L.B.: An interlude, ending with a hug

Left Behind, pp. 298-301

This section doesn't quite work. If Tyndale Press had employed an editor for Left Behind (though, clearly, they did not), then that poor soul would have needed to convince LaHaye and Jenkins to do a bit of rewriting here.

But as a reader I'm willing to cut them some slack for this passage for at least three reasons, which we'll deal with in turn.

First, because this little interlude is somewhat nobly intentioned. It serves a kind of pastoral function for those readers who share the authors' stern notion of the ultimate fate of those who have failed to pray the magic words.

Most of LB revels in the eternal suffering of the damned. The logical sequel to this series of books would be L&J's Inferno -- a journey through Hell in which the authors could savor the anguish and eternal torment of everyone who disagreed with them in this life: the scientists and seminarians; the humanists and humanitarians; the Catholics, Jews, Muslims, atheists, Episcopalians and mid-trib advocates; the thousands who die every day in poverty without ever having heard or accepted the innovations of Adventist eschatology that might have saved their immortal souls. All of these have committed the sin of blasphemy against the teachings of LaHaye, and so all receive their temporal comeuppance in Left Behind. The only thing that might bring the authors greater delight would be cataloging that comeuppance as they imagine it will occur throughout an eternity of deserved suffering.

But here, briefly, that triumphalism is put on hold as L&J consider the discomfort that this framework can cause to those readers who may have loved ones who have not yet spoken the magic words. Like Jesus said of the Pharisees, they have bound heavy burdens, grievous to be borne, and laid them on their followers' shoulders. Unlike the Pharisees, though, L&J are at least willing, for a moment, to offer one finger to help carry the weight. This passage is that finger's worth of help -- their attempt to console readers with loved ones who reject premillennial dispensationalism and therefore, they believe, deserve Hell.

The stand-in for these lovers-of-the-damned is, of course, Rayford Steele, who we find racked with grief over the as-yet unresolved eternal peril facing his daughter Chloe. The interlude begins with the belated realization that this is not the only cause Rayford has for grief:

Rayford Steele could not sleep. For some reason he was overcome anew with grief and remorse over the loss of his wife and son. He slid out of bed and onto his knees, burying his face in the sheet on the side where his wife used to sleep. He had been so tired, so tense, so worried about Chloe that he had pushed from his heart and mind and soul his terrible loss. ...

That "for some reason" is odd. It's barely been a week since Rayford lost his wife and son (and his co-pilot, and surely a few other acquaintances, all at once, which has to account for something even with a friendless loner like Rayford). He's barely had time to begin cycling through the Kubler-Ross stages of grief. There's no wrong way to grieve, and it's not at all strange that it takes a week for it to hit him like this. What is strange is that it doesn't hit him like this again, repeatedly, in the weeks and months to come.

The one bit here that rings true is the recognition that his preoccupation with Chloe's spiritual state has been a distraction from his grief. Late one night last month a friend of mine's mother passed away. At 8 a.m. the next morning he was on the roof of his parents' house, cleaning the gutters. He spent the next two days rebuilding their deck and redoing the landscaping in front of their house. This is something we humans do when confronted with death and grief. We clean. We throw ourselves into the welcome distraction of fixing those things that can be fixed because it helps to shield us from having to confront head-on that which cannot be fixed.

Rayford's response to his loss, and his actions over the past week of the story, might have been richer -- more human and more sympathetic -- if we had been allowed to see him wrestling with his grief in this way. That would have entailed a level of complexity in which L&J don't seem interested -- or, worse, won't allow. To what extent is Rayford's newfound religious zeal a side-effect of the shock of loss? To what extent is his own conversion a form of bargaining ("God, if you'll let me see Irene and Raymie again, I'll ...")?

Those sorts of questions are off-limits in the world of LB, in which nearly always a good or evil deed is the result of a correspondingly good or evil motive. We've noted that Carpathia would have been a far more interesting character if his expressed idealism had been at all genuine, if the Antichrist had been portrayed as more of a tragic figure. But tragedy, and even the possibility of tragedy, is not part of L&J's world. (Nor is comedy.) Fallen humanity, they seem to believe, is wicked, but not fallible -- our only shortcoming is sin.

This denial of the tragic, ironically, leads to a hubristic view of human nature. It is also a failure to love. To deny the tragic is to suggest that God loves sinners less than Homer loved Achilles or Shakespeare loved Macbeth. Theology is always just as concerned with human nature as it is with the nature of God, and bad theology inevitably gets both wrong. This is bad theology.

