Left Behind Fridays

So where were we? Page 71?

We've been at this for a year and half and we're only on page 71?

I'm going to try to keep our ongoing book review from devolving into another weekslong lapse by imposing a more orderly schedule.*

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the first installment of Left Behind Fridays.

I take as my inspiration the selfless devotion TBogg and World O' Crap have demonstrated in their willingness, week after week, to subject themselves to the latest offerings from America's Worst Mother.™ Immersing myself in the Worst Books Ever Written may not be pleasant, but at least I won't have to come up with new names for the children each week.

In other Left Behind-related news, I'm now a bona fide member of the "Left Behind Prophecy Club," a particularly shameless, money-grubbing subscription service from Tim & Jerry. The club's message boards provide a gathering place for fans of the book series to meet and to reassure each other that, happily, the world is getting worse and worse, the gyre ever-widening towards the blessed hope of apocalypse.

Among the recent signs of The End recently cited on the message boards: a halter top in church.

It seems that in this last year I see so much moral decline ... The Terri Schiavo case ... The promotion of homosexual lifestyle all over TV. Especially HBO. No, I don't want to see makeovers by the Fab Five. And the clothing they are foisting on us ladies ... they want to dress us worse than prostitutes. The young lady in church with the halter top and satin mini just blew my mind. ... When I was young, ladies wore white gloves and hats to church. My mother was always fussing about my getting my gloves soiled on the way. Experimentation with human and animal combinations. Removing the Ten Commandments from public view, outlawing Nativity Scenes at Christmas, chocolate crosses for Easter, labeling Christians as 'nuts', outlawing expressions of Christianity in school and public, a movement to end church 'tax exempt' status and so on and on.

I'm not sure if her comment about "human and animal combinations" refers to some kind of genetic engineering or to something more Santorum-ish, but either way you have to love that this is included on a spectrum of depravity that includes ladies no longer wearing white gloves at church -- the abomination that causes desolation.

Anyway, welcome to Left Behind Fridays. It may not be the end of the world, but at least it's the end of the work week.

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* I invite you to hold me to this schedule. I have a sad personal history of convulsive attempts to become more organized, occasionally resulting in mini-spending sprees at Staples. Weeks later the unused accordion files and color-coded labeling systems sit there, seeming to radiate an aura of disapproval, like so many New-Years-Resolution inspired treadmills gathering dust in the basements and garages of couch potatoes across America.

Comments

[Kenneth Fair]

Yea!

I've been starved of your Left Behind commentary! I love reading reviews of bad books. And this is even better because you give us such a great glimpse behind the curtain of radical Christianity.

Keep it up!

[Jennifer]

Um...I'd love to believe this is real, but...

[Adrian Turtle]

Wait, I don't understand these people without your glosses. Are the chocolate crosses at Easter supposed to be a newfangled abomination, or are we supposed to be nostalgic about them?

[Peatey]

Does this mean cats and cat-blogging will be left behind?

[Tom Morris]

I discovered something far worse the other day. Left Behind: The Kids. I'm waiting for Disney to sign the rights...

[EliB]

Well, I must say that experimentation with human and animal combinations in church is going a bit too far. You could get your gloves soiled that way.

[Thlayli]

Hallelujah!

Spiff icon, too!

[Isabeau]

I don't blame you for dragging your feet. I'd enjoy the "Left Behind Prophecy Club" about as much as I'd enjoy a "Chew a Daily Lemon Diet Club."

[wednesday]

Last I checked, LB:Kids was part of the LB parent license. Not like Disney couldn't buy and sell Cloud Ten a zillion times over, Columbia Tristar distro or not.

[the other michael]

I'm with Adrian:

Removing the Ten Commandments from public view, outlawing Nativity Scenes at Christmas, chocolate crosses for Easter...

er, huh?

It really does sound as though this lady's idea of the Christian life consists of white gloves, plus munching on fattening, festive representations of Calvary.

Fred, you'd better not be kidding. Now that Charlie Pierce seems to have stopped supplying weekly brilliance to Altercation, I need a friday blogging destination.

We're counting on you to suffer for us!
m

[Anarch]

I just squeed like a thirteen-year old fangirl. Which is marginally upsetting, being a male graduate student, but is made up for by the fact that, OMG!11!! Left Bhind is teh sux!! w00t! :D

[William Masqets]

I love you.

[twig]

Speaking of fangirl.

"Experimentation with human and animal combinations."

Are we getting catboys? Why didn't anyone tell me we're getting catboys? Sign me up for some Friday catboy blogging.

[Scott]

"Experimentation with human and animal combinations."

