L.B. The Visitation Pastor

Left Behind, pg. 196

The New Hope Village Church is being run by a post-rapture skeleton crew consisting of the apostate Rev. Bruce Barnes and get-back Loretta. Most of the following chapter consists of the long, sad saga of Barnes' former sham-faith.

Before we dive into that extended monologue, a brief aside on the Rev. Barnes' former vocation. He (re-)introduced himself to Rayford Steele as New Hope's "visitation pastor," and repeatedly makes clear that his was a lesser, subordinate role to that of the senior pastor -- the Rev. Vernon Billings. This is typical of the hierarchical structure among the staff at many nondenominational churches. This ranges from the senior pastor at the top (i.e., the pope) down through the various "associate" pastors, followed by "assistant" pastors -- including visitation staff, like Bruce -- on down to the youth pastor, who is just out of Bible College, wears jeans, and ranks somewhere just below the worship leader and just above the head usher.

"I was good at it," Bruce Barnes says of his role as visitation pastor.

This is not true. This cannot be true. All of Bruce Barnes' extended testimony to Rayford and Chloe is premised on the idea that his getting left behind produced an epiphany of self-knowledge, but this newfound self-knowledge does not extend to the recognition that he cannot have been very comforting in his role as a half-assed poser of a visitation pastor.

Part of the problem here, I think, is that Tim LaHaye is, himself, was a senior pastor during his days at Scott Memorial Baptist Church in San Diego. I doubt he understands the nature of "visitation" ministry any better than Bruce Barnes does. Here's how Barnes described that work:

"My job was to visit people in their homes and nursing homes and hospitals every day. I was good at it. I encouraged them, smiled at them, talked with them, prayed with them, even read Scripture to them."

Isn't that nice? He smiled at them. But what Barnes/LaHaye don't explain or seem to understand is why these people are stuck in nursing homes and hospitals. One gets the sense that an amiable visit from Barnes might have been welcomed by a parishioner who was, say, laid up for six weeks with a broken leg that would soon heal as good as new. But for a parishioner undergoing long-shot cancer treatments -- adding the pain of chemotherapy to the already crippling pain of their disease in the hopes that maybe, maybe it would help them live long enough to see their youngest child graduate fifth grade -- I can't imagine that a visit from Guy Smiley would have been much help.

It's not unusual for seminary students to experience a crisis of faith -- and not every student's faith survives this crisis. The common misperception is that this is due to all that book-larnin' -- that reading Bultmann or the latest from the Jesus Seminar is inherently dangerous to one's faith. (Far safer to maintain a pose of anti-intellectual piety -- which is, again, why many evangelicals prefer the safety of "Bible college" to the academic perils of seminary.) I suppose it's theoretically possible that some suggestible seminarian might be overwhelmed by such exposure to liberal scholarship, but I've never met such a person. No, the real reason that seminary is a crucible for faith has nothing to do with intellectual study. It has to do with CPE.

CPE stands for "clinical pastoral education" -- better known as the front lines. CPE has nothing to do with Vernon Billings' job. It doesn't involve preaching from a pulpit. It involves, rather, visitation -- ministering to people in "nursing homes and hospitals."

Gordon Atkinson, the Real Live Preacher, refers to CPE as "Tear the Young Minister a New One" and describes how his own CPE experience led to a dark night of the soul:

... people facing death don’t give a fuck about your interpretation of II Timothy. Some take the “bloodied, but unbowed” road, but most dying people want to pray with the chaplain. And they don’t want weak-ass prayers either. They don’t want you to pray that God’s will be done. ...

I threw myself into it. I prayed holding hands and cradling heads. I prayed with children and old men. I prayed with a man who lost his tongue to cancer. I lent him mine. I prayed my ass off. I had 50 variations of every prayer you could imagine, one hell of a repertoire.

I started noticing something. When the doctors said someone was going to die, they did. When they said 10 percent chance of survival, about 9 out of 10 died. The odds ran pretty much as predicted by the doctors. I mean, is this praying doing ANYTHING?

Compare that with Barnes' facile summary of his role as a "visitation pastor." If Barnes ever met with someone who was dying, he doesn't seem to have noticed. The RLP goes on to describe the final, fatal blow that CPE dealt to his young faith. Her name was Jenny:

Thirtysomething. Cute. New mother with two little kids. Breast cancer. Found it too late. Spread all over. Absolutely going to die.

Jenny had only one request. “I know I’m going to die, chaplain. I need time to finish this. It's for my kids. Pray with me that God will give me the strength to finish it.”

She showed me the needlepoint pillow she was making for her children. It was an “alphabet blocks and apples” kind of thing. She knew she would not be there for them. Would not drop them off at kindergarten, would not see baseball games, would not help her daughter pick out her first bra. No weddings, no grandkids. Nothing.

She had this fantasy that her children would cherish this thing -- sleep with it, snuggle it. Someday it might be lovingly put on display at her daughter’s wedding. Perhaps there would be a moment of silence. Some part of her would be there.

I was totally hooked. We prayed. We believed. Jesus, this was the kind of prayer you could believe in. We were like idiots and fools.

A couple of days later I went to see her only to find the room filled with doctors and nurses. She was having violent convulsions and terrible pain. I watched while she died hard. Real hard.