The second reason I'm inclined to treat this section charitably is because, like an Olympic judge, I want to award points for degree of difficulty. Rayford is meant to be in anguish here, and anguish is not an easy thing to portray. Whether on the page or on the stage, the audience will always be able to tell if you're faking it. Jenkins is faking it, which makes it seem like Rayford is too. We're faced with the literary equivalent of overacting:

Rayford knew he had been forgiven for mocking his wife, for never really listening, for having ignored God for so many years. ... But that didn't stop the aching emptiness in his heart, the longing to hold his wife and son, to kiss them and tell them how much he loved them. He prayed for the grief to lessen, but part of him wanted it, needed it, to remain. ...

As Rayford knelt praying and weeping, a new anguish flooded over him. He felt hopeless about Chloe. Everything he had tried had failed. ...

Rayford had never felt more powerless and desperate. How he longed to have Irene and Raymie with him right then. And how he despaired over Chloe.

He had been praying silently, but the torment welled up within him, and despite himself he heard his own muffled cries, "Chloe! Oh, Chloe! Chloe!"

There's more where that came from, enough of it to cause readers to suspect that Jenkins wrote this with an open thesaurus next to him, turned to the entry for "sorrow." It's not as howlingly bad as most of this book tends to be, but it does show again Jenkins' trademark notion of ars poetica -- for all the history of grief / the phrase "all the history of grief." It's not necessarily an inaccurate portrayal of the emotions we are told Rayford is feeling, but neither is it the sort of portrayal that would make any reader who actually has felt this think that Jenkins has felt the same thing. (I hope, for Jenkins' sake, that the abstract quality of this scene arises from his never having experienced what Rayford is going through here. If that's not the case, then he has my sympathy, but come on man, learn to use it.)

The final reason I don't want to judge this scene as harshly as the text that surrounds it is because it deals, primarily, with character. This is, for L&J, rather uncharacteristic. Chloe's eventual salvation is, like everything else in the book, mainly treated as a plot point -- as an event that has to occur next, not because it flows out of the events that occurred before, but because the plot dictates that we must hurry along to the next dot on our Bible Prophecy Timeline. Reading LB is a bit like being on one of those rushed guided tours -- No time for lingering in front of the Van Goghs, the agenda says we have to see all of the French Impressionists in the next 20 minutes. But here, for a moment, we're allowed to linger:

"Are you all right, Dad?" she asked quietly.

"Yeah."

"Nightmare?"

"No, I'm sorry to disturb you."

"I miss them, too," she said, her voice quavery. Rayford turned and sat with his back to the bed. He held his arms open to her. She came and sat next to him, letting him hold her.

"I believe I'll see them again someday," he said.

"I know you do," she said, no disrespect in her voice.

Whatever its merits or demerits as a piece of writing, that scene, for once, treats the Steeles as human characters and not just pawns of plot and prophecy. Characters can't be treated like that for very long before they begin to assert themselves, to begin making choices that the author may not have foreseen.

Such willfulness on the part of their pawns is something that L&J will not allow to go unchecked. They quickly reassert their control. As punishment for his brief flirtation with autonomy, Rayford is forced to take a passive role for the next 14 pages as flagrant exposition is dictated to him, first from CNN anchors who appear to have the authors' outline of the book on their TelePrompTers, and then from Bruce Barnes, who delivers a sermon on "Hal Lindsey for Dummies." Chastened by this beating, it will be a long time before Rayford again behaves as anything resembling a real human.

Comments

[Keith]

So, unless I've missed something, it's taken 300 pages to get to the first genuine bit of character action in the whole book and it's really just a lament that his one surviving daughter hasn't yet converted.

Again, my respect for wading through such hollow, yet illuminating tripe.

[JBLIII]

Yay! More Friday LB! As always, you have my thanks and sympathies for taking this task on yourself. And this week you've earned my deep respect for having the charity to cut L & J some slack. You're a better man than I am.

[Kristin]

Now, why did you have to go and give the authors the idea for LaHaye's Inferno? The only thing that might be worse than that is LaHaye's Paradiso - where instead of Dante and Beatrice, we get an unholy reunion between Rayford and Amanda. Yech - or worse still, Tim and Bev.

