L.B.: The real sin of the Rev. Bruce Barnes

Left Behind, pp. 195-197

To put meaning in one’s life may end in madness,
But life without meaning is the torture
Of restlessness and vague desire --
It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.

-- Edgar Lee Masters, from "Spoon River Anthology"

Rayford Steele's wife, Irene, was snatched away by God because she was a Real True Christian. She had learned to be an RTC at the New Hope Village Church. Looking for answers, Rayford drives to the church to meet with the Rev. Bruce Barnes -- one of only a handful from the congregation who were left to live because they were, it turns out, not really Real True Christians.

"How did you miss it?" Rayford asks Barnes. And the now-penitent visitation pastor tells him. Barnes offers a three-page monologue describing a life of hypocrisy and insidious sin. The acts he details are ... well, rather unimpressive, actually. The guy may have been a half-assed pastor, but he was scarcely even a quarter-assed sinner.

I told my wife that we tithed to the church, you know, that we gave 10 percent of our income. I hardly ever gave any, except when the plate was passed I might drop in a few bills to make it look good.

I probably shouldn't downplay this too much, since Ananias and Sapphira were punished rather severely for a more extreme case of something similar -- but this still seems rather petty. Yes, lying to his wife was wrong. And the hypocrisy of trying to look generous when the offering plate was passed was wrong. But we're also talking about his tithing back to the church the income he just received from the church -- which makes the whole thing seem like the way Barnes & Noble promises a 35 percent discount on a 50 percent markup. (And for Judas' sake, haven't these people ever heard of pre-addressed offering and tithing envelopes? With this kind of shoddy bookkeeping you just know somebody on the finance committee was skimming.)

The real sense you get reading this -- and reading about all of Barnes' other sins -- is of a not-very-imaginative pastor standing in the pulpit, just knowing that his congregants have sin in their hearts, but unable to imagine what that sin might be. LaHaye and Jenkins here are poorly served by their Protestant rejection of the sacrament of confession. You'd never read such a paltry list of sins in a novel by a Catholic priest like Andrew Greeley.

I encouraged people to share their faith, to tell other people how to become Christians. But on my own I never did that.

Here again, the hypocrisy is probably worse than the actual sin of omission. Evangelism is a Christian imperative, but it is not a universal gift, so I'm not completely sure his failure to exercise that gift even is a sin of omission. (And, in the context of this book, Irene is never condemned for not telling her husband and daughter "how to become Christians.")

The real dynamic here, I think, is that when evangelism is reduced to a sales pitch, to telling "other people how to become Christians," then it becomes an awkward, embarrassing, cringe-inducing experience for all involved. The only way to get Christians to engage in this mutually painful form of marketing is to lay on the guilt as thick and heavy as possible. This is part of that guilt trip: Move the product or you're going to Hell.

Barnes goes on to confess that, "I hardly ever read my Bible except when preparing a talk or lesson." He views this as another sin of omission, a failure to carry out another Christian duty. L&J insist that Christians must carry out such duties, and so they include this too in their guilt-trip. But what if Barnes' real failure here is not his failure to carry out his duty, but rather the fact that he seems to view such things as duties to be carried out?

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. But I never did that on my own, privately.

We've already discussed that Barnes wasn't good at this -- that he shows no hint of awareness of the kind of human suffering one encounters in "homes and nursing homes and hospitals every day." But bracket that for now.

If Barnes really spends his work-week carrying out such a ministry, is it then a sin of omission that he fails to do this same work as a volunteer on his days off? For that to be true, we would have to conclude that all paid ministry is illegitimate. We would have to conclude that those selfish bastards at the local rescue mission don't really care about the poor because, after a long day ladling soup and doing laundry on the clock they don't go and do those same things again on their own, privately.

Fortunately, we're spared having to dwell on the illogic of this confession by Barnes' next statement, in which he seems blissfully unaware that he is refuting his claim to have been good at his job:

I was lazy. I cut corners. When people thought I was out calling, I might be at a movie in another town.

Here, finally, we come to some full-fledged sin. Not just sloth, but also a kind of theft from the offering plate that's far graver than his confessed skimping on the tithe. Barnes is also guilty of being a shoddy craftsman. Being a visitation pastor is his vocation, and failure to seek excellence in one's vocation -- as Calvin, Luther and Aquinastotle all taught -- is a sin. This latter point doesn't occur to Barnes because it doesn't occur to L&J: witness their own slapdash, lazy, corner-cutting approach to their vocation as novelists.

So far, then, Barnes has confessed to petty avarice, pride and sloth. Throughout most of Christian history, pride has been considered the most serious of the sins. Within American evangelicalism, however, it takes a backseat to what is regarded as the naughtiest of evils:

I was also lustful. I read things I shouldn't have read, looked at magazines that fed my lusts. ... I wasn't a rapist or a child molester or an adulterer, though many times I felt unfaithful to my wife because of my lusts.

