Kiss My Left Behind


Abstract:
An amusing piece at Slacktivist. I, too, forced myself to read Left Behind. It hurt. I remember one line, early in the book, when the authors described Russian jets attacking Israel. Take a breath before you read this, and try to make it to the end of the sentence:

"To say the Israelis were surprised would be like saying the Great Wall of China is long."

Body:
I nearly gouged my own eyes from their sockets. The writing is almost as painfully bad as the theology. Slack has an amusing take on this:

This is bad writing, but it's also more than that. Jenkins and LaHaye read the Bible through the same skewed lens. This same obsessive elevation of irrelevant detail shapes their interpretation of the scripture. Thus they read Jesus' sermon on the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25 and ignore everything it says about feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and caring for the least of these. Instead they latch onto the introductory bit about the Son of Man sitting on "his throne in heavenly glory" and speculate what that throne is made of, and where it its, and how big it is, and how many air miles there might be from that seat of judgment to Waukegan.

To say that their interpretation of the Bible is perverse would be like saying the Great Wall of China is long. When they read the Bible, they see neither the forest nor the trees - they see development plans for a huge parking lot, a boxy retail shopping complex at its center, and an adjoining gated community for Christians only.

What I noticed most of all about their vision of the end times is that there are no surprises. No sheep or goats asking, "Lord, when did we see you?" You know who doesn't measure up, and it has little to do with grace or love or Jesus Christ - it's the guy who lusts after his flight attendant, it's the preacher who sneaks off to a matinee when he should be at the nursing home, and it's the person who almost believes but just can't do it because they know too many bigoted Christians.

[edit - the title of this post is also the title of a book, which I have not read.]

Posted: Sat - July 9, 2005 at 09:38 AM           |

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