As the door shut, the last thing I saw was the unfinished needlepoint lying on the floor.

A faith that matters, a faith that is worth anything real, or anything at all, has to be able to account for Jenny's story. Her story, after all, is everyone's story -- the details of time and place may differ somewhat, but not the ending. You and me, and everyone we know, we're all going to die. Hard. A faith that cannot account for this must give way either to despair or denial.

The faith described in Left Behind cannot account for this. It's all about denial. Proudly so. "Can you imagine," Irene Steele gushes, "Jesus coming back to get us before we die?"

Can you imagine a visitation pastor bringing such a message to hospitals and nursing homes and people like Jenny?

Bruce Barnes might have been an interesting character if he had lost his faith due to his experience with human suffering. That would have raised some real and interesting questions. But the world of LB is not that real or that interesting. It is a world in which human suffering exists only for others at the periphery. And it is always deserved.

New Hope is a fictional church, but it is based on real-world congregations. These actual churches are run by senior pastors preoccupied with their weekly sermons and their "prophecy seminars." But somewhere down the ladder of their church hierarchy they also employ visitation pastors -- real people who spend their days in real hospitals and nursing homes, encountering real suffering.

What on earth do you suppose they say? What kind of spiritual comfort can they bring when all they are carrying is the ancient joke of Bildad's theodicy and the gospel of the denial of death? Bruce Barnes says he "read Scripture" with the people he visited, but what scripture? Every passage in the Bible that offers the hope of resurrection is twisted, in LaHaye's PMD theology, into an argument for the avoidance of death through the "rapture."

LaHaye and Jenkins literally could not imagine meeting someone like Jenny, so in the imaginary scenario of LB Bruce Barnes never did.

But even in the shallow, suffering-free world of LB, and even by L&J's own shallow standards, Bruce Barnes was not a good visitation pastor. Two sentences after Barnes tells us that he was "good at" his job, he tells us this:

"I was lazy. I cut corners. When people thought I was out calling, I might be at a movie in another town. I was also lustful. I read things I shouldn't have read, looked at magazines that fed my lust."

Rayford winced. That hit too close to home.

L&J can't imagine Jenny, but they can imagine Jenna Jameson.

Comments

[VKW]

It is easy to find reasons not to listen to people who are in pain or dying.

[Mnemosyne]

"As the door shut, the last thing I saw was the unfinished needlepoint lying on the floor."

I find that story almost as unbearably poignant as RLP, because I am the kid on the other end. My mother died of breast cancer when I was 7, and I still have (and cherish) the last item she was working on before she died, a crewel-work Christmas tree.

RLP may not know the corollary to this story that every woman knows: there's always someone who will finish the item. In my case, it was my mother's best friend, Audrey, who took the needlework home and finished it after my mother's death. She gave it to my father, who put it up as part of our Christmas decorations every year and later gave it to me when I was an adult.

[Jesurgislac]

I don't suppose it's any consolation to anyone (and, as an atheist, it's none of my business) but I've always felt that a belief in a God who can cure, but won't unless he gets the right kind of prayers, is a belief in the cruellest kind of God.

[coriolis]

I was saved from growing up a PK by my dad's CPE stint at the New Hampshire State Hospital.
Self-indulgent series pitch:
My daughter and I wrote a treatment for a TV series in reaction to watching 7th Heaven. The focus was the Youth Minister who, after Bible College, was forced to confront how ill-prepared he was for ministry by the protective cocoon of the suburban evangelical experience. In it, the only Real Christian (TM) was the visitation pastor. (Why? Because of Matthew 25.) The VP's antithesis was the agnostic music minister. The Senior and Junior Pastors were the "fake it until you make it" types who, after a combined three decades, were still faking it.
This may fit better in your previous thread on "Game for Goats," but I'll try to squeeze it in here:
Al Franken wrote that if you cut out all the stuff in the bible about feeding the poor, caring for the sick and striving for justice for the oppressed, you would have a container suitable for hiding your stash.
Mnemosyne, RLP's story about Jenny did not faze me, I've heard too many variations too many times to feel the pathos. Your postscript, on the other hand, left me weepy. Thank you for touching my heart.
Fred, today my faith was shriveled and parched. Living water, that's what this place is. Thank you, also.

[Victoria]

Which is why, Jesurgislac, I don't believe in a God like that. The God I believe in isn't keeping a tally and waiting for the perfectly worded prayer, as a Christian I believe in an incarnate God who cries with us in our deepest sorrow.

[Scaramouche]

One of my favorite blogs, the Waiter Rant, speaks eloquently to what you described here. He once had this to say:

When looking death in the face things get very real very quickly……..

I’m twenty one and doing a stint as a chaplain’s aide in a large gritty urban hospital.

Part of my job is to bring Communion to people dying in the AIDS ward. Most of the people wasting away in their beds are uninsured junkies or prostitutes. This is long before antiretroviral therapy. AIDS is poorly understood. Some people still wear masks out of fear of contagion.

Many of the people dying in this place are wracked with guilt. Remember how people used to say AIDS was God’s punishment for sinners? That’s not an abstract concept for many of these people. A lot of them made disastrous life choices - the consequences of which are now, remorselessly, killing them.