There it is. In L&J's world, the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life aren't enough to make you a really bad person. You've got to have the lust of the flesh. For L&J, nothing says "sinner" like sneaking a peek at Playboy. (Except, perhaps, sneaking a peek at Playgirl -- but that's another subject.)

It's also kind of quaint that Barnes looked at actual "magazines." Usually, when writing a book set in the "near future," the authors will look at technological trends and, projecting them forward, try to imagine how such technologies will reshape the world of their novel. Here, as with the advent of cell phones, L&J failed to predict the rise of Internet porn. Predicting the near future is a tricky business, though, so I'll give them a pass (without even speculating on whether they actually failed to foresee this trend or just pretended to).

And while we're on the subject of cataloging sins, let's note that it's a bit disturbing the way Barnes lists rape, child molestation and adultery together without any sense that one of these things is not like the others. He lumps these together as though they are mere points on a spectrum of sexual sins, as though all of these are forms of pleasure, as though no distinction can be made between predation and akrasia.

"I had a real racket going," Barnes was saying, "and I bought into it. Down deep, way down deep, I knew better. I knew it was too good to be true. ..."

Here's where he loses me completely. What "racket"? What part of Barnes' miserable, stunted, furtive, hollow existence could possibly be regarded as "too good to be true"?

A reader might have hoped -- against all prior evidence to the contrary -- that L&J, were attempting something subtle here. Perhaps they intended readers to see Barnes as a sad little man living a life of quiet desperation. But no, they genuinely seem to think that Barnes was enjoying the high life as he took license with the promise of God's forgiveness and pursued the pleasures of the flesh. They seem almost jealous of his sleepwalking, half-dead existence. It's the same jealousy one sees whenever a particularly colorful former sinner stands to give his testimony, and everyone inches forward in the pews to hear again about Brother Jim's wretched past of unbridled womanizing and drunkenness.

What's striking here -- and all the more striking because the authors themselves seem not to notice it -- is how color-less Barnes' life as a sinner was. It would be wrong even to say he had lived the life of a sinner -- he hadn't lived life at all.

This, I would argue, was Bruce Barnes' real sin. And it's far more dangerous, far more soul-killing, than the full-blooded pursuit of pleasure by a Brother Jim, or a Faust, or a Qoholeth. Sin boldly. Better to be a crack addict chasing a counterfeit of the pearl of great price than to be chasing nothing at all.

In my favorite prayer of confession from The Book of Common Prayer, we say, "Too often we carry on our lives as if You did not exist." Bruce Barnes is certainly guilty of that, but he also carried on his life as if he did not exist. He confesses to a litany of petty sins, but not to the sin of pettiness itself -- of living a small, numb, meaningless life. That's the kind of sin that breaks God's heart.

Barnes wasn't "left behind" -- he stayed behind on his own.

Comments

[JeffL]

This is part of that guilt trip: Move the product or you're going to Hell.

The Reverend Barnes doesn't get to get raptured.

Being raptured... is for CLOSERS.

[incandescens]

As this condition becomes more fully established, you will be gradually freed from the tiresome business of providing Pleasures as temptations. As the uneasiness and his reluctance to face it cut him off more and more from all real happiness, and as habit renders the pleasures of vanity and excitement and flippancy at once less pleasant and harder to forego (for that is what habit fortunately does to a pleasure) you will find that anything or nothing is sufficient to attract his wandering attention. You no longer need a good book, which he really likes, to keep him from his prayers or his work or his sleep; a column of advertisements in yesterday's paper will do. You can make him waste his time not only in conversations he enjoys with people whom he likes, but in conversations with those he cares nothing about on subjects that bore him. You can make him do nothing at all for long periods. You can keep him up late at night, not roistering, but staring at a dead fire in a cold room. All the healthy and outgoing activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so that at least he may say, as one of my own patients said on his arrival down here, "I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked." The Christians describe the Enemy as one "without whom Nothing is strong". And Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man's best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off.

-- The Screwtape Letters, CS Lewis

[cm]

Wow. For some reason, this post really hit home. If you'll excuse me, I've got some thinking to do.

[Garnet]

Barnes goes on to confess that, "I hardly ever read my Bible except when preparing a talk or lesson." He views this as another sin of omission, a failure to carry out another Christian duty. L&J insist that Christians must carry out such duties, and so they include this too in their guilt-trip.

I'm sorry, Christian evangelical pre-millenial dispensationalist fundamentalists consider it a hell-worthy trespass not to read the Bible? These guys are almost uniformly, shockingly ignorant of what the Bible says beyond a few choice passages (Leviticus, Revelations, stuff about Sodom); hearing L&J argue, with a straight face, that people who don't read the Bible for fun is just... inconcievable.

[Scott]

And the hypocrisy of trying to look generous when the offering plate was passed was wrong. But we're also talking about his tithing back to the church the income he just received from the church

Any significant tithe is done by check (nobody puts 10% of their income in the collection plate as cash) - the church would be expecting records and to know how much he was tithing. This doesn't pass the smell test.

