Getting It Wrong: "Left Behind" and the Mainstream Press

BreakPoint with Charles Colson ^ | April 27, 2004 | Charles Colson

[Mr. Silverback]

What will probably be this year’s biggest book-publishing event took place a few weeks ago. It wasn’t the latest thriller by John Grisham or the sixth Harry Potter book; it was Glorious Appearing, the final installment in the Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins.

The mainstream media, which usually ignores happenings in the Christian publishing world, took notice this time. But, as usual, they got matters of Christian faith and practice wrong.

Writer Joan Didion, as Wheaton literature professor Alan Jacobs noted, regards Left Behind as “the key to unlocking the hidden agenda of the Bush administration . . . ”—reasoning, if that’s the word, that since the president’s “preferred constituency” has made Left Behind a best-seller, they must be trying to turn what’s in the book into reality. Bush’s Christian faith only deepened Didion’s suspicions—talk about conspiracy theories.

It doesn’t take much to see the flaws in Didion’s logic. But as Jacobs points out, it’s possible to read and even enjoy a book without subscribing to its tenets. What’s more, apart from the fact that Christ will return and that “every knee shall bow and every tongue confess,” orthodox Christian beliefs about the Second Coming are all over the lot. The uniformity that Didion sees is the stereotype conjured up by her overheated imagination.

Amy Johnson Frykholm, a cultural studies professor at Colorado Mountain College, draws a similar conclusion in her new book, Rapture Culture. She credits the Left Behind series with fomenting a “new engagement with the world” among American Christians.

This is nonsense. The civil-rights movement, the pro-life movement, the pro-family movement, and other forms of engagement predate these books by years. As reviewer Stephen Prothero put it, it’s not as though Christians “had their heads buried in the sand before LaHaye and Jenkins joined forces.”

Mistakes like Didion’s and Frykholm’s are possible because of abysmal ignorance of religious truth among many reporters. If these folks were familiar with their subject, they’d realize that, ironically, the beliefs reflected in the Left Behind novels are more likely to produce cultural withdrawal than cultural engagement.

That’s because, as Jacobs wrote in the Boston Globe, this viewpoint takes the position that cultural and social trajectories only travel in a downward direction. Societies will continue to deteriorate until the “only option for redemption is the Second Coming.” If that’s true, then attempting to renew culture is, at best, futile and, at worst, opposed to God’s sovereign purposes.

In fact, taken to its logical extreme, bad news for the culture becomes good news for the Christian, since it’s seen as hastening Christ’s return. That’s one of the problems with this eschatology, because it can often lead to Christian indifference.

Thankfully, most Christians don’t think that way. They understand that Christian hope and love of neighbor, the basis for our engagement, are not in tension with one another. They are manifestations of the same truth: that in God’s good timing, this world will be remade into what God intends it to be.

None of this is hard to figure out—that is, of course, if your goal is to report fairly. Most journalists, however, when it comes to the Christian faith, sadly prefer unfair characterizations.

[ValerieUSA]

I heard the first books in the series on tape, and then read a few --- and then stopped altogether.
It amounted to nothing more than crass commercialism and a poor value for the high price to keep up with the series. The writers and publishers EXPLOITED their Christian readership. It was no more than a 2 volume book sold in many installments full of rehashes and crap that should have been edited out.

As annoyed as I am with the exploitation by the writers - I am even more annoyed by the extreme loyalty of many of the readers. Dare to criticize this poorly crafted series and its kooky premise, and you become the antichrist in their eyes.

Come on people. Have some discretion - don't be suckers just because the label says "Christian".

[stars & stripes forever]

If there is *anyone* who would believe in God... it would be Satan.

God says in John 16:11. ...the prince of this world now stands condemned.

Angels are not like people. They are a different kind of creation. Their purpose is to minister in God's kingdom and on the earth.

Satan served the Trinity until he decided he wanted to be like them. Then he became a fallen angel.

As a result Jude 1:6 says, ...and the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abanded their own home, these He has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgement on the Great Day.

It also says in 2 Peter 2:4 that God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell.

Satan does not have the capacity to believe in the Lord as Savior. He knows who Christ is, but will never repent because he cannot. He has been condemned to the abyss. I wouldn't call him a puppet, I would call him a loser.