[Elmo]

Am I the only one who is creeped out by the image of Rayford sitting on his bed and reaching his arms out to hold his college student daughter?

[Sarah Dylan Breuer]

I agree that it's a relief in one of the very, very rare moments when LaHaye and Jenkins try to portray a character as a human being. You might find it interesting to watch the LB movies, which are as painfully bad as the books, but do have a few more nods in directions you've suggested would have been fruitful in the books: for example, the "last temptation of Buck" takes place on a rooftop looking over the city, and walls along the streets of Chicago are plastered with "Have You Seen," "Please Help Me Find," and "We Miss You" fliers with candles, stuffed toys, and other objects of makeshift memorials below them.

You're right, I think, that the greatest weakness of the LB books is their failure to portray real humanity, without which I think it's impossible to say much that's meaningful about the God in whose image humanity was created, the significance of the Incarnation, or the meaning of redemption.

[Ken]

Chloe's eventual salvation is, like everything else in the book, mainly treated as a plot point -- as an event that has to occur next, not because it flows out of the events that occurred before, but because the plot dictates that we must hurry along to the next dot on our Bible Prophecy Timeline. Reading LB is a bit like being on one of those rushed guided tours ... But here, for a moment, we're allowed to linger.

And that is the real tragedy of Left Behind; the first uber-Christian novel (and series) to get high on all the mainstream best-seller lists in a long time. (What are its sales at nowadays, 70 million and counting?)

Where we get only occasional, quickly-suppressed glimpses of what it could have been instead of "Hal Lindsay for Dummies" going down Darby's End Time Prophecy checklist in "the Ultimate Escape Fantasy, followed by the Ultimate Revenge Fantasy".

[Tonio]

With all due respect to Fred, the idea that L&J contemplated "the discomfort that this framework can cause to those readers" is laughable. Instead, I suspect someone read an early draft of the book and pointed out the obvious and unrealistic lack of grief shown by the characters. Or perhaps one of the authors noticed this after experiencing a personal loss.

Aside...recently I heard "Delta Dawn" for the first time in years, and the song sounded eerily like an anti-PMD allegory.

[Jos]

"I know you do," she said, no disrespect in her voice.

For some reason, this sentence bothers me. I only partly know why.

It's the 'no disrespect' bit. If Chloe had said it without a trace of sarcasm, mockery or doubt, I would have been OK with that. It would've been in character for Chloe. You know, in so far as she has a character.

But why point out that she is 'not disrespectful'? Chloe isn't disrespectful, as far as I can tell. Yeah, sure, she fails to fall on her knees and chant the magic words the instant daddy dearest tells her to, but I wouldn't call that disrespectful.

But still... in order for this scene to be touching and about one human being trying to console another, we need to be told explicitly that Chloe isn't disrespectful right now.

I don't know.

Maybe I'm just oversensitive.

Then again, maybe I have very different opinions than LH&J when it comes to disrepectful offspring.

[aunursa]

Like Jesus said of the Pharisees, they have bound heavy burdens, grievous to be borne, and laid them on their followers' shoulders. Unlike the Pharisees, though, L&J are at least willing, for a moment, to offer one finger to help carry the weight.

From my Jewish perspective, in a just afterlife the authors of the gospels would be punished for the brutal defamation of character they committed against the Pharisees.

[aunursa]

Jos,

That sentence bothered me when I first read it, but I couldn't put my finger on why it bothered me ... I can now. Thanks.

[Tonio]

Dumb question - what was the cutoff age for the Raptured children according to L&J?

[Izunya]

Jos got it, I think. From the viewpoint of L&J, Chloe [i]is[/i] disrespectful, because she fails to blindly follow her father in his newfound magic-word-ist faith. Never mind that she's an adult. Never mind that she's a person in her own right, even.

I don't know whether this denial of Chloe's personhood comes from the fact that she's a woman or because she's the protagonist's child, and L&J see children of whatever age as extensions of the parent's personality and success. To be fair, I don't know for a fact that they see children this way.

I do know that I've encountered that kind of thinking before, and when you're the child, it can mess you [i]up.[/i]

Izunya

[cjmr]

The 'no disrespect' thing would only make sense if in the last piece of dialogue between them, she'd been being disrespectful. But I've lost track of what that dialogue was.

---
Elmo,

I've cried on my dad's lap more than once since becoming an adult woman. It's natural in a time of mutual grief. It would have been weirder if they'd gotten up and gone someplace else, IMHO.