Usually, when writing a book set in the "near future," the authors will look at technological trends and, projecting them forward, try to imagine how such technologies will reshape the world of their novel.

The internet is all porn in later books, after the authors do some late night surfing of their own. :-)

He confesses to a litany of petty sins, but not to the sin of pettiness itself -- of living a small, numb, meaningless life.

Unfortunately, too many people use language like this to force others into their own grandious schemes - you're morally suspect if you don't want to "save the world", by either the right's or left's ideology (and just coincidently giving the speaker power over you). There's no sin, IMHO, in lacking a delusion of grandeur.

For example, C.S Lewis (I'm paraphrasing from memory) had a comment in a book about everyone wanting to be a "great lover" - instead of the mundane ("small"??) life of going thru a dull patch in a normal, every day marriage, they run off w/ the pool boy/girl to have the drama of "look what I gave up for love" and the related emotional rush.

IMHO, the world would be better off if people sinned small by looking at dirty pictures (to whatever degree that's a sin - I can't say I care if you do) than sinned 'boldly' w/ cocaine and hooker binges. Saying the second is OK if 'balanced' by big works you approve of is just selling a Clinton-era indulgence.

[Jon H]

Ah, so Screwtape created the world wide web.

Makes sense.

[Holden Lewis]

I have to say that Fred is the reason I keep visiting this site, and commenters like Scott are why I enjoy it so much.

Scott's comments remind me of an AA slogan: "Keep on trudgin'." 'Tis an honorable thing to muddle through, to treat people well, to strive not to fuck up too badly, to remind oneself that one's needs shouldn't come before everyone else's. Yeah, and if that means toughing out a dull spot in one's marriage, then stop complaining and do it.

There is a political dimension to this, too. What Scott terms "grandiose" in personal terms is called "utopian" in political terms. We know what happens when utopians get power. L&J and all millenial dispensationalists are utopians who believe that the path to heaven runs through Armageddon.

[Spherical Time]

Scott,

I agree, the world would probably be a better place if people "sinned small" with dirty pictures . . . but is that a realistic interpretation of "sinning small?"

I mean, as a non Christian I find it hard to believe that L&J enforce not just "True Christianity" but perfection on those that they chose to rapture. It sounds like they say that this small stuff wasn't just the small stuff, it was the big stuff, the stuff that kept Banes on Earth.

This demand for perfection from the raptured questions obscures something that I thought I understood about Christianity, and that is that faith in Jesus Christ as one's personal Lord and Saviour is the key. Can someone be saved, and still peek at the dirty pictures? Not according to L&J.

So when Fred says, "Where is the sin of pettiness?" I think he's asking a question that might have saved Barnes if L&J had asked him it before the rapture. If Barnes understood that his preoccupation with the small sins was petty, he might have asked, well, what's the big sin? And that's the sin of not having faith in Jesus Christ, which Barnes doesn't seem to understand is the root of his problems. So to L&J equivocate all sins to this one. Big and small, every sin is not having faith in Jesus Christ.

The problem for me is that Barnes still couldn't understand what he's missing. The traumatic experience of being slapped silly isn't going to bring you to faith, and L&J's rapture was just that. Through pain someone doesn't come to love . . . unless it's a really sick and twisted love. A Stockholm syndrome of the soul, perhaps.

Anyway, the grand point of all this is that L&J don't understand "sinning small," because they have no conception of "sinning big." Barnes doesn't understand the differences between his sinning and "big sinning," so he beats himself up. But when it comes down to it, L&J don't understand his motivation to beat himself up.

I've never met a perfect Christian though. For me, the difference between Barnes and Irene is that Barnes was aware of his mistakes. If he was a true L&J Christian, he shouldn't have been. He should have been Steele or Williams, with no conception of his shortcommings. In real life, it isn't the bad Christians that "sin small," it's the good ones.

ETA: I'm looking back over this . . . and I don't know that I've made my point, but I'm posting it anyway.

[Kirala]

Big, small, the size of the sin is almost immaterial. For one thing, God can forgive about any sin, so obsessing over anything isn't going to do anything but keep you away from God that much longer. I think Fred nailed it with the pettiness thing. The problem comes in when your life is about petty things. Sure, everyone has everyday business to attend to, and sure, that everyday business may not look spectacular. But the King of the Universe has created each of us and invited us into a radically close relationship. Should a person in that relationship then live for the everyday things? Seems like Bruce isn't really in it. But LaHaye and Jenkins seem to be mistaking the symptoms for the disease here.

[Andrew J]

"Bruce Barnes"? I still can't get over these people's names. L&J must use a name generator, that's all I can say. Or they randomly pull out whatever words they think of first.