I’m too young and emotionally under equipped to be any real help to these people. I just try and listen. That’s hard. Some patients scream at me, driven insane by secondary infections that are rotting their brains. Others are stonily silent – not wanting help from anybody. Occasionally people find peace but that's rare. They cry, they bargain, they pray. All the things people do as they rage against the dying of the light.

Maria is a drug addict. She got AIDS from years of mainlining heroin. Her baby, the result of exchanging sex for drugs, died of AIDS. She has no family or friends. She lies dying alone in a small room overlooking the hospital’s air conditioning plant. She hasn’t had a bath in days. The sweet sour smell of the unwashed is over powering.

“Hi Maria. I brought you Communion,” I whisper.

She looks at me weakly.

“Can I have some water?” she asks. She’s near the end.

“Sure.”

I look for her water bottle. There is none.

“Where’s your water bottle?”

“The nurses won’t let me drink water,” she says.

Must be something going on with her kidneys. Stupid doctors. The woman's dying.

“Let me go ask the nurse what we can do,” I say.

“Thank you.”

I walk to the nurse’s station. A large woman sits behind the desk yakking on the phone with what seems to her girlfriend. She looks at me with complete disinterest.

I wait patiently for her to finish. She doesn’t.

I wait some more.

“Pardon me, Maria wants some water. Can I give her some?” I interrupt.

“Can’t you see I’m on the phone?” the nurse yells.

“Yes but….”

“I’ll be with you when I’m finished!”

So I wait. The nurse ends her call.

“Now, what do you want?” she says angrily.

“Can I give Maria some water?”

“She’s on restricted fluids you can’t.”

“How about some ice chips then? I think she has dry mouth.” I ask innocently.

The nurse throws her hands up in the air in frustration. “Yeah, go get the girl some ice chips for what good it'll do her. You can get them on the next unit.”

“Thank you,” I say.

I go over to the neighboring unit and fill a Styrofoam cup with ice. I walk back to Maria’s room.

“Maria I got you some ice chips.”

No response.

“Maria?”

I walk over to the bed. She’s dead.

A wave of incredible anger sweeps over me. All this poor girl wanted was a drink of water. It turned out to be her last request

Even this small thing was denied her.

I crush the cup in my hands. Ice scatters on the floor. Hot tears run down my face. This girl had nothing – less than nothing. She died thirsty and alone.

It was then my innocence was taken.

I march out to the nurse’s station. The nurse is on the phone again. When she sees me a look of annoyance crosses her face. “Now wha….”

I slam my hand down on the counter. “MARIA IS DEAD!”

The nurse jumps out of her chair.

“DON’T YOU GIVE A SHIT YOU LAZY BITCH? SHE’S DEAD!” I bellow.

All hell breaks loose. A code is called. Security is called.

The attending shows up. There’s a do not resuscitate order. He pronounces Maria dead.

Security guards escort me to the pastoral care office where the Chaplin waits for me.

Instead of yelling at me for losing my temper he sits me down on his couch. He hands me a cup of coffee.

“What happened?” he asks gently.

I tell him everything.

A small smile crosses his face. “That nurse is a lazy bitch,” he says.

I laugh harshly.

“This is hard work son,” he says.

“I had no idea how hard.”

We’re quiet. I listen to the wall clock tick.

“When you were looking at Maria in that bed were you thinking about yourself?” the priest says suddenly.

The tears come again.

“Yes.”

“What were you feeling?”

“That I never want to be alone like that.”

“Do you feel that alone?”

A truth I had been hiding from myself came bubbling up from the depths.

“Yes,” I start to sob.

The priest gets up and sits next to me. He gently and puts his arm around me. I cry till I feel like I’m going to shake apart.

When I finish the Chaplain says, “If you’re honest - trying to help people makes you confront the darkness in yourself.”

“Yeah,”

“Maybe you should work on feeling alone,” he adds.

“Kind of tough when you want to be a priest,” I reply.

“Maybe you should think about that.”

I’ve given my heart and soul to being a priest for four years. I’m supposed to go abroad to study theology next year. Now, for the first time, I realize it isn’t going to work out.

“God doesn’t want you to be unhappy,” the priest says.

“Then why drag me here and put me through all this for nothing?” I whisper.

“I don’t know.”

“God’s a real asshole sometimes isn’t he?” I say sadly.

The priest leans back and smiles. “A gigantic asshole.”

We both laugh.

A few months later I quit. ………….

[Cactus Wren]

"I was lazy. I cut corners. When people thought I was out calling, I might be at a movie in another town. I was also lustful. I read things I shouldn't have read, looked at magazines that fed my lust."

Rayford winced. That hit too close to home.

L&J can't imagine Jenny, but they can imagine Jenna Jameson.

And even this has to be kept abstract, at one remove from real human experience. Can you imagine a young man actually saying, "I was lustful. I read things I shouldn't have read, looked at magazines that fed my lust"? L&J can't let it strike them "close to home". It's inconceivable that they might have this character say, "I was horny. Perhaps I didn't follow my dick around, but I wanted to. I read smut, and I watched pornography."