[Bill S]

You might have point there, Tonio:
"She's 41 and her daddy still calls her Baby
All the folks 'round Brownsville say she's crazy,
'Cause she walks downtown with a suitcase in her hand
Looking for a mysterious dark-haired man.
In her younger days they called her Delta Dawn
the prettiest woman you ever laid eyes on
Then a man of low degree stood by her side
and promised her he'd take her for his bride-
Delta Dawn,
what's that flower you have on?
Could It be a faded rose from days gone by?
And did I hear you say
He was meetin' you here today
To take you to his mansion in the sky."

[Jos]

That sentence bothered me when I first read it, but I couldn't put my finger on why it bothered me ... I can now. Thanks.

Glad to see I wasn't the only one bothered by it.

I do have to wonder if Chloe's actions before this scene are (I assume) considered 'disrespectful' by LH&J because she's a woman or because she's Rayford's child.

Probably both.

Of course, if I were feeling charitable, I could claim that if Chloe were Chad, the writers would still feel compelled to point out that there was 'no disrespect' in his voice in this particular scene.

And if I were feeling really charitable I could also claim that LH&J also don't really think Chloe has been acting disrespectful.

But I'm not feeling charitable. And I seriously doubt LH&J are not being unthinkingly misogynistic here.

[Jos]

And Izunya just said exactly what I said.

I really need to type faster.

[NewsCat]

Fred,

I really like the concept of the characters breaking free of their author's intention. (For which they will be punished).

I remember reading something written by Stan Lee about Mary Jane Watson and how when they originally created the character she was not intented to be so vivid and alive. The Gwen Stacey character was going to be Spiderman's main squeeze. But after (I thinka decade) they gave up. Mary Jane was just more exciting than Gwen Stacey, so they had MJ marry Spiderman and killed Gwen.

I'm sure Stan Lee was stretching the truth a bit (maybe they just enjoyed coloring a redhead more than a blond) but I liked the way he wrote about it at the time. That somehow MJ "herself" was breaking the will of her creators. That she was more alive than they intended.

[Jos]

I really like the concept of the characters breaking free of their author's intention. (For which they will be punished).

As far as I can tell, this happens to pretty much every writer out there. You cannot create a character and keep controlling it like a puppet. If you develop him/her/it/they enough there will come a time when they're going to turn around and simply not do what you want.

How you handle this nearly inevitable situation probably says a lot about what kind of writer you really are.

LH&J seem to be handling it by never letting their characters get that far.

Guess what kind of writer that makes them.

[Cosmicdancer]

great defamation of character committed against the Pharisees

THANK YOU!

I'm not Jewish, but I am aware of what a Pharisee actually was and it drives me up the BLINKING WALL every time I hear someone use "Pharisee" as an insult when I know they're confusing it with another word or concept from first century Judea. For some reason, I just get blank looks when I bring it up in front of other Christians.

[Jeff]

Am I the only one who is creeped out by the image of Rayford sitting on his bed and reaching his arms out to hold his college student daughter?

See the "Company Man" episode of Heroes to see this done right. There is no amount of "ewwww" at all in the scenes of Mr Bennett and his daughter. Of course, they've been portrayed as complex characters who've gotten themselves into a very intense and believable love/distrust (not as far as hate) by this point.

[Chris Archer]

It seems that the important sentence from the excerpt has NOTHING to do with poor daughter Chloe- it is this: Everything he had done had failed. Isn't that admission what all of us are called to make? Without Christ and before Christ we ALL are failures and fuck-ups. Nothing can happen until we recognize that. That may be within Tim's theology. I'm not sure about that. This is far beyond anything which he may believe that he knows about. Let's thank God that God is far beyond Tim and Jerry's beliefs!

[X]

Ever seen those Beep Beep cartoons? Wile E. Coyote is chasing the Road Runner down the road, paying no attention to the fact that he and the Road Runner are in thin air over a canyon. Road Runner makes it to the other side and--a little smugly--holds up a sign saying "Look Down". Fatefully, Wile E. Coyote looks down. He realizes he is unsupported in midair and falls down into a flat splat on the canyon floor.

That's kind of my impression of Chloe Steele.