Again, very good post, Fred! I'm glad my prophecy was right, in that I posted on an earlier topic that my favorite moments were a.) when Chole returns home, b.) when they meet Bruce Barnes, c.) Rayford feeling God's spirit [we haven't gotten to this nebulous, cold passage yet, but we're close; I swear, either God is evil or Rayford is the most unfeeling man in the history of the human race--he barely notes it for more than a paragraph, and never really mentions it again!], and d,) when Cameron "Buck" Williams begins hitting on Chole in a juvenille, grade school romance full of awakwardness. Plus there's Nicolae Carpathia's incredibly pointless "demonstration of power" (the narrative and advertising description of it that I've seen is identical) at the end of the book that's basically the equivelant of a B action movie villain killing off his top men for no reason other than "HAHAHAH! I was using you all along! I couldn't possibly need you further! Witness my power, though no one [that I know of] will remember a bit of it in five minutes!"

I can't wait until Fred gets to the end.

[Ray]

The tithing bit confused me too. Aren't donations to your church tax-deductible, in the US? If people really are contributing significant sums (or claiming that they are), they're not going to just drop it in the collection plate, right?

[Doctor Science]

The trouble with the Screwtape quotation incandescens quoted is that it's an excellent clinical description of depression (been there, done that, burned the ugly ugly T-shirt). In his writing over the years Lewis struggled IMHO unsuccessfully with the problem of the religious significance of mental & emotional illness, and I see this discussion heading that same way.

One of the intrinsic difficulties with evangelical Christianity, and not just the fundamentalist-dispensationalist variety, is that it places great emphasis on your inner state. Barnes is Unsaved because, whatever he did, he did not have the right inner state, that sense of interior spiritual conviction that lets the True Believer know he is truly Saved.

At least, that's what I think L&J are trying to say. But we can see in this discussion where the uncomfortable cracks are in their viewpoint. If Barnes could achieved the proper inner state with the right medications, how much of a moral/theological failure were his emotional lacks?

This is why I personally am 100% for justification by works, dudes. If Barnes visited the sick and imprisoned and helped them feel better, it doesn't matter much why he did it or how he felt about it. It's nice to give someone a meal prepared with love, but a lot of the time what they need is a *meal*.

[cjmr's husband]

Well, you have to remember that he thinks his sin is telling his wife that he tithes, not that he tells the church. Was his wife raptured? If so, then she is a Good Wife (tm) and wouldn't worry her pretty little head about the taxes, and wouldn't dream of checking his finances. Just sayin'.

(cjmr: got my 1040 started yet?)

[cjmr]

No, I don't. And you're a fine one to talk about tithing. If you don't mind the fact that we don't have the statement of giving from the church yet and thus can't take our offerings off our taxes, I can do it this afternoon.

[VKW]

"Bruce Barnes is certainly guilty of that, but he also carried on his life as if he did not exist."

I am too lazy to seek out the quote, but I (vaguely) remember a statement from a famous rabbi (I'll just call him Shlomo for the sake of the story) to the effect, "When I die, I will not be asked, 'Why were you not Moses?' but instead, 'Why were you not Rabbi Shlomo?'"

Or, for those who prefer an attempt at humor, another story concerned the expansion of the Nerf(TM) line of products, listing various increasingly unlikely ideas culminating in the Nerf Life, in which nothing painful or eventful can ever happen.

Good stuff, Fred. One of the highlights of my week.

[pharoute]

If failure to seek excellence in one's vocation is a sin can't we argue that Barnes' obvious "going through the motions" is evidence that being a pastor was not his vocation? It might have been his job and he excercised free will in choosing it but perhaps it wasn't his calling. Also this whole post reminds me of the "hot/cold/luke warm spit you out" passage in the Bible but at the moment I'm too slothful to dig it up...

[bulbul]

...so that at last he may say, as one of my own patients said on his arrival down here, "I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked". The Christians describe the Enemy as one "without whom Nothing is strong". And Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man's best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off.

[Beth]

I think Spherical Time is really onto something here:

For me, the difference between Barnes and Irene is that Barnes was aware of his mistakes. If he was a true L&J Christian, he shouldn't have been.

This seems to be an unspoken teaching, not just of L&J but of many salvation-centered denominations: once you've been saved, you never have to worry about sinning again. And while they'd never put it that way, the corollary is as ST described. I know that some people have an almost allergic reaction to the "we are all sinners" formula, but if you think of it not as "we are all shameful little worms who should spend our days in self-flaggelation," but "we are all imperfect, as is our nature as human beings," it can inspire such virtues as compassion and non-judgementalism. I don't think its a coincidence that LB, which seems so rooted in "we're saved and therefore without sin," is also so strikingly lacking in those virtues.

The trouble with the Screwtape quotation incandescens quoted is that it's an excellent clinical description of depression

Thank you, Doctor. I really needed to hear that. I was upset by the quote in a way that didn't seem at all healthy. It's always uncomfortable to recognize yourself in a less than flattering portrait, but instead of a spur to self-examination and change, this one felt like an utter condemnation, saying in effect, "See, you really are guilty and deserve all the misery and self-loathing that you feel." Remembering that what I'm dealing with is not a special failure but a special challenge helps a lot.