No, it's all very vague: I read things I shouldn't have read. This could mean literally anything! I looked at magazines that fed my lust -- like the Sharper Image catalogue, or the cool-techie-holiday-gifts list in the latest WIRED magazine? (Oh, I forgot, it's only sexual that is to be condemned. Pound and pound and pound on "Thou shalt not contemplate adultery", while completely ignoring "Thou shalt not covet" and that trivial little bit about "Sell what thou hast and give it to the poor". Lusting after money and possessions is perfectly cool.)

As Fred put it in an earlier L.B. entry: "The people in this novel are not human."

[Lara]

I have been in the ministry for going on three years now. It is heartbreaking. When I went gleefully off to seminary, I wanted to be a full-time chaplain. By the time I got through my pastoral care class, much less CPE, I was wondering if I had it in me to be one of those senior pastors whose only job was writing sermons to deliver to people she didn't know. I am a solo pastor now, which means I do it all - and I wouldn't trade it for the world. But it is heartbreaking all the same. I appreciated this particular entry more than you can know, including all of the heartfelt and real comments. Thanks.

[Jon H]

""I was lazy. I cut corners. When people thought I was out calling, I might be at a movie in another town. I was also lustful. I read things I shouldn't have read, looked at magazines that fed my lust.""

Wow, this *was* written a long time ago.

Nobody reads porn in magazines these days.

Unless, maybe, L&J meant magazines like "Tricycle: the Buddhist Review" or "Skeptic".

[Beth]

It is a world in which human suffering exists only for others at the periphery. And it is always deserved.

I wonder how people who buy into this deal with it when reality smacks them upside the head, when suffering, real suffering, suddenly exists for them as well.

People often thank Fred for reading LB "so we don't have to." The triteness of the phrase has always bugged me, but this latest installment is a prime example of why its not only trite but terribly insufficient. I could, of course, have read LB myself if I really wanted to, but if I had, I would have missed the "visitation pastor" thing entirely, not being familiar with what these pastors actually do. And even if I had recognized the job description, I can't imagine I would have found the connections and implications that Fred has. I would have noticed that LB theology was shallow, but I would have been hard-pressed to identify specific points of failure, and would have lacked the knowledge of deeper, more sincere examples of modern Christian ministry to compare it to.

So thank you, Fred, not for reading LB so I don't have to, but for helping me to understand it in a way I never would have on my own. And thanks too, to my fellow commenters, for augmenting Fred's work with your own thoughts and insights.

[Scott]

Can you imagine a young man actually saying, "I was lustful. I read things I shouldn't have read, looked at magazines that fed my lust"?

Yep, every "testimony day" at any Southern Baptist church. That's exactly how they'd phrase it. You get to sound spiritual by diagnosing your own faults like an outsider instead of just admitting them like a sinner.

[Mnemosyne]

Can you imagine a young man actually saying, "I was lustful. I read things I shouldn't have read, looked at magazines that fed my lust"?

For some reason, this made me flash on George Costanza in the classic "Seinfeld" episode, "The Contest."

"I was alone. There was a Glamour magazine ... and then my mother comes in screaming, 'Oh my God, George, what are you doing!' and faints. I didn't know whether to catch her or zip up."

"So what did you do?"

"I zipped up."

[bulbul]

Beth: thank you for perfectly phrasing my thoughts. I have read Left Behind as a part of my study of American evangelicalism which began with an encounter of the cult kind some time ago. Talk about "knowing how a way leads onto way" :o) For me, Fred's brilliant analysis has the added benefit of shedding further light on the whole world behind the phenomenon.
Some time ago I was working on a dictionary. When I mentioned that to my priest, he informed me that, in the Catholic tradition, compiling a dictionary or an encyclopaedia is among those things that will ensure you a place in Heaven. I am not sure whether this is true, but if it is, Fred's work as evidenced here will surely earn him a place at His right hand.

[Matt Austern]

I've been trying to convince my wife that she needs to read these essays on Left Behind. Is there an index somewhere that lists them all? I couldn't find one.

(BTW, I'm not sure you've noticed what you're doing, Fred: you're writing a book. You should find an agent and talk to a publisher. If you do decide to publish this I'm sure people will buy and read it, and it will be worth reading. Your essays are good enough that they deserve to be made available in a more permanent form.)

[Stephen Frug]

RE: Matt's comments.

1) There is an index in the archive under topics... but it includes a lot of other stuff, and that right up top. Fred, how about a more streamlined, LB-readings-only index?

2) About this being a book... What Matt said.

SF

[Mazement]

Here's a link to all the "Left Behind" essays...the only problem is that they're in reverse order.

http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/left_behind/index.html

[Cactus Wren]

May I just pop up again to second, or actually third, what Matt said? This is a book, worthy of publication and needing to be read.

[Lucia]

There seem to be three ways of dealing with the question: how could a loving God be so cruel? One is to decide that the unfortunate must deserve their fate, the PMD-moonbat way. Another is to say all religion is baloney. The third is to believe, to serve by succoring the unfortunate, to rejoice in God with all the evidence to the contrary smack in your face.

I am not trying to be flip, or snide, or rude, but humbly asking the Christians here: how do you do that third one?

[lbb]

This. Hit. Hard.