After 18 years of her Lothario father's neglect and her mother's increasing PMD-fixed insanity, she breaks free to the San Francisco Bay Area and its intellectual, cultural and ecumenical freedoms and tolerance...unaware that she is stuck in a PMD novel. Until all at once she encounters her father smugly holding up the "Look Down" sign...and turns into a flat splat in the plot.

[baf]

We throw ourselves into the welcome distraction of fixing those things that can be fixed because it helps to shield us from having to confront head-on that which cannot be fixed.

One of the most poignant things I've ever seen is the "Robot Fixer" section from Greg Pak's film "Robot Stories", which is basically about a woman being hit really hard by the urge you describe here.

[Jeff]

I just get blank looks when I bring it up in front of other Christians.

Considering that most "Christians" I've met (though none here) seem to think that the Bible conssists of the Ten Comandments written over and over again, I'm not surprised. And the Ten Comandments they believe in are:

1 Thou shalt hate gays
2 Thou shalt hate Muslims
3 Thou shalt hate Hispanics
4 IOKIYAR
5 libruls are dirty hippies who want to take away everybody's propertah and give it to Osama bin Laden -- this is the ScottBot Comandment
6 You don't have to actually help anyone as long as you CLAIM to feel bad about it afterward
7 Gay marriage will make your children gay
8 It's OK for legal immigrants to die of heat stroke waiting for work in front of Home Depot as long I get my strawberries for under $30 a pound
9 Torture "Extreme Questioning" works for Jack Bauer, and leaves no lasting affect on his "subjects", so it must be just fine
10 [Fill in the blank]

[Chris Archer]

The most important part of the statement is:
"

Everything he had tried he had failed.' Isn't that what we have to consider about ourselves before we do (or try to) anything else? This is Rayford's admission that He May Not Know All About Everything. Rayford does not; none of us know a thing- including Lahaye and Jenkins.

[Jos]

Everything he had tried he had failed.' Isn't that what we have to consider about ourselves before we do (or try to) anything else?

I'm pretty sure I'm totally not following your line of thought here. From the context, I gather that Rayford is despairing that all his efforts to convert Chloe and save her from the fires of Hell have failed.

Of course, considering the fact that he the only things he tried were bullying Chloe into seeing that vid, preaching constantly to her and dodging her questions, I find it very hard to be sympathetic.

[Hagsrus]

Dumb question, but are there really words to recite that are supposed to guarantee salvation regardless of subsequent conduct?

If so, what are they?

[Jos]

Hagsrus, after a brief dig in the archives, I have found the magic words.

WARNING! Recitation of these words will result into converting to the LH&J branch of Christianity. Do not chant if you would prefer not to convert. It does not matter if you actually mean them. Say them at your own risk.

"Dear God, I admit that I'm a sinner. I am sorry for my sins. Please forgive me and save me. I ask this in the name of Jesus, who died for me. I trust in him right now. I believe that the sinless blood of Jesus is sufficient to pay the price for my salvation. Thank you for hearing me and receiving me. Thank you for saving my soul."

[Bugmaster]

@Hagsrus:
Yes, the words are "Hastur, Hastur, Hasshtrtryarrrrghble#*&^NO CARRIER

[Bill S]

Jeff, I think #10 is "God loves Christians to the exclusion of everybody else, and WE get to define what a REAL Christian is."

[Spalanzani]

They are: Klatu Barato Nikto

Make sure to get that last one right.

[damnedyankee]

Hagsrus:

SHAZAM!

[damnedyankee]

I believe that the sinless blood of Jesus is sufficient to pay the price for my salvation.

Well, if that ain't a loophole big enough to drive a truck through I don't know what is...

[Sam]

I have a theory, one strong enough that I'll unlurk for it.

I think that in this part of the book, the main focus is to show that Chloe is starting to convert to L&Jism. In the evangelical style of L&J (as opposed to the evangelical style of our friend here), to respect is to convert. She cannot properly respect the teachings of Premillenial Dispensationalism unless she believes them. Her "maddening intellectual grid" would forbid such nicety.

I think this has a relation to their hatred(?) of ecumenicalism, though I'm not sure if it's a side-effect of that philosophy, or the cause of it.

[Reverend Ref]

We've noted that Carpathia would have been a far more interesting character if his expressed idealism had been at all genuine, if the Antichrist had been portrayed as more of a tragic figure. But tragedy, and even the possibility of tragedy, is not part of L&J's world. (Nor is comedy.) . . . Theology is always just as concerned with human nature as it is with the nature of God, and bad theology inevitably gets both wrong. This is bad theology.