Back to this week's reading, one thing that struck me about the list of Bruce's sins is that they're mostly sins, not against God or against Man, but against the church. It sounds like Bruce was left behind mostly for failing to work long enough hours for the church, recruit new members for the church, or give enough money to the church. (BTW, any thoughts on what Bruce did with all that tithe money he pocketed? I'm sure "men's magazines" aren't cheap, especially at newsstand prices, but it's hard to imagine anyone spending anything approaching 10% of their income on them.)

VKW, The rabbi was named Zusia, and I agree, it's a wonderful, and wonderfully apt quote.

[bulbul]

Clinton-era indulgence
Did I miss anything?

[bulbul]

The trouble with the Screwtape quotation incandescens quoted is that it's an excellent clinical description of depression
To me, this sounds like another version of "Most men lead lives of quite desperation".

pharout: Revelation 3:15-16

I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.
So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.

[Reverend Ref]

It's also kind of quaint that Barnes looked at actual "magazines." Usually, when writing a book set in the "near future," the authors will look at technological trends and, projecting them forward, try to imagine how such technologies will reshape the world of their novel. Here, as with the advent of cell phones, L&J failed to predict the rise of Internet porn.

They didn't even need to predict the rise of internet porn. They simply could have . . . borrowed . . . some existing technology from an old TV show that did use futuristic stuff. Anyone ever hear of a holodeck?

Had I had a holodeck when I was 15, I probably would've been in there for years . . . can anyone say "Yeoman Janice Rand"?

[cjmr]

did that work?

[bill]

I get it now. The torture of being Left Behind is getting caught up in soap opera written by middle schoolers.

What's hell going to be like? Perhaps sinners in hell will be forced to read and reread the entire LB series for eternity.

[pepperjackcandy]

The trouble with the Screwtape quotation incandescens quoted is that it's an excellent clinical description of depression [snip]

One of the intrinsic difficulties with evangelical Christianity, and not just the fundamentalist-dispensationalist variety, is that it places great emphasis on your inner state. Barnes is Unsaved because, whatever he did, he did not have the right inner state, that sense of interior spiritual conviction that lets the True Believer know he is truly Saved.

So if the Saved have an inner feeling of certainty, does that mean they're manic?

:sotto voce: Sure would explain the behavior of the PMD fundies my college roommate hung around with.

[Stan Taylor]

I'm sure "men's magazines" aren't cheap, especially at newsstand prices, but it's hard to imagine anyone spending anything approaching 10% of their income on them.)

Yeah, but most assistant pastors don't make much money.

[SV]

So, if the experience of giving in to sin is one of clinical depression...

And clinical depression can be fought off with prozac and other pharmaceuticals...

Does that make Elrond Hubbard the devil?

[pharoute]

Elrond Hubbard? Uncle of Arwen Holmes?

[pharoute]

Thanks Bulbul...hmm only sort of fits with this I guess...

Obviously the movie Barnes was watching wasn't "Defending Your Life"

[Mara]

Back when I was in high school, I told a friend (someone I looked up to in my church's young adults group) that I had been in the SCA, doing medieval reenacting, when my dad had been posted to the West Coast, and I was thinking of getting involved with the SCA again on the east coast. This friend highly disapproved -- he equated the SCA with D&D (which he thought was satanic or something), and, aside from that, as a distraction from the True Business of a Christian, i.e., spreading the gospel. (This guy would take his New Testament on the Metro and use his commute as an excuse to accost fellow passengers with the Gospel.) I was, and still am, a history buff; got to look at some medieval manuscripts and early printed books last weekend, and it just made me tickled pink to see, and handle, medieval MS. I never did rejoin the SCA, but my interest in costume, art, period music, textiles, etc., are abiding. These things make me happy. But I was made to feel guilty for spending money and/or time on myself and on anything that was considered self-indulgent because it was secular. I've tried to retrain myself not to feel that way, but old habits die hard.

So, yes, basically, to this sort of Christian, anything pleasurable that isn't directly related to the spreading of the gospel is a sin. You can't just read a good book or listen to music. If you're reading a book, it ought to be Christian literature. If you're listening to music, it should be Christian music. If you practice some sort of art or craft, you ought to be using it for the glory of God, not simply enjoying it for its own sake. I think this makes fundie artists, writers, etc. think less about the actual technical aspects of their craft. Maybe this is an explanation of why the LB books are so bad. What the authors are doing, they do to the glory of God, so their focus isn't on the actual craft of storytelling so much as it is on their "mission", i.e., spreading the Word.

Granted, there are a few religious artists/musicians/etc. out there who do halfway decent work, but, IMO, the imperative to do everything in such a restrictive context seems to make many Christian fundamentalists' work insipid and shallow. Artists and musicians in previous eras did wonderful work in both religious and secular contexts (thinking about Bach and various 17th c. painters, here), so it's possible to do good religious art, but those artists also did secular work and they had to compete in the marketplace with other artists doing the same thing, so were forced to hone their craft. And shoddy work wasn't accepted because it was "Christian" and therefore somehow holier.