A little background on self: I was raised Christian (Episcopalian) and, while I do believe in God, I have a very different understanding of him than I once did (including, perhaps most significantly, the understanding that I don't and can't understand very much at all), and I no longer consider myself a Christian, because the God that I believe in has no need to indulge in cruel exhibitions in the style of a Classic Comic in order to teach humans about difficult concepts like compassion and hope and thankfulness and such.

Christians tend not to understand how one can believe in God -- more, be confident in the existence and fundmental goodness of God -- and not be a Christian, or a member of any organized religion. The organization provides the comfort and the surety, and if you're gonna take the rest of the package, why not take that too? Well, that's the subject of a much longer discussion, but my gut tells me that it's connected in a way to the problem of the Visitation Pastor.

I've dealt with a lot of Visitation Pastors and the equivalent in the last six years, as I've lost my best friend, my mother, and my father. It is impossible to believe in a God with a nursery-school level of justice and compassion -- a God that just doesn't let bad things happen to good people -- when contrary evidence is rubbed in your face every day. It is hard to believe in any God when you ask for things -- not for yourself but for your loved one -- modest things, not for a miracle cure but for a chance, and then for a gentle death, and then for a death that's a little less painful than this one, and then for just one more good day...when you ask for less and less and less, and the answer that comes back is always, "No." If belief in God survives this experience, it does so because we understand belief as something more deep and complex than the loyalty oaths of Catch-22. It is possible, even necessary, to let belief in God go...not to reject it, but to stop trying to hold onto it. Only then can it survive.

There's a line in the movie My Cousin Vinny where the title character, a defense lawyer, is confronted by his cousin, who is facing a capital murder charge. Vinny has been making a hash of the case, and the cousin is understandably worried that he might be riding Old Sparky before too long. Don't you worry, Vinny explains, we've got an edge on the prosecution -- we know you didn't do it. Therefore, there's got to be something wrong with the prosecution's case, and all I have to do is find it. Faith, in times of trouble, survives through exactly the same inductive logic. If you follow a line of deductive reasoning instead, step one leading to step two leading to step three, you'll end up coming to the conclusion that there is no God, there can be no God, or at least not a compassionate one, because what you're seeing doesn't point to that conclusion. But if you give up the need to connect all the dots -- if you accept that, as a living, breathing human being, there are dots you won't be able to understand, much less connect -- then only may you be able to retain faith in a good and loving God. But you have to open your hand and let it all go. You have to let go of your need for justice that you can understand, for a reasoning that makes sense of your loved one's suffering.

Can a Visitation Pastor do this in an honest way? Not in the theology of LP: all the dots must be connected. There is no mystery; God is transparent. And yet I stood on a riverbank in Nepal, surrounded by the sight and the sound of the river that had claimed my best friend, and I felt like a pane of tinted glass had been placed between me and the bright sunny day, with death on its other side, and I felt a message: this is as far as you go, for now. This is not for you to know yet.

I do not believe in a Classic Comics God, I do not believe in a God that pulls the wings off flies or that torments human beings, and I do not feel the need to understand the contradiction between this and the reality of suffering. A Visitation Pastor has to let go of this need, too, but I suspect very few can.

[Sparticus]

"Smiled at them". Genius.

[Keith]

My wife's grandfather recently died. He was in the hospital and the general outlook was not good (tripple organ failure isn't exactly something you walk away from). Some of the family had convinced themselves that he would recover and spend the next few year son dialysis but would otherwise be fine. The visitation pastor didn't really do anything to dispell this wishful thining, either. Not htta it was her job, but a few kind words to the effect of, "Yeah, that's sweet, but you still might want to make plans withthe funeral home" would have helped. When he passed, the visitation pastor led a limp prayor, the standard Psalm 23 sort of thing and I couldn't help but feel the emptiness of the ritual. Being an atheist, I have an ear for this sor tof thing but I still would have prefered, and know m wife an dher family would have preferred someone like the pastor in Scaramouche's story.

And seriously, Fred. These posts would make a fantastic book.

[aunursa]

So thank you, Fred, not for reading LB so I don't have to, but for helping me to understand it in a way I never would have on my own.

I have read LB -- all twelve books. I read it in spite of the bad writing. But this blog has helped me to understand many of the Christian nuances of which I had been unaware ... as well as several flaws I had missed.

[Kevin]

"But you have to open your hand and let it all go."

A breakthrough for me was when I decided that believing in something despite all evidence to the contrary was actually the product of a closed mind. But, that was just me, I certainly don't understand all ways of understanding. Just food for thought.

[Captain Slack]

Not htta it was her job, but a few kind words to the effect of, "Yeah, that's sweet, but you still might want to make plans withthe funeral home" would have helped.

"How much better for us if all humans died in costly nursing homes amid doctors who lie, nurses who lie, friends who lie, as we have trained them, promising life to the dying, encouraging the belief that sickness excuses every indulgence, and even, if our workers know their job, withholding all suggestion of a priest lest it should betray to the sick man his true condition!"
— Screwtape, Letter V

[lbb]

A breakthrough for me was when I decided that believing in something despite all evidence to the contrary was actually the product of a closed mind.

If you're using deductive reasoning, that is absolutely true.