Once I figured out that my chipper-shredder can double as a large blender, I've come up with much more interesting pate and moose recepies.

[Matt25]

This is great! I love your Left Behind review posts.

Like many of the other commenters, I have difficulty with the exegesis of the signs-of-The-End paragraph. It sounds like her mother let her eat chocolate crosses on the way to church, sometimes resulting in soiled [eewww] white gloves. Was this a sign of the End Times?

[Mnemosyne]

I hate to agree with anything that someone who posts to a Left Behind message board would say, but I have to admit, when I first saw those chocolate crosses at Target, I thought, "What the fuck are those?" You don't have to be a strong Christian to find something a little weird about destroying the cross by eating it. Heck, Disney had a huge controversy over making little Mickey Mouse-shaped butter pats because, by using them, you were destroying Mickey!

[Andy]

What is the homosexual lifestyle? Similarly, I want to know just what's on the homosexual agenda. I have been gay for like 17 years now and still no one has cc'd me on the memo, I feel left out. I'm sitting here on a rainy, gray awful day in Manhattan in my t-shirt and jeans eating Stella d'Oro cookies and drinking diet Coke while reading the internets. Is this such an abomination?

[Scorpio]

I suppose a chocolate cross can't be deemed "rugged", but finding them to be part of the Degeneracy of Out Times is a bit excessive.

[achilles]

Glad to hear that LB will be returning!

[Mabus]

Woohoo! Finally....

These reviews are how I found out about the site in the first place....

[Chris]

Yay! It's like MST3K but with Jesus teaming up with the robots to take down bad writing and bad theology.

[badcatholic]

Hallelujah. I'm so happy I could cry. You're a brave, brave man -- I couldn't get past Page 5 the first time I tried to read the book, but your take on things is irresistible!

[Stacy]

Andy, I gather you're supposed to be out evangelizing the homosexual lifestyle (which is a misnomer - it means guys who have sex with other guys, never mind what you're doing the other 23 hours of the day), mostly by being open about your gayness and (this is the really bad part) letting people get to know you as a human being, with your personality and your emotions and not being ashamed about the gay stuff.

To people like that, the only good gay is one who has been rehabbed (or maybe a dead one), but the ones who prefer to live as "confirmed bachelors" and never do anything to publically indicate they are anything less than straight are tolerable.

[Agitprop]

I commend you for being able to read those books. I myself don't have the stomach for it. LaHaye seems like another false prophet trying to make a buck off religion--the very thing that Christ opposed. I have a copy of Left Behind the Movie starring President Bush if you're interested.

[Nina]

I think she's saying chocolate crosses are horrible, awful, no good things. Disrespectful and just vulgar. But you know, one thing all Christians agree on is that it's important to partake in communion, which is either the actual or symbolic eating of Christ's body and drinking of his blood. Given that context, what on earth is sacriligous about eating a chocolate cross? I mean, it's far from a sacrament, but bad???

[Trevor Bechtel]

Do they sell those chocolate crosses at Staples?

[Scott]

It's Friday (sound of foot tapping.....) :-) :-)

[PepperjackCandy]

"chocolate crosses for Easter, labeling Christians as 'nuts',"

Are those nuts *in* the chocolate crosses?

I actually found the hollow cross the most offensive. Are they saying that Christianity is pretty, but hollow and meaningless?

The other type I saw was filled with caramel. Mmmm. . . caramel.

Anyway, I followed some links somewhere to your blog for the Left Behind stuff, but I'm having much fun reading all of your other posts, too, so "Hi!"

All of you are so sad. I will pray for you. God loves you anyway but hates what some of you are doing. I will pray for all of you. Hopefully before the time comes that people will be left behind or any of you die, you will have turned to Jesus. Do you not have anything better to do than to sit and down something that you won't even try to understand.

[Marty Kay]

Sorry to necro this post, but the "human animal combinations"... Wasn't "Human-Animal Hybrids" one of the things Bush condemned in his address to the nation?? Is Human/Animal combinations some Fundamentalist code for something?

[Ken]

Is Human/Animal combinations some Fundamentalist code for something?

Furry Fandom?

[Duane]

Is Human/Animal combinations some Fundamentalist code for something?

http://www.seekgod.ca/chimeras.htm

[chris archer]

Thank you for your 'left behind' comments. I have not read any of those 'books' and I'm not going to start. The money that Lahaye and Jenkins are making from those 'books' is enough to make a good Christian want to puke her guts out! Scaring people was never recommended by the Lord as a method of evangelising. Good luck! Can we have a few 'left behind' film critiques?