I'm heading off to our diocesan Family Camp in a couple of days where I will be the chaplain for the week. Besides a daily Eucharist, I am also responsible for some sort of program for the adults while the kids are off doing kid-type things. I'm using "God, the Devil and Bob" as my basic starting point. It's an animated series that had a very short run on NBC several years ago. The Devil really is a tragic figure here, there's some great comedy, as well as a sincere look at human nature and the nature of God. In other words, there is more good theology in each of these 22 minute cartoons than anything we've seen dissected on LB Fridays.

Everything he had tried had failed. ... Rayford had never felt more powerless and desperate.

And this is also something that is theologically wrong. We don't convert people, that is God's job (or the Holy Spirit if you want to get technical). I tell my parishioners all the time, "All we can do is invite people; conversion is God's department." This fundagelical push to constantly figure out how many people you've saved is, for lack of a better term, whacked. It's nothing more than spiritual bullying. Our job as Christians is to proclaim the kingdom of God. We proclaim. We invite. We welcome. We talk. God converts. If the other person rejects that, it's not our problem. But that DOES NOT mean we revel in their (anticipated?) destruction.

Love God. Love your neighbor. Remember you aren't the boss.

[Bugmaster]

@Reverend Ref:
Well, what about people like myself, who don't believe that there is any "boss" at all ? You have shown us the way to salvation, and we rejected it as a fantasy. Now (assuming you're right), we will burn in Hell for all eternity / will be stuck in Limbo forever / will be separate from God for all time / won't get our 72 virgins / etc. Wouldn't you want to push your point... and push and push and push... until the atheists do convert ? It's for their own good, and you love them, right ?

Ok, this is different from typical evangelicals, who only care about themselves ("I've converted 10 people last week ! Woo !"), but still, I'm sure there are some people out there who think that way. Three of them were in my math class...

[Reverend Ref]

Bugmaster:

If you don't believe that there is any "boss" at all, and if you reject it as fantasy, that's your call (that whole free will thing). Am I disappointed? Sure, for a variety of reasons. However, I will not push and push and push... until the atheists do convert. It may be for your own good, as you say, but so was syrup of ipecac (or so my grandmother told me). I would much rather invite you into a discussion about God and invite you to church, be turned down, and then talk about about the Mariners or Seahawks or the weather and have you remain on speaking terms with me (maybe even be considered a friend), than to push and push and push and piss you off.

At least with Option #1 there's a chance you might change your mind. That's how I operate during my bar visits. There's a whole hospitality thing going on there. Not to mention the fact that I do not believe God put me on a quota system.

[Bugmaster]

and have you remain on speaking terms with me (maybe even be considered a friend)

Well, if more people thought like you, we'd have less wars (and less theocratic maniacs in charge), so your stance is quite admirable. Still, it sounds like you'd rather acquire a friend in this life, than rescue the same person's soul from an eternity of torment in the next life. Some people (i.e., zealously religious people) could interpret this as a selfish attitude.

[Fraser]

Newscat, if that's what Stan Lee said he was definitely stretching the truth.
According to everything I've read (don't ask how much), Gwen was, for Stan, Spider-Man's Great Love--and certainly she's pretty close to the kind of sweet devoted girl he usually cast in that role (Betty Ross, Jane Foster, etc.)--as someone once put it, Silver Age Marvel went for Ingrid Bergman as a role model where a lot of the DC romantic leads were more Katherine Hepburn (Iris Allen, Carol Ferris, Hawkgirl).

In any case, Gerry Conway, the writer who actually had the Goblin toss Gwen off the bridge, said his motive wasn't that she was boring--instead it was that she and Peter were clearly headed to marriage, which got too far away from the concept of Peter as the guy who got the short end of the stick all the time--plus killing her would bring back some of the unpredictability Conway liked in the classic Lee/Ditko issues. Stan was extremely, extremely upset by this and strongly opposed it,but he no longer had the deciding vote.
It would be years after that before Peter and MJ started dating, and even longer before they tied the knot, so it's a safe bet it wasn't a Gwen-for-MJ trade.
As for MJ being so full of life--which she is--I'm inclined to agree with the theory it's precisely because she wasn't the Great Love that she was allowed to be a little more fun-loving than Gwen.