[sdf (Stu)]

As a mostly lurker who has never read LB but has devoured your (Fred's) analysis of it, I can only echo the comments about eventually turning this into a book. I absolutely hope you are planning on doing this.

In reading Fred's posting and the comments to it, I thought of two infinitely more complex and far more sincerely religious texts that I have been fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to teach:

Tolstoy's "Death of Ivan Ilych" is the most powerful thing I have read that deals with the denial of death and the interactions of the dying with those around (in this case) him. It also, apropos the current discussion, gives an interesting cameo to a priest giving last rites. (Not to spoil it, but let's just say that Tolstoy didn't like the Church very much.)

On the subject of theodicy, and of responding to the suffering of innocents, I have yet to encounter anything as powerful (I won't, as an agnostic, necessarily say convincing) as the Brothers Karamazov. Of course part of what makes it powerful is that Dostoevsky gives some of the best lines to Ivan, who "returns his ticket" to God, rejecting redemption of any kind, in response to the suffering of children. That is, he refuses to grant anyone the power to forgive this suffering. Of course Alyosha gets to answer this, sort of, and the Elder Zosima in a more systematic if less direct kind of way, but it is clearly a question that tormented Dostoevsky -- whose own son had died recently at the age of 3 -- and one that he had to overcome great doubt to solve for himself (if indeed he really did solve it).

But that took us sort of off topic, I suppose ...

[J]

There's this:
"My job was to visit people in their homes and nursing homes and hospitals every day. I was good at it. I encouraged them, smiled at them, talked with them, prayed with them, even read Scripture to them."

And then this:

"...I was also lustful. I read things I shouldn't have read, looked at magazines that fed my lust."

Good millennial dispensationalists that they are, L&J obviously believe in salvation by faith. Visit the sick? Give to the poor? Oppose war, murder, and torture? Fuck that shit: God wants praise and he wants it NOW.

And yet it certainly wouldn't be in the character of these sort of people to give up the ability to judge, browbeat, and castigate (and, often, libel, smear, spit, and slander) those they want to portray as insufficiently pious by calling them slothful, greedy, and above all, lustful.

That's the key, you must understand, to the evangelical (or hell, any religious) moral code: If it's not sexual or scientific, it's not sinful. Invade any country you want. Amass any amount of worldly goodies for yourself that you can. Use ANY weapons in war. Call for the assassination of any world leader. Gamble, lie, cheat, steal, pollute, cut people off in traffic: None of this is viewed as being the least bit contrary to being "saved". Just as long as you have a sufficient degree of genital hatred and don't believe in evolution then you're fine.

Sorry I've wandered off topic a bit. Here's the rub: L&J--and evangelicals in general--are trying to have it both ways. "Doing good won't save you," they seem to say, "Although, of course, doing (sexual) badness will also doom you."

[Jennifer]

I interpreted the "let it all go" as the whole "God works in mysterious ways" thing. In other words, we don't know everything and God does, and even though it looks like this is really fucking horrible, there might very well be a reason for it and why this is a good thing- we just can't know it at this point in time.

Or there's another theory, the "God decided he won't interfere any more on earth, and therefore, y'all are on your own with those diseases" one.

Or alternately, God's a bastard.

I switch around between all three of those with regards to my dying dad...

(Btw, I highly recommend watching Joan of Arcadia if you want some interesting theological discussion. Oddly enough, the show's creator pretty much believes what I do. Go figure.)

[lbb]

I interpreted the "let it all go" as the whole "God works in mysterious ways" thing. In other words, we don't know everything and God does, and even though it looks like this is really fucking horrible, there might very well be a reason for it and why this is a good thing- we just can't know it at this point in time.

That's about where I was coming from. There's a difference between looking at a picture in which you see all the dots, and you also see that they don't connect...and looking at a picture in which a lot of the dots are missing. Death and suffering fall into the latter category, and you can call it "faith" or you can call it simply accepting that you don't have all the data. The problem comes when "faith" is applied to situations where you have all the dots, or enough of them, and you can see that they don't connect, and you still insist, "But they do!"

[Ray]

"I sat on the bed.
I looked at the Rorschach blot.
I tried to pretend it looked like a spreading tree, shadows pooled beneath it, but it didn't.
It looked once more like a dead cat I once found, the fat, glistening grubs writhing blindly, squirming over each other, frantically tunneling away from the light.
But even that is avoiding the real horror.
The horror is this: in the end, it is simply a picture of empty meaningless blackness.
We are alone.
There is nothing else."

[J]

"...the whole "God works in mysterious ways" thing.

This line--nor any variation or restatement thereof--appears nowhere in the Bible. Not that that means anything to me, as an atheist, but it might mean something to you believers out there.

"In other words, we don't know everything and God does, and even though it looks like this is really fucking horrible, there might very well be a reason for it and why this is a good thing- we just can't know it at this point in time.

What a stupid piece of reasoning.

[alex]

The other really interesting thing about "letting it all go" is that adopting this posture towards faith generally makes one much less inclined to proslytize--while one may continue to have faith in the face of owerwhelming evidence, one seems to be far less inclined to try to force said faith on anyone else. Gordon Atkinson (Real Live Preacher) talks about this a lot--or rather, he doesn't talk about it. It's just there, underneath all of his writing. I'm sure it's under all of his preaching too.

