Let's Leave THEM Behind

Reader, pardon the following rant.

While perusing the aisles of our local Barnes and Noble, I paused at the embarrassingly massive display of Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins' not so critically acclaimed Left Behind series. The series is comprised of twelve volumes chronicling the lives of four people as they make their way through the dreaded seven years of post rapture tribulation somehow managing to survive (though everyone around them dies) and, furthermore, conversing in the most unrealistic dialogue to find its way to paper since the Dick and Jane series. The twelfth novel climaxes in the second coming of Christ who, I've been told, annihilates people through lasers emanating from his eyes (which is problematic on a number of different fronts).

To my shock and utter dismay, I discovered that the pair has released a thirteenth edition of the series. Apparently, it follows the same characters through their millennial reign with Christ on earth. One wonders if the paradise of the millennial kingdom will have any affect on the reality or intelligence of the dialogue. My guess is no. This promises to be the final chapter of the story, which, of course, we have all heard before. I think that it was originally supposed to be seven volumes (one for each year of the supposed tribulation ), but then it moved to twelve when it was such a hit. Apparently some of the middle volumes took 500 pages to narrate the action of two weeks time. And in addition to the thirteen volume series, there is also a Left Behind series for kids (get um young like the credit card companies) and a three volume "pre-quil" (presumptuous at best - the last thing I care about is how Rayford Steele became a pilot or how Cameron Williams - ironically played by Kirk Cameron in the equally distasteful movies - got his annoying nickname Buck.) I mean this isn't Starwars and Rayford Steele is a poor man's Lando at best.

There are so many areas that deserve reflection and criticism. In the first place, the series exhibits horrible theology. A few points to mention here: 1) The rapture (the premise on which the entire series is based) is a relatively recent theological idea, developed in the 1830s. None of the church Fathers or reputable theologians today believed in such an event. The Scriptural grounding for it is dubious and is often taken out of context. Additionally, it assumes a position toward suffering that contradicts the entirety of the New Testament. It assumes that God will spare his church of the final tribulation - God never promises we will be spared of any suffering! In fact, he promises that we will have suffering. Why should we assume that we will be spared of the great suffering? 2) The books are extremely critical of the Catholic Church as a whole. In fact, most (if not all) Catholics are left behind in the first volume. This includes the Pope and the Cardinals. The Pope than quickly becomes a corrupt leader of a one world faith that is basically Unitarian. This view of the Catholic Church is ignorant and presumptuous. It assumes that all Catholics have no understanding of Christ, salvation, and the like and that all evangelicals (or whatever tradition the books are endorsing) do. What an incredibly arrogant stance! Also, it shows a lack of understanding of the tenants of the Catholic Church, first and foremost of which would be the unique position of Christ as the way to the Father - if any denomination today is going to stand against a growing tide of inclusivism and diminishing of the role of Christ, I believe it would be the Catholic Church. 3) Any number of concerns could be further added, including a horrendous eschatology, which assumes a unique place for Israel (Galatians 3:28 aside) and the rebuilding of the temple in paradise. Apparently LaHaye and Jenkins never read the book of Hebrews. But these are issues for another blog, as they are too big to dispute and tackle here.

In addition to poor theology, I question LaHaye and Jenkin's motives in writing the series. Certainly it began well intentioned, but why the ridiculous proliferation of books? Why continue to write these novels and stretch them into such a long, expensive series? I hope that I am wrong, but it seems that much of the motivation was profit, which in my mind is untenable. But for some reason, Christians continue to make these best sellers! It saddens me that this is the kind of material that is so widely popular amongst Christians today, while names like Henri Nouwen, Thomas Merton, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the like are absent from most Christian bookstores.

Finally, I am disturbed by the low level of literature (if it can be called that) that is present in the books. As I said above, the dialogue is unrealistic. Moreover, the characters are paper thin, and the predicaments that they get into are often solved by unrealistic means. Why must we excuse this poor writing? As Christians, we should demand the best in everything, but so often we settle for something much less simply because it is, or purports to be, Christian.

To end my short rant in this vein (I thank the reader for his or her indulgence), I'd like to appropriate and alter a bit a line from the show King of the Hill: "Mr. LaHaye and Mr. Jenkins, you're not making Christianity better, you're making literature worse."