The Ministry of Fear

Full disclosure: I don’t like Tim LaHaye. He and his ilk are precisely the sort of people I think the Republican Party should not be involved with. It’s not that he’s a fundamentalist Christian, it’s that he’s a bigot – he has referred to Catholicism as “a false religion” and insinuated that by “rejecting” Christ, Jews have brought their troubles on themselves.Still, I have to give him credit. His “Left Behind,” a series of 12 suspense novels based on evangelical Christian eschatology, is a clever idea: Take Tom Clancy, mix in a liberal dose of John’s visions on Patmos, and watch the sales pile up. The series is astonishingly successful – some 40 million books sold, not to mention audio books, DVDs, and version of “Left Behind” for teens.Presumably most of these millions believe, as Mr. La-Haye does, that Apocalypse will soon be arriving in much the way these works of fiction describe. I, however, picked them up because I was intrigued by their particular combination of entertainment and eschatology.According to Mr. LaHaye, all those who truly accept Christ as their savior soon will be be simultaneously transported to heaven. This “Rapture” – from the Latin raptio, or “caught up”-will cause “worldwide chaos” (but presumably make it a lot easier to find a parking space). Then we can expect the seven-year “Tribulation” period, when the Anti-Christ will set up a one world government and make peace with Israel. Finally, Jesus Himself will return to dispatch the Anti-Christ and begin His 1,000-year reign on Earth.Whether you believe this stuff or not – and, as a lapsed Reform Jew, I’m decidedly in the latter category – you have to admire the scope of it and be curious as to how it plays out in a work of fiction. Well, I was barely past the title page of the first book when I saw that Mr. LaHaye had squandered his marvelous premise. His religious teleology, which he obviously believes in very intensely, comes across on the page as less convincing than the metaphysics of the worst science-fiction or fantasy genre pulp.A fair amount of blame should be apportioned to his co-writer on the “Left Behind” books, Jerry B. Jenkins, who you may remember as the author of such literary classics as “Disaster in the Yukon: A Novel,” and “Miracle Man: The Nolan Ryan Story.” (When I searched for Mr. Jenkins’s name onamazon.com, the DVD of something called “Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers” also came up, but his name wasn’t listed in the credits.)Mr. Jenkins writes quickly, and it shows. The novels unfold in diverse places like Chicago, Jerusalem, and the Greek countryside, but a sense of place is rarely evoked. The characters are ciphers with ridiculous names – Rayford Steele, Buck Williams – that call to mind actors in the decidedly un-Christian genre of gay porn. And despite the biblically mandated chain of events, “Left Behind” is awkwardly plotted. Exposition is given in chunks, via e-mails, voice-mail messages, or cell-phone conversations. This results in execrable dialogue:”‘There’s no delicate way to say this,'” Chang began. “Captain Steele told Naomi and me this morning that Mr. Williams had told him that Dr. Ben-Judah was killed in the fighting at Jerusalem.'” (No delicate way, indeed; but certainly there’s a shorter one.)“Left Behind’s” sins are not just of a literary nature. The books are packed with insulting stereotypes: an Asian genius who knows martial arts; a “strident” woman in “sensible shoes”; touchy, grasping Arabs. The dialogue of African-Americans is reminiscent of Steppin Fetchit: “That’s in the Bible, Jesus rulin’ the nations?” Israelis, we are informed, “hate Jesus.” (No, they don’t; like most Jews, they just hate what has been done in His name.) In one scene, which made me want to hurl the book through the nearest window, a penny-pinching rabbi makes an appearance.Probably the most disturbing aspect of the “Left Behind” series is how the authors use Jesus in the narrative. In “Glorious Appearing,” the 12th novel, Jesus returns and lays waste to the army of the Anti-Christ. His words alone cause people to blow apart like frogs in a microwave: “bodies ripped open, blood pooling in great masses.” “Men and women and soldiers and horses seemed to explode where they stood.” (Why “seemed”? Why the horses?) At one point, Jesus strides through the battlefield, “the hem of his robe turning red in the blood of the enemy.” Son of God? More like Son of Godzilla.One may reasonably ask how the Jesus who said, “love thy neighbor as thyself” could be perceived as capable of such carnage. In “The Rapture Exposed” (Westview Press, 224 pages, $24), a recent book by Barbara Rossing traces this gory version of end times back to the 19th century, when a succession of British and American visionaries – or cranks, depending on what you believe – developed the concept of “premillenial dispensationalism.”This is, supposedly, a literal interpretation of the Bible: “dispensations” are eras or events that are “predicted” in prophetic books like Daniel or Revelation; “premillenial” means that the 1,000 year reign of Christ, as described in Revelation, has yet to come. Thus, when Jesus returns, it will be exactly as described in Revelation 19: He will descend from the heavens on a white horse, “clothed with a vesture dipped in blood.” He will “smite the nations” with his own sword, “until all the fowls [are] filled with their flesh.” (Nobody explodes, though, like they do in “Glorious Appearing”; so LaHaye must believe that it’s acceptable to embellish the word of God.)Ms. Rossing presents an impassioned case for a more metaphorical interpretation of this text. I was rooting for her, as her writing makes it clear that she follows the kinder, gentler version of Christianity. But she undermines her own argument when she points out that “Judaism, Christianity and Islam can all be characterized as religions of violence – and all three are also religions of peace. It depends on which strands you tease out from each tradition.” Fair enough, but not exactly a helpful way to counter the premillenial dispensationalists. And it’s unlikely that her informative, well-intentioned book will have any effect on “Left Behind’s” legions of fans.Nor, to be honest, is Mr. LaHaye much daunted by literary criticism. However true David’s aim, the missiles just plink off Goliath’s armor. And the giant keeps getting bigger: Mr. LaHaye has started another series of “prophetic fiction.” “Babylon Rising” is published by Bantam Dell, a division of Random House, rather than Tyndale, the Christian house that published “Left Behind”; the second book of the series is out next week.For these books, Mr. LaHaye gave Mr. Jenkins a well-deserved rest and hired one Greg Dinallo as his co-author.The first book in seried introduced the reader to Michael Murphy, whose mission is to “dig up artifacts that confirm Bible stories.” Most of Murphy’s great (but unspecified) discoveries came his way through a mysterious figure called Methuselah, who likes to watch “from a secure hiding place” while Murphy tries to “survive some very real, very deadly physical challenge.” (Just in case we don’t get the idea, the next sentence informs us that “the risk of death was very real and very high.”)The particular challenge that Methuselah sets for Murphy in the opening chapters of “Babylon Rising,” and the particular item that Murphy pursues throughout the novel, is not really worth explaining. There’s a banal villain called “Talon” (we know this because he is often referred to as “the man called Talon”), and a boilerplate cabal of foreign evildoers called “the Seven” (we know that they’re foreign because the Hispanic one, for example, calls his colleagues “senor.”)“Babylon Rising,” like the “Left Behind” series, is fatuous and boring, useful only as a peek into the roiling minds of fundamentalist Christians. But I can save you time by summing it up. Judging from the atrocious books of Mr. La-Haye, their minds are filled with prejudice, smugness, and contempt. They want everyone in the country, indeed the entire world, to live as they do. And they believe that horrendous violence is acceptable to God.Which other group of religious fundamentalists does this call to your mind?

The Ministry of Fear

The Ministry of Fear

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