In contrast, the motivation behind the unpleasant sort of evangelical seems to be insecurity. They want to convert unbelievers in order to reinforce their own belief. Dissent and contradictions are emphatically not allowed.

Combating the fear that underlies fundamentalism in the Abrahamic faiths is going to be the biggest challenge of the next century. Islam is the one that's uppermost in people's minds at the moment, but Judaic and Christian hard-liners are as serious a threat. Mother Jones has an article posted about the Reconstructionists, as creepy a bunch as you'd ever care to encounter.

[lbb]

What a stupid piece of reasoning.

Um, there's a big difference between "not knowing" and "knowing not".

[J]

"Um, there's a big difference between "not knowing" and "knowing not".

No there isn't.

[lbb]

No there isn't.

"I don't know that there are WMDs in Iraq."

"I know that there are no WMDs in Iraq."

Do you get it now?

[Lila]

Going back to the Screwtape quote: Florence Nightingale has a wonderful line in her writings--I don't have it to hand for a direct quote, but the gist is that the worst suffering that hospital patients have to bear is "the incurable hopes of their friends."

[robert p]

As an Evangelical, I am all too aware of the shortcomings of the excesses of the (American) churches. I appreciate all the honest critiques written here. But it's not a matter of "evangelicals bad, progressives good". Dont forget that there is so much excellent work done in Jesus' name around the world by professing evangelicals. Their Fervency, certainty, adherence to Biblical inerrancy, and a faith empowered by the Holy Spirit are evidence of a redeemed life.

Nonetheless there surely needs to be more emphasis on the fruit of the spirit (Gal 5:22,23) rather than the glamorous spiritual gifts. And to follow in Jesus' footsteps means servanthood -- helping the poor, imprisoned, blind, and oppressed (Luke 4:18,19) -- not seeking earthly power.

And now a (mangled) quote:
Your Eschatology affects your present Theology.

Premillennial Calvinists hold to some kind of fatalistic, nihilistic, afterlife-mentality approach to living that throws out the value of now for the sake of the value of the hereafter. They look forward to Creation being burnt up, the depraved non-elect being burnt alive and flying away to paradise to forget all about this awful existence.

I think we need to consider this issue carefully and also think about why we believe what we do. What we believe about God, humans, creation, salvation and other facets of theology will inform our behaviour down to the everyday, practical level.

If we don't think about it properly and don't have a strong foundation to our thoughts - tested by scrutiny, opposition and dialogue - then our thinking will probably just go to the Byrds.

(from http://phrenicphilosophy.blogspot.com/2005/11/right-to-die.html)

[j]

But it's not a matter of "evangelicals bad, progressives good".

Yes it is.

"Their Fervency, certainty, adherence to Biblical inerrancy, and a faith empowered by the Holy Spirit are evidence of a redeemed life.

No it isn't. I'm fervently certain of the non-existence of God. Does that make me redeemed?

[Skyknight]

The way you speak of visitation pastors/clerics/etc., it sounds like this is a necessary step to reaching the senior echelons. So how did LaHaye get away from all the pain and sorrow that's entailed? From Scaramouche's story, I get the feeling that this is partially meant to make absolutely sure one has the spiritual fortitude that a pastor ought to have--a kind of winnowing.

{quiet chuckle} Maybe "visitation pastoring" should be renamed "pastor boot camp", with Azrael filling in for the drill sergeant...

[Where's my LB Friday?]

:-)

[cjmr's husband]

My guess is that he didn't avoid Visitation Pastoring, so much as waste the time reading dirty magazines as described.

[Skyknight]

...? I thought LaHaye's avatar/Stand/self-insert/whatever-your-term-of-choice-is was supposed to be Steele, not Barnes.

On a side note...how, exactly, is the name "Rayford Steele" supposed to sound like a pornography actor's name? I can't figure it out at all. At a guess, I would imagine that this is how LaHaye worked it out...

ray: light (substance of God)
ford: determination (get across the river no matter how fierce the current)
steel: resilience (how DO you shatter a plate of steel, without liquid helium or a blowtorch?)

[Scott]

On a side note...how, exactly, is the name "Rayford Steele" supposed to sound like a pornography actor's name?

A butch sounding first name (one or two syllables, w/ nice, hard consonants) and a last name that reminds you of a tough material. Like "Chuck Pylon" from MST3K.

They should have named him "Big McLargeHuge" :-)

[Beth]

"...the whole "God works in mysterious ways" thing."

This line--nor any variation or restatement thereof--appears nowhere in the Bible.

It's actually one of the primary themes of the book of Job.

"But it's not a matter of "evangelicals bad, progressives good".

Yes it is.

There may be evangelical beliefs or individual evangelicals that are bad, but to make a sweeping statement like "evangelicals, bad," sounds like bigotry to me.

[L]

how DO you shatter a plate of steel, without liquid helium or a blowtorch?

You bend it or pound on it repeatedly. Eventually metal fatigue catches up with it and flaws develop. Then it's just a matter of time.

Of course, it depends on the steel. The thicker it is, the more effort it will take. As a rule though, the harder it is the more brittle. (Metaphor-makers take note!)

