse looms.

The word rapture doesn't appear in the Bible. Neither does the word "trinity", for that matter, but for that we have to look to the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD...

"... non-fundamentalist -- or should I call you folks non-evangelical? "

Depends who you mean by "you folks". =:o}

I'm an evangelical, in that I take the Bible as the principle and overriding documentary authority on what God wants to tell the world. (Except that many evangelicals would say I'm not an evangelical, because I don't believe the same things about what the bible is saying and how to make sense of it as they do.)

I'm also a "fundamentalist" with a small "f", in that I believe that whenever there's some point of confusion or debate about theology or God's will, it's important to go back to (or keep contsnatly in mind) the fundamental truths of our faith. But I'm not a Fundamentalist (with a big "F"), because I fundamentally disgree with those guys about what the fundamentals of our faith actually are! Hence, I don't usually refer to myself as a fundamentalist these days, to avoid confusion, and am quite happy to use the term Fundamentalist to refer to the mind of warped thinking represented by rapture literature, the theo-political ID movement, etc.

By the common understanding of the terms, though, I'd say that

khaosworks is, like me, a non-Fundamentalist evangelical, with certain views that are non-standard for evangelicals. (And we don't even agree with each other on those! =:o} )

My religious upbringing was evangelical, but I don't think I quite qualify as one anymore, since while I believe that the Bible was inspired by God, it was also written by men, and needs to be interpreted and analysed as such, in historical and literary terms as much as any other historical or literary document. I also question the validity of including Paul as part of the canon, but that's another debate altogether.

I lean towards a more rational, intellectual sort of faith, and (to varying degrees) am heavily influenced by the Christian existentialists as well as apologists like C.S. Lewis. There's a bunch of people out there calling themselves post-fundamentalists, and I fit into that category a lot better.

In the end, I half-jokingly call myself a heretic, and perhaps that fits the best.

"In the end, I half-jokingly call myself a heretic, and perhaps that fits the best."

[GASP] =8oO

But you can't be! Only members of the Percy Road/Seaview Group, circa 1984 can be considered True Heretics!

=;o>

Well, see, Paul's letters (and Revelations for that matter) /shouldn't/ be part of the bible. They should be considered like any other early comentaries - Augustine's, for example. They should not be scripture. I'll give you Acts as scripture, but really everything after that should be a separate volume.

That little "f" you're using there is best served by being called a "foundationist", I think.

Nah... I enjoyed the BBC radio adaptation, but I don't buy into the religion. =;o}

Wrong Foundationism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundationism).

Good gracious, that's so gross. I had not heard about those books. What a brutal totally mad God these people believe in. What do they think the phrase "Jesus saves" stands for - a bank advert?
Well, I have always had a profound dislike, not to say disgust, of anything fundamentalist - of any religion. these people are just all the same from any creed, from any nation. Give them a bomb that would single out all their respective non-believers, they'd throw it the same second.

Trust me, not hearing about these suckers is a blessing. You're VERY lucky to live in Germany.

There are *stories* about this? Good heavens.

Fundie fanfic, really.

It seems to be the result of Fundies having been exposed to the fantasy genre, rather liked it, but knowing that they musn't write about demons or wizards or any of that stuff because it'll lead the poor readers into sin (not to mention what it's do to the author), so they can only write that kind of stuff if they write what the Bibble reveals to be true... And of course, because what the bible reveals to be true about demons and magic and stuff is (a) very little, and (b) not designed to be used in this way, the end result is a grotesque perversion of both the theology and the art form.

The core problem is the failure to recognise that fiction is a different thing from reality, or that readers are capable of distinguishing the two, and/or to grasp the nature of metaphor, which allows us to say useful and valuable things about reality without having to laboriously figure out and transcribe literal truth.

I remember when the "first" (because Lewis and Tolkien weren't evangelicals, so they didn't count) "Christian fantasy" novels started appearing in the late 70s, and being reviewed in "Buzz" and other such Christian (i.e. evangelical "nobody else counts"-type Christian) magazines. There was much brou-ha-ha between those who said "At last! Guilt-free fantasy reading!" and those who claimed it was the thin end of the wedge for Satan to slip this evil fantasy/fiction stuff into the life of the church and use it to confuse impressionable young Christian minds, by distracting them from reading the pure unsullied scriptures. Ironically, the current crop of "rapture literature" seems to show they were right to be concerned... =:o\

Did I say late 70s? I think I mean early 80s. It didn't become a Christian until I was 12 (1977), and there was at least 3 years of having to be defensive about my SF habit before the first "Christian fantasy" started appearing. And I may have read the odd copy of "Buzz" magazine while I was still at Oak Hall, but I didn't really take to it until I was at university, which was 1983 (and it may have become "Alpha" by then, or something else. They had a fit of name changes around that time). But by the time I got to Uni I'd achieved peace in my own mind about enjoying SF & fantasy anyway, and just quietly disagreeing with the few authority figures at Oak Hall who got that terribly concerned look on their faces whenever the subject came up.

You know, there was a time when sincere Christians were producing quality fantasy novels...

Oh indeed, and many of them still are. In fact, probably an increasing number are. But they don't do it by the process that leads to things like the "Left Behind" books.

And I actually know some fundamentalists who don't subscribe to this crap, and are scared to death about the tarring and feathering their religion at large is receiving because of the majority that do believe this stuff.

Fred Clark over at the Slacktivist has been doing a long-running intermittent series of posts on the Left Behind books. Really good.

Somewhere in this house, I have a great observation about those who take the Bible literally. I can't find it now, so I can't credit it, but it goes something like this: Those who don't understand the concept of metaphor shouldn't be reading a book intended for adults.

And you've just quashed the faint urge I had to have a look at those books. Thank you.

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The best thing about the Left Behind books is the way the non-Christians get their guts pulled out

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