Think I should go sign up for that art class my sis was talking about. And maybe the weaving class I've been eyeing, while I'm at it. And NOT feel guilty for spending the money on myself.

[Lucia]

If you practice some sort of art or craft, you ought to be using it for the glory of God, not simply enjoying it for its own sake.
As Fred and others have commented before, what glorifies God (not in the fundie view, but in mine) is doing whatever you do the best you possibly can. I also think that your creative spirit is your direct pipeline to God -- whether you get paid for your art or not, whether anyone else ever sees it or not, when you are creating God is there with you. To do less than your best (however good, bad or indifferent that best may be) perverts that gift and sins in a much deeper way than leering at magazines.

Btw, if you mark something up 50% and discount the marked-up price 35%, um, aren't you losing money?

[Jay]

"self-indulgent because it was secular."

it is amazing how backwards the general ethos of evangelicalism in America has gotten. it is insanse to think that Jesus himself could not be a pastor or board member in most evangelical churches, could not be a missionary in most evangelical mission organisations, and would probably not have been raptured in LB. Jesus was secular. God used the most secular medium possible- human form- to communicate to people. this fundamentalist elitism is nothing short of phariseeism and arrogant pride.
but it is an ethos, almost a non-descript undercurrent- most pastors, most congregants would glide by blissfully unaware of this guiding thought pattern, and most would do so with *good hearts.* (not to downplay right heart. i agree, works are significant, and it seems that Jesus thought they were imperative (matthew 24?) but he also talks about us knowing him as necessary. so i guess it comes down to what we consider knowing him. unfortuantely, evangelicals would raher concieve of "knowing jesus" in a "serendipity christian bookstore" pink and fluff meely feely kind of way, rather then actually knowing Christ, and being HUMBLED and made HONEST by who HE is.)
but we have slowly asked Jesus to leave our churches-
"its ok Christ, we can handle it from here. look, we got this new projector, and Tim Lahaye is teaching a writing conference, so your fire and creativity just kinda cut our efficiency- so, see ya."

btw, "tithing" isn't even a biblical precept for "christian" financial responsibility. it is par for the course for LJ to perpetuate the idea that "10% is God's and 90% is mine so back the hell up." it would be "unrealistic" for trained EV pastors to tell their congregations that they don't have to give 10%, that was for a specific past time, in a specific past culture. the NT seems to say that if someone is one of Jesus' people that part of that realisation is "ok, so how do i use all this that i have to serve other people?" (and in so doing serve Christ). but this concept is lost to the sales men style of propagation of evangelicalism, where reading your bible is more important then knowing Christ and doing something about it.

When I was a child, my family was poor. My Dad used to scoop up a bunch of those blank offering envelopes from the pews, taken them home, put blank pieces of paper in them, then fold them over and put them in his pocket. Then he could take an envelop out of his pocket every Sunday -- one that looked like everyone else's -- and put it in the plate, just like everyone else. He gave me our real offering of $1 a week to put in the plate. He said he did this so that no one would feel sorry for us, and that it was a secret.

His system worked fine until I learned about the sin of pride in my Sunday school classes and started asking him some difficult questions. Then he just told me to be quiet.

[Jeff]

I'm sorry, Christian evangelical pre-millenial dispensationalist fundamentalists consider it a hell-worthy trespass not to read the Bible?

Part of it is the Protestant idea of the Bible as being the sole authority. This in direct contrast to Catholic church, which until recently actively discouraged its adherents from reading the Bible on their own.

Aren't donations to your church tax-deductible, in the US? If people really are contributing significant sums (or claiming that they are), they're not going to just drop it in the collection plate, right?

Sure you do. That's what the pre-printed envelopes are for. That reminds me: I have to call the church secretary to get my tax form for 2005.

[The Old Maid]

Insta-reaction:

1. Is this a parallel-universe interpretation of scrupulosity? Sounds like No and Yes.

2. Yes, tithes are tax deductible. I do hope the little woman (as in, as little as Hattie) Mrs. Barnes didn't just sign their tax return without reading it. Unless she did read it and someone wrote the wrong numbers knowing they were wrong. But that's the kind of sin that's called a "crime."

[Ray]

If you're deducting your donation, you can't just be dropping it in an envelope in the plate. Either the IRS is taking people's donations on faith, or someone in the church can match the envelope to the donor and provide a record that you include with your form, right?

[PK]

"Btw, if you mark something up 50% and discount the marked-up price 35%, um, aren't you losing money?"

1.5 * (1 - 0.35) = 0.975

Indeed! :)

Scott:

"IMHO, the world would be better off if people sinned small by looking at dirty pictures (to whatever degree that's a sin - I can't say I care if you do) than sinned 'boldly' w/ cocaine and hooker binges."