And yes, "Rayford Steele" does sound porny. And if not porny, then masculine exaggerated to the point of absurdity. It's a caricature of a male name. You expect someone with a name like that to have something to prove. Even more so for a man with a nickname like "Buck" that he insists everyone use.

[J]

"There may be evangelical beliefs or individual evangelicals that are bad, but to make a sweeping statement like "evangelicals, bad," sounds like bigotry to me."

And yet, there it is.

When I meet ONE evangelical that supports gay rights, a woman's right to chose, contraception, and stem cell research, then I'll consider revising my estimation of them. When I meet one evangelical who doesn't see the theory of evolution as a dirty communist plot, then maybe I'll re-think things. When I meet ONE evangelical who ISN'T a diehard cheerleader and/or all-purpose apologist for the use of American armed force in the world, then they'll have earned my respect. When I meet one evangelical who doesn't have a cartoonish aversion to "secular culture" but instead appreciates and enjoys it the way I do, then maybe I'll . . .

No, wait, nevermind: My basic aversion to evangelicals is that they believe in god, which I consider a basic disqualifier for being a person of real intelligence or perception.

[J]

Hmm, y'know what, you're RIGHT L: I AM bigoted against evangelicals. (Though no more than I'm bigoted against Muslims, Hindus, Mormons, Catholics, etc . . .). I hate them. I hate them exactly to the same degree and in the same manner that slaves hate their masters. I am bigoted against them in the same way that Jews were bigoted against the Cossacks (or that other group of people whom I will not mention here for fear of breaking a certain Internet Rule).

So no, L, I do not agree with you at all if your point is that dislike of evangelicals is somehow a heinous crime of mind or of tongue. Seculars, gays, liberals: None of us have done ANYTHING to you people except to be who we are. The freedoms we want do not abridge ANY of yours and yet the "freedoms" entail mostly the freedom to restrain, control, and dominate us.

Fuck the Kingdom.

[J]

Hmm, y'know what, you're RIGHT L: I AM bigoted against evangelicals. (Though no more than I'm bigoted against Muslims, Hindus, Mormons, Catholics, etc . . .). I hate them. I hate them exactly to the same degree and in the same manner that slaves hate their masters. I am bigoted against them in the same way that Jews were bigoted against the Cossacks (or that other group of people whom I will not mention here for fear of breaking a certain Internet Rule).

So no, L, I do not agree with you at all if your point is that dislike of evangelicals is somehow a heinous crime of mind or of tongue. Seculars, gays, liberals: None of us have done ANYTHING to you people except to be who we are. The freedoms we want do not abridge ANY of yours and yet the "freedoms" you want entail mostly the freedom to restrain, control, and dominate us.

Fuck the Kingdom.

[The Old Maid]

(decloaking from lurker status)

I second the vote for "Joan of Arcadia." I'd also recommend an out-of-print book called "When your friend is dying" by Betsy Burnham.

Would also comment that there is a quote to the effect that "The worst thing about being ill is the way other people change." In that aspect Bruce Barnes is at least consistent: he was consistently clueless. His idea of getting a clue is to urge the protagonists to get some earth-moving equipment and build their own Bat-Caves. (To his credit, that plan works quite well. It has little to do with spreading the Good News, but it keeps the characters alive so we can spend 12 volumes with them.)

About the variations in evangelicals, has anyone read Philip Yancey?

"So how did LaHaye get away from all the pain and sorrow that's entailed? From Scaramouche's story, I get the feeling that this is partially meant to make absolutely sure one has the spiritual fortitude that a pastor ought to have--a kind of winnowing.

{quiet chuckle} Maybe "visitation pastoring" should be renamed "pastor boot camp", with Azrael filling in for the drill sergeant..."

Dunno. Maybe there's a pastor ROTC program?

"Where's my LB Friday? :-) "

At least his New Year's resolution lasted longer than mine. I didn't make it to New Year (i.e. "I will not join more forums until I've caught up on my real-world projects or Jan. 1"). I don't know what your "fun with newbies/make the newbie earn his keep" rituals are here, so I'll just introduce myself who might know a little about "What's behind Left Behind," what with writing 185+ pages on it and all. Might tide you over until Fred's next post.

http://oldmaid.jallman.net

[bulbul]

I second The Old Maid's seconding of "Joan of Arcadia", especially episodes 1x01 through 1x12. 1x12 was such a strong climax I stopped watching the show for some time. While all the rest of season 1 and season 2 was quite good, nothing would ever top the emotional intensity of those twelve episodes. I am rarely moved by movies or television, but this show really got under my skin.

As for you, J:
My basic aversion to evangelicals is that they believe in god, which I consider a basic disqualifier for being a person of real intelligence or perception.
I AM bigoted against evangelicals. Though no more than I'm bigoted against Muslims, Hindus, Mormons, Catholics
You actually sound like an evangelical.

I am bigoted against them in the same way that Jews were bigoted against the Cossacks (or that other group of people whom I will not mention here for fear of breaking a certain Internet Rule)
There is no such "Rule". There is only a description of what usually happens at some point in a long thread of online discussions. You do understand the difference between a rule and a description, don't you?

Fuck the Kingdom.
Lead me not into temptation...