Before I started reading Left Behind, I thought it had two purposes: to inspire believers and to convert unbelievers. Probably not genuine unbelievers like myself, but mainstream Christians who wouldn't be considered "true Christians" by the type of Christian depicted in LB. I expected the series would be a cautionary tale, warning mainstream Christians to join an evangelical church post-haste.
Now that I've finished the series, I think I was wrong. The purpose is not to persuade but to gloat. The series is one long "neener neener" to unbelievers. We were right, and you were wrong, and look how much you're going to suffer.
Jesus said: "I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven." But the believers in Left Behind do rejoice as they trample on the enemy. They wink and laugh at enemy soldiers during Armageddon. The immolation of unbelievers, burned to piles of ash, is described as "almost amusing." They "can't wait" for "the awful reality of Satan and his lackeys getting theirs." They're like playground bullies who act with impunity because they know the teacher is on their side.
Which brings me to the most offensive thing about this series: the way God is portrayed. The believers talk on and on (and on, and on) about God's boundless love for His children, but that's not what we see. Left Behind makes God out to be a nasty little boy holding ants under a magnifying glass. Vicious, vindictive, totally without compassion. That's the God LaHaye and Jenkins want us to believe in.
Tsion Ben-Judah, the World's Only Biblical Scholar, says many times that the judgements and plagues aren't in conflict with a loving God because God is just trying to get everyone's attention, giving everyone one last chance to accept Him. But the punishment so far outweighs the crime that I felt sympathy for the unbelievers who, true to prophecy, curse God instead of accepting Him. After the earthquakes, and the locusts, and the sulfurous poison gas, and the sores, and the oceans of blood, and the darkness, would you be filled with love and worship for the being who was doing this to you? Me neither. We're supposed to see the holdouts as stubbornly choosing earthly pleasure and "thumbing their noses at God," but instead I saw them as God's victims, flies He swatted with His sledgehammer.
And as it turns out, that bit about having one last chance isn't even true anyway. Near the end of the series, the few remaining undecided who have neither become Christian nor taken the mark of the beast find that "their hearts have been hardened" by God. They are unable to convert even if they want to. The believers witness unbelievers begging God to allow them to pray to Him, and think to themselves that these people deserve no sympathy. After all, God gave them plenty of chances, but His patience has limits. That's right, God in His infinite mercy condemns millions of people to eternal torment, because He gets tired of waiting. Converting six years into the tribulation is okay, but six years and four months is too late, sorry, God doesn't want you anymore.
As God's chosen people, Jews are the exception: they're allowed to convert right up until the moment Jesus arrives and starts slaughtering unbelievers. And I must say, Jesus the mass murderer isn't very nice, but at least He sounds like I imagine a god might sound..mostly. (It's painfully apparent when Christ's dialogue was quoted from Scripture and when it was written by LaHaye and Jenkins.) The angels who show up earlier in the series (and have more of their dialogue written by L & J, I surmise) are so badly written it's just tragic. A direct encounter with an eternal being would be a transcendent experience. It would change you forever. But to the believers in Left Behind, it seems rather mundane. The angels show up, save their lives, chat, then disappear and everyone goes on about their business. The believers seem to view the angels as just another tool in the arsenal, like the super cool cell phones and the heat ray guns. One even makes up a nickname for the archangel Michael! (When the angel appears in an airplane they ask, "Are you there?" and the angel says "Roger." Prompting the nickname "Roger.") They're taking that whole personal relationship with God too literally, if they feel free to give funny nicknames to His messengers.
I think the whole premise of this series -- translating Biblical prophecy into predictions of actual future events -- trivializes what it claims to glorify. The book of Revelation is (in my opinion) a work of feverish visions. It's majestic in its lunacy. Trying to break it down into facts and predictions robs it of all life and poetry. What's left is sad and absurd, like a deflated Macy's float.
For instance, Tsion (the World's Only Biblical Scholar) instructs us that "a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head" means the Jews, specifically the ones who convert to Christianity. And "two wings of a great eagle" means by land and by air. And "the place prepared for her in the desert" means Petra, in Jordan. And "a time" means "one year." Therefore the passage "The woman was given the two wings of a great eagle, so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the desert, where she would be taken care of for a time, times and half a time, out of the serpent's reach," actually means that when the Antichrist attacks the Jews, they will escape to Petra in cars and planes, and live there safely for three and a half years. Leaving aside the question of the basis for this interpretation, how dreadfully prosaic! It's like taking the lines "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate" and saying "That means you are pretty and you have a good personality."
I may have more to say about this tomorrow -- I haven't even addressed Jesus' thousand-year reign of enslavement and thought control -- but I'm tired of thinking about Left Behind for tonight. I think I might dig out some Gene Wolfe. It would be nice to read a good writer's depiction of gods speaking to men, for a change.
Of course it's one long "neener, neener". Why do you think it's been so popular? To the hate-based Christians (my new term: Christianists), it's an orgasm on paper! People who believe in a loving God and Christ's message of redemption for all are going to be every bit as put off by this stuff as "heathens". But after 30 years of EVERY SINGLE PREDICTION spectacularly failing to come true, I'm sure the End-Timers really needed something juicy to keep their spirits up... and LaHaye delivered.
I'm sure there's "Left Behind" fanfic out there somewhere, and it might be an interesting project for some sociologist to study the differences between that written as parody and that written by True Believers. I will bet my betting nickel that, if such a study were done, the True Believer fanfic would be an order of magnitude nastier than the parodic, as they reflect the lessons they've been taught.
The word "Roger" was used by radio operators when transmitting speech as the equivalent of the Morse code letter "R", (dit-dah-dit) which means "message received and understood." The current preferred phonetic equivalent is "Romeo" not "Roger". Incidently, the older English meaning of the verb "to roger" was "to engage in sexual intercourse", hence the pirate flag, the skull and crossbones, was often referred to as "The Jolly Roger". That makes the LB authors' joke even more ironic, if unintended. I gave up trying to understand Christianity and for that matter, all the other religions years ago, and agree with Richard Dawkins conclusion that they are viruses of the mind.
While I'm not a fundamentalist, sometimes the simplest reading is the best. One line that really stuck with me is when Jesus said, "you do not know the day or the hour" of his return. I do take take one literally. Which means it is supreme arrogance to think that somehow you know when that appointed hour is -- not only that you somehow know the mind of God when he already explicitly said you *don't* know, but worse, that somehow we are so dang important that it will happen in our time or, even worse, *because* of us. In other words, claiming to know when this might happen is the very first sign of someone who says they believe in God yet thinks they are bigger or smarter than God, and that God acts on their command according to their petty earthly desires.
This doesn't begin to address the added arrogance of claiming to know what will happen when the time comes. I would agree with a corallary of your take, that anyone who takes Revelations literally is a lunatic at best. Heck, I still have trouble making sense out of Isaiah.
This kind of thinking also offends me to the core because of its indulgence in judgment. When I converted, one of the first things I did was use my concordance to look up what God has to say about humans judging others. There are 14 references to judgement in the Bible. All of them say in essence, "this is God's job," and half of them go on to explicitly say "and it's definitely not your job." To express any joy over God's putative future judgment, much less to claim to know what it is, is an equal arrogance.
Sean
So Sean, I guess you're not down with those people who are trying to breed a red cow to hasten the apocalypse? That would seem the ultimate example of trying to override God's timetable.
That would be correct. The term "special place in hell" comes immediately to mind.
Besides, cow is already red, you have to cook it to change its color.
I'd say its more like saying: "you have a spotted dog and are eligible for social security."