{"id":478,"date":"2003-11-07T16:32:53","date_gmt":"2003-11-07T21:32:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2003\/11\/07\/lb-not-creepy-enough\/"},"modified":"2014-10-17T17:53:30","modified_gmt":"2014-10-17T21:53:30","slug":"lb-not-creepy-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2003\/11\/07\/lb-not-creepy-enough\/","title":{"rendered":"L.B.: Not creepy enough"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
Left Behind,<\/i> chapter 1<\/b><\/p>\n
The remarkable thing about LaHaye and Jenkins\u2019 description of the rapture in this first chapter is how very creepy it isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
The events they\u2019re attempting to describe are so audacious, so potentially unsettling, that this chapter should make your flesh crawl and the hair on the back of your neck stand on end.<\/p>\n
But it doesn\u2019t. And that\u2019s not just because L&J are bad writers.<\/p>\n
Left Behind,<\/i> despite its religious trappings, is part of a larger genre of earth-shattering apocalyptic tales. Contrast the opening chapters of LB<\/i> with the early pages of Stephen King\u2019s The Stand<\/a>,<\/i> which offers a similar sweeping epic tale of the end of the world.<\/p>\n
King\u2019s story is genuinely frightening. L&J\u2019s is not. This is, of course, partly because Stephen King is a better stylist. But the main difference is not King\u2019s skill as a storyteller, but his objective. When you read The Stand,<\/i> he wants you to imagine this is happening to you.<\/i><\/p>\n
The tone and objective of LB,<\/i> instead, asks you to imagine this happening to someone else.<\/i> The reader has no purchase, no foothold in the story \u2014 and thus no reason to find it personally unsettling.<\/p>\n
L&J\u2019s approach divides their readers into two categories. You can, like the authors, consider yourself among the departed, looking on these wooden characters with a gloating scorn. Or else you must be, like these characters, the object of that scorn. Either way, there\u2019s little room for the empathy necessary to make such stories truly frightening.<\/p>\n
L&J\u2019s polemical triumphalism blunts any potential the story has for emotional impact. See for example the closing lines of their first chapter:<\/p>\n
Worse, Rayford had told Hattie he didn\u2019t know what was happening any more than she did. The terrifying truth was that he knew all too well. Irene had been right. He, and most of his passengers, had been left behind.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
We the readers also know \u201call too well\u201d what has happened \u2014 it has been clumsily, didactically spelled out, and will be again and again in the book. There is no sense of mystery or mysteriousness, no sense of wonder. Even God and the workings of God are fully known, fully understood, pinned to a board like an entomologists specimen. There is nothing \u201cterrifying\u201d about such reductive, Gradgrindish \u201ctruth.\u201d<\/p>\n
The theme of the book is stated directly in that paragraph: \u201cIrene had been right.\u201d Irene is Rayford Steele\u2019s prophecy-obsessed wife, the one who warned him all along of the coming rapture and tribulation and antichrist, while educated fools like Rayford had sneered at her faith, scorning her beliefs. She is the first of the authors\u2019 stand-ins, which means you can substitute their names for hers in that sentence and convey, precisely, the whole point of this series of books: \u201cLaHaye and Jenkins had been right.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mennonite theologian Loren L. Johns<\/a> identifies this \u201cunadulterated triumphalism\u201d as one of the most disturbingly unchristian aspects of the series:<\/p>\n
\u2026 Fundamental to the spirit of the Left Behind series is the sense of vindication that \u201cwe\u201d have been right all along. The not-so-subtle news headline that lies behind the entire series could well be, \u201cPremillennial Dispensationalists Proved to Have Been Right All Along.\u201d The message of this series is unadulterated triumphalism. You can forget the business of Christians taking up the cross in this series!<\/p>\n
Premillennial dispensationalists have admittedly gotten rough treatment in the modern world. From a modernist or secularist point of view, the claims of a pre-Tribulation rapture of the church, followed by seven years of Tribulation, followed by the thousand-year reign of Christ just seems too preposterous to be believed. Combine that with the fact that premillennial dispensationalists have been prone to set dates for the Second Coming of Christ \u2014 and the fact that their batting average so far has been zero \u2014 and that well-educated theologians as a whole tend to pooh-pooh their ideas, and you quickly come to a point of eschatological frustration with the way things are.<\/p>\n
It is not the Lamb who has conquered in this series, but the premillennial dispensationalists! \u201cWe win!\u201d Similarly, \u201cYou lose!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Johns is astute in pointing out the transparent insecurity and frustration that are the source of this fictional vindication, and how it undermines the \u201ctaking up the cross\u201d that is the literal crux of Christianity.<\/p>\n
What he doesn\u2019t also mention is this: It renders the story far more dull than such a tale has any right to be.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Left Behind, chapter 1 The remarkable thing about LaHaye and Jenkins\u2019 description of the rapture in this first chapter is how very creepy it isn\u2019t. The events they\u2019re attempting to describe are so audacious, so potentially unsettling, that this chapter should make your flesh crawl and the hair on the back of your neck stand […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[238],"class_list":["post-478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-left-behind","tag-left-behind"],"yoast_head":"\nL.B.: Not creepy enough<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Left Behind, chapter 1 The remarkable thing about LaHaye and Jenkins' description of the rapture in this first chapter is how very creepy it isn't. 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