I want to agree with you here, except that another cool line Screwtape (BTW; show of hands here--how many atheists secretly enjoy reading C.S. Lewis? I used to think I was unique, but I keep meeting more and more of these folks. Maybe it's because his 'general' philosophy is so good, whereas his religious philosophy is so tweedy and unconvincing).

Anyway, according to the Lewis-ian consensus, "great" sins are in a weird way less reprehensible than "petty" sins because great sins tend to require some virtue as well. Looking at dirty pictures? Any dope with a computer and some discretion can do that. But to, say, commit actual adultery requires a certain amount of courage (a definite virtue) and committment (a tenuous virtue). I think Lewis even gives the example of Attila the Hun. Something like, "Yeah he was brutal and murderous, but it can't also be denied he was BRAVE."

Remember when Bill Maher got shouted down (and eventually kicked off the air) for saying the terrorists at least had the courage to use their own bodies as weapons, whereas we in the West tended to lob cruise missiles from a thousand miles away? It might've been an impolitic thing for Maher to say, but he was also right.

It would only take a slightly better world than this one in which to imagine Islamic terrorists, instead of using their bodies as deadly weapons against others, use their bodies as nonviolent weapons in the mode of Gandhi's example. They've got all the courage and committment they need--they just keep getting tripped up by their hatred.

[J]

The above comment was mine, by the way. Forgot to append my name and blog.

More from Scott:

Unfortunately, too many people use language like this to force others into their own grandious schemes - you're morally suspect if you don't want to "save the world", by either the right's or left's ideology (and just coincidently giving the speaker power over you). There's no sin, IMHO, in lacking a delusion of grandeur.

I pretty much agree with you here. Although it might be a good idea to have some larger goal for yourself than just the satisfaction of daily needs and wants, too many folks peddle You-Need-Something-Worth-Dying-For rhetoric for the wrong reasons. Either they're a one-issue person who has a very specific idea of you, yes YOU should consider dying for, or else they're an adventurist in the worst sense of the word--like Teddy Roosevelt or David Brooks--who believes that a "great nation" has to be constantly fighting and struggling or else it will stagnate and become decadent. (Teddy Roosevelt was the rare militarist who actually did some fighting himself; Brooks, meanwhile, has never even BEEN to Iraq)

Which reminds me of three years ago, when we as a nation were busy brainwashing ourselves into thinking this war would be a good and noble thing, some twittering militarist fuckstick pontificated, "Are we really going to become a nation that thinks nothing is worth fighting for?"

Note the slippery ellision: something "worth fighting for". "Fighting for" being a term of art to suggest a noble, civil effort, rather than the vastly more accurate "killing for" or "dying for" or "engaging in sexual torture for".

[Bugmaster]

BTW; show of hands here--how many atheists secretly enjoy reading C.S. Lewis?

Me me ! I loved Narnia (except for the last book, that one was a bit lame) and The Screwtape Letters.

Lewis strikes me as one of those few theists who actually believes that their theism is logically justifiable -- and not based merely on faith. Lewis's arguments are ultimately not convincing, but you've got to admire the effort. Plus, he can actually write well, which is more than I can say for LB&J or whatever their initials are (I keep confusing them with a sandwich). Lewis doesn't just hit you on the head with apologetics -- he strives to make you experience what it's like to be a Christian. I wonder, are there any modern authors who can do the same ?

[cjmr]

If you're deducting your donation, you can't just be dropping it in an envelope in the plate. Either the IRS is taking people's donations on faith, or someone in the church can match the envelope to the donor and provide a record that you include with your form, right?

There are numerous ways to do the accounting (each congregation member being issued personal-numbered envelopes being the most common--I used to be #126) but, yes, the church usually issues you a giving statement at the end of the tax year that you use when filling in your tax form. And the IRS does trust you to report those donations--you don't have to send in the receipt with your tax form (unless you give a one-time material gift of over a certain amount). But you better be able to produce it if you are audited. Or at least the corresponding cancelled checks.

[J]

Lewis strikes me as one of those few theists who actually believes that their theism is logically justifiable -- and not based merely on faith. Lewis's arguments are ultimately not convincing, but you've got to admire the effort.

Yeah, I suppose so. But frankly I have the reverse problem with him: He seems to protest too much. I was 150-some pages into Mere Christianity when I thought to myself, "If this were true, I can't believe it would take this much explaining." He's like Plato that way--the only real "philosopher" I've ever read: The writing is brilliant, scintillating, mesmerizing and totally wrong.

Personally, I've always known that I was ever going to find faith, that it would probably NOT be an intensely intellectual experience for me but would rather be transcendant and direct and personal. And I've had experiences like that--but none of them had the least bit in common with any specific religious tradition that I'm familiar with. I dunno, there is the "lost hour" I spent sitting and staring at the two Assyrian shedu (these guys, with the wings and lion bodies: http://www.metmuseum.org/Works_of_Art/department.asp?dep=3) at the Metropolitan. So that means, what, Inannaism is the one true way?