[hapax]

Bugmaster -- no, I don't think they're any more interested in "saving a person's soul from an eternity of torment" then Jesurgislac's perpetrator of pester rape/sex was interested in giving his partner an orgasm.

That school of "evangelism" is more concerned with being able to gloat over your eventual damnation with a self-satisfied "well, it wasn't MY fault, I tried!" I suspect that most of them would be secretly disappointed if the technique actually worked.

[Reverend Ref]

Still, it sounds like you'd rather acquire a friend in this life, than rescue the same person's soul from an eternity of torment in the next life.

Um ... not quite. I'd rather remain on speaking terms with you. Whether you are or are not my friend, I really couldn't care less. However, I believe that conversion happens through conversation, which has the potential to open one up to the working of the Holy Spirit. If I push and push and push, as you said earlier, and do nothing but piss you off about me in particular and Christianity in general, then I have helped to shut the door. And that, in my book, is sinful behavior.

I don't know where a conversation will lead, but I do know that not being willing to converse, or sit down at table or any other words/actions that shuts people down will lead nowhere. Witness my own Anglican Communion and the various behaviors there about not wanting to converse with or commune with the "wrong" people. At least if we keep talking, the potential for conversion remains.

[Bugmaster]

@hapax:
"They", who ?

[hapax]

@ Bugmaster:

The "push and push and push" type, who you suggested would consider the Reverend Ref's approach "selfish."

[Bugmaster]

@hapax:
Oh, ok, I agree. I just wanted to point out that there are several "push push push" types out there who are not motivated by immediate personal gain -- I've known some of them. Not all the pushy evangelicals are evil; some are just a bit too earnest.

@Reverend Ref:
Well, your position does make sense. I don't know much about the Anglican Communion, but some Protestant varieties here in America also have such an isolationist approach. Pretty sad.

[Jane Ellen+]

Bugmaster:

"it sounds like you'd rather acquire a friend in this life, than rescue the same person's soul from an eternity of torment in the next life."

Like the Ref, I'd say that your choice is your choice. I believe that you're better off choosing to follow God... you might say that's why I'm in the business. However, what happens when and if you don't is also entirely up to God, and not my call in the least. That pushing you speak of is not loving, but trying to control (and my biggest beef with the whole LB schtick-- like they seem to believe they have The Definitive Rules, and that God has to play by them).

To the best of my ability, it is my responsibility to behave toward others in a loving manner-- essentially, not to get in the way-- and to trust that God will take care of the rest, in a way that is both ultimately just and merciful.

And in the meantime, I'll be a friend, when possible. Though I'd rather talk the about the Cubs than the Mariners...

[PepperjackCandy]

a lot of the DC romantic leads were more Katherine Hepburn (Iris Allen, Carol Ferris, Hawkgirl).

Lois Lane.

I think.

[Doctor Science]

concept of the characters breaking free of their author's intention.

Shockingly, there is no litcrit term for this phenomenon. So a few years I made one up: "galateagenesis": when a created character seems to the creator to have "come alive", as Galatea did for Pygmalion.

IMHO though it is possible to have capital-A Art without galateagenesis (because not all artists' brains work that way), galateagenesis is an infallible sign that Art is taking place.

I somehow think L&J didn't have to worry about it much ...

[Drak Pope]

Galateagenesis is a good word and very mythologically sound but it's just not very fun to say.

GAH-LAH-TAY-AH-GEN-EH-SIS.

Bloody mouthful, and for something that .1% of the population will ever ever need to even say. You should make it more succinct, give it a bit more "punch" as it were. May I recommend "Chloefy"?

[hapax]

@Doctor Science: "galateagenesis is an infallible sign that Art is taking place."

I wish. It happens to me all the time, and nobody has yet accused me of perpetrating Art.

OTOH, I've often thought it a very good metaphor for understanding God's viewpoint towards Creation (I understand exactly what Fred meant when he discussed Homer's love for Achilles; heckopete, toss in Milton's love for Lucifer!) but also an aesthetically (if not logically) satisfying answer to all those who argue that "if God truly was omnipotent, why did it have such obvious built-in flaws like Free Will, Death, Entropy, etc.?)

Tolkien argued (I thought very convincingly) that humans were created "in the image of God" precisely in their ability to create such worlds, capable of independent growth and failure. Anyone who's been lucky enough to create even a fragment of such would never ask "Why did God do that?", but rather, "Why not create billions such?" (For all we know, God did...)