[Lucy Snowe]

Fred, I was wondering if you had seen Ingmar Bergman's chamber collection on losing his Lutheran faith. (Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, and The Silence) Winter Light is an astonishing piece on the theme that L&J only wish that they could comprehend. ( Incidentally, the spider in Darkly might be a good stand in deity for the Left Behind universe.)

[Martin Wisse]

The real reason the sins of pastor Barnes are so inconvincing is of course that the writers themselves are so lacking in imagination and compassion.

Their characters are counterfeit because they are.

[jay]

bugmaster:

"Lewis doesn't just hit you on the head with apologetics -- he strives to make you experience what it's like to be a Christian. I wonder, are there any modern authors who can do the same ?"

how modern? like technically modern? what about poets? it is interesting to live in a culture where most christains believe the best way to explain God is by linear rhetoric. but linear rhetoric falls short of being able to give voice to "God" on so many counts, eh?
i have recently gotten really immersed in the poetry of Gerard Manly Hopkins- wow. *good* poetry involves you in the process, not merely proving a point.

[Lucia]

So that means, what, Inannaism is the one true way?
There is no one true way, no magic formula that works for everyone. Christianity works for Fred, music works for my DH, if Inannaism works for you, go for it! -- besides, you gotta love the poem about her beer party with Enki.

[J]

"...besides, you gotta love the poem about her beer party with Enki."

Oh absolutely! There's that great part in which Enki hands over the mes (mes=divine essence/nature/elemental concept) to Inanna for such things as falsehood, truthfulness, beer-brewing, music, and fellatio. Resurrecting the Inanna-cult would awesome and I'd join in a second!

...What I meant by "one true faith" was that I somehow doubt that the various Lewises and Dostoivevskis and Pope Bennys and Jack Whelans of the world, when they lament the plague of modern secularism, would feel that Inannaism is exactly what they had in mind for an alternative: "Any faith better than no faith . . . er, except that one. No, uh, not that one either. *Sigh* no, that one's no good either . . . Okay FINE! When I said "any faith" I really meant CHRISTIANITY, are you happy???"

P.S. Everyone should take a look at the new illustrated book "Inanna: From the Myths of Ancient Sumer", by Groundwood Press:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0888994966/sr=1-3/qid=1139346402/ref=pd_bbs_3/102-8772260-8492151?%5Fencoding=UTF8)

[Mark]

Great post, Fred.

One question. Didn't anyone ever take Barnes aside and make him say the "the words"?

That's all it takes to get yourself rapturred, right?

[Roger]

Let me second Jay's recommendation of Hopkins's poetry as a beautiful, brilliant, and smart Christianity without that pushy aftertaste. But for anyone looking him up at home, his name spelling is Gerald Manley Hopkins - you can find some of his stuff online at http://www.bartleby.com/122/ .

-Roger

[Dharvey]

Glad I didn't miss much! And this whole subject is something I remember being a big deal back in my Christian College days. Things like "finding God's will for your life" and "sharing the Gospel" were huge issues that (especially as first-year students) were laid on you all the time. But not by professors - it was other students! Luckily, the professors we had got us to understand that living our lives fully meant getting past the guilt trips.

Pharoute was right on with his post where he wrote "If failure to seek excellence in one's vocation is a sin can't we argue that Barnes' obvious "going through the motions" is evidence that being a pastor was not his vocation?" Of all the jobs in the world, being a religous leader *has* to be something you love to do, doesn't it? However, talk to any pastor and they will tell you, it isn't easy work. Mainly, there is never any *down* time - you never get to leave your job!

So Barnes got kind of burned out under all the scrutiny - and maybe that was a sign he shouldn't be doing this job. But sucking at your job or doing the wrong job for you (if it's being a pastor or whatever) as the standard for not delivering you from evil??? L&J have set a bar no one could reach.

Last thing - I think the Barnes and Noble mark down point is not that they make a lot of money off you by scamming you into thinking you got a great discount - it's that the discount is only 2.5%. If I recall correctly from my bookstore days, it costs a bit more (in shipping, labor, etc.) to have to return the book to the publisher than to sell it for 2.5% less than the bookstore paid for it. The Gene of Gene's Books (once the greatest independent bookstore in all of Southeastern PA IMO) used to make a mint by selling remainder books at ridiculously slashed prices.

[aunursa]

What's striking here -- and all the more striking because the authors themselves seem not to notice it -- is how color-less Barnes' life as a sinner was. It would be wrong even to say he had lived the life of a sinner -- he hadn't lived life at all.

In each book in the series, L&J have at least one of the characters relay their conversion story, which includes an acknowledgement of their sinful nature. While most of the sins are as colorless as that of young Barnes, the authors imply that all those unsaved (faux Christians as well as the faithful of other religions) have lower moral character than the raptured.

Btw, if you mark something up 50% and discount the marked-up price 35%, um, aren't you losing money?"

Not at all. While you're giving a net discount of 2.5%, you're reaping a huge increase in sales that an advertized 35% discount will bring from naive customers.

/Iknowwhatyoumeant.