L.B.: Buck's soul searching

Left Behind, pp. 356-357

Most of the end of Chapter 19 is taken up with Buck's taxi-cab suspicions about Nicolae Carpathia. In the midst of his pondering, Buck also takes a page or so to reconsider his suspicions about God.

The loss of his sister-in-law and niece and nephew tugged at his heart almost constantly, and something made him wonder if there wasn't something to this Rapture thing. If anybody in his orbit would be taken to heaven, it would have been them.

Here again is a bit of retroactive correction. We've been privy to Buck's every waking thought for the last 350 pages, and this is the first time he's remembered his missing family members even in passing. He flew halfway around the world to investigate Dirk's death, but he hasn't even placed a follow-up phone call to his brother to ask about three people whose disappearance, we're now supposed to believe, has been a source of "constant" pain. I'm not buying it.

Buck's observation that his niece and nephew were more deserving of heaven than anyone else he knew is also interesting. One wonders what it is that Buck knows about, say, Marge Potter, that makes him feel she's deserving of hellfire and brimstone.

What Buck seems to mean here is that his brother's children were young and innocent, which points to a strange undercurrent in Left Behind's interpretation of the idea of an "age of accountability." LaHaye and Jenkins have placed their cut-off for childish innocence at roughly the point of puberty. Consider that alongside the sexless Millennium of the later books in the series and you get a picture of humanity in which sexual=sinful and vice versa. L&J aren't the first to mangle the meaning of sin in this way. Origen did it too, and of course, as a consequence, that's not all he mangled.

But he knew better than that, didn't he? He was Ivy League educated. He had left the church when he left the claustrophobic family situation that threatened to drive him crazy as a young man. He had never considered himself religious, despite a prayer for help and deliverance once in a while. He had built his life around achievement, excitement, and -- he couldn't deny it -- attention. He loved the status that came with having his byline, his writing, his thinking in a national magazine.

Well there it is: Buck was "Ivy League educated" and therefore "knew better" than to believe in God. Education and book-learning and the intellect are all in the service of pride. They are stumbling blocks, obstacles to faith, to be viewed with suspicion if not avoided altogether.

L&J have provided a stark illustration of what Richard Hofstadter describes in Anti-Intellectualism in American Life:

One begins with the hardly contestable proposition that religious faith is not, in the main, propagated by logic or learning. One moves on from this to the idea that it is best propagated (in the judgment of Christ and on historical evidence) by men who have been unlearned and ignorant. It seems to follow from this that the kind of wisdom and truth possessed by such men is superior to what learned and cultivated minds have. In fact, learning and cultivation appear to be handicaps in the propagation of faith. And since the propagation of faith is the most important task before man, those who are as "ignorant as babes" have, in the most fundamental virtue, greater strength than men who have addicted themselves to logic and learning. Accordingly, though one shrinks from a bald statement of the conclusion, humble ignorance is far better as a human quality than a cultivated mind. At bottom, this proposition, despite all the difficulties that attend it, has been eminently congenial both to American evangelicalism and to American democracy.

This seems, at first glance, to be an odd situation. Hofstadter, the Pulitzer-Prize winning intellectual, seems to be wholly in agreement with LaHaye and Jenkins about the incompatibility of faith and learning. But look again and notice the distinction: What Hofstadter presents as a diagnosis; L&J present as a prescription. Hofstadter describes what he regards as a mistake, a misapprehension, an unnecessary wrong turn taken by "American evangelicalism and American democracy." But L&J don't regard this as a mistake, they see it as how things ought to be. They point to the serious of dubious wrong turns that Hofstadter describes and see it as a road map to the Promised Land. L&J prove Hofstadter right just as he proves them wrong.

The above passage from Hofstadter is quoted, mostly approvingly, in Mark Noll's The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. Noll adds, however, that, "The question for American evangelicals is not just the presence of an anti-intellectual bias but the sometimes vigorous prosecution of the wrong sort of intellectual life." In particular, he points to the way that dispensationalists like Darby, Scofield and Ryrie -- LaHaye's (anti-)intellectual ancestors -- regarded their approach to biblical interpretation as "scientific."

(Instead of doing what I'm tempted to do here -- quoting the entirety of Noll's chapter on "The Intellectual Disaster of Fundamentalism"* -- let me just again say that if I could recommend only one book to explain American evangelical Christianity, it would be The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.)

And yet there was a certain loneliness to his existence ...

Having shown us why Buck has thus far resisted conversion -- his Ivy League schooling and his worldly pride is getting in the way -- the authors then aim to show us that Buck still longs for it, that he needs to fill the "God-shaped hole" in his life. That's what they start to do, at least, but then they take a weird turn:

And yet there was a certain loneliness to his existence, especially now with Steve moving on. Buck had dated and had considered escalating a couple of serious relationships, but he had always been considered too mobile for a woman who wanted stability.

Side-stepping the slashfic bait there, I think this is intended as a lead-in to the following chapter, in which Buck meets Chloe and instantly falls in love. The juxtaposition of his existential loneliness and his lack of a romantic partner might have led to a potentially interesting consideration of the way that romantic love is sometimes pursued as a surrogate for separate questions about the meaning of life. If that's what the authors intended here, then they cut short and confuse the issue in the pages to come by having Buck find God and romance (chaste, sexless romance) at the same time. What I suspect they intended here, instead, was to emphasize Buck's unspoiled innocence. Sure he'd had "a couple of serious relationships," but he had never "escalated" them (nudge nudge, wink wink) so he remains pure and deserving of Chloe's love. But since, again, Buck yields his heart to Chloe and to God almost simultaneously, this also confuses the issue. It seems to suggest that Buck's chastity somehow made him worthier and more deserving of God's love.

All of this soul-searching and pondering might be somewhat plausible in some other book, with some other character, it's screamingly implausible with this character in this book. In this context it reads a bit like Moses casually saying to the burning bush, "I've never considered myself religious ..." The authors want to treat Buck's dawning faith as a typical representation of a typical conversion experience, but Buck is far from typical. The game here is rigged. Unlike those of us here in the real world, Buck has already seen proof of God's existence -- the Babel Fish itself. He has seen the hand of God swatting aside nuclear missiles like snowflakes. Buck's report on that undeniably, unambiguously supernatural event, the authors say, won him a Hemingway Prize. It would also have won him a $1 million check from the Amazing Randi.

The authors acknowledge this, but still try to suggest that Buck would have room for doubt:

Since the clearly supernatural event he had witnessed in Israel with the destruction of the Russian air force, he had known the world was changing. Things would never again be as they had been. He wasn't buying the space alien theory of the disappearances, and while it very well could be attributed to some incredible cosmic energy reaction, who or what was behind that? The incident at the Wailing Wall was another unexplainable bit of the supernatural.

This parallels Buck's worries about Carpathia. We're supposed to see that, too, as evidence of his skeptical, cautious journalist's mind, but both cases just make Buck look dimwitted. He knows, he has seen with his own eyes and heard with his own ears, that Nicolae has been involved in at least three murders, that he is complicit in a criminal conspiracy to game the international monetary system, and that he is a megalomaniac seeking unchecked absolute power. Given that he knows this, his reluctance to reach any conclusions about Carpathia seems impossibly obtuse.

But Buck also knows that God exists. The "clearly supernatural event he had witnessed in Israel with the destruction of the Russian [and Ethiopian] air force" is also something that he saw with his own eyes and heard with his own ears. His reluctance to reach any conclusions about this also makes him look impenetrably dim.

That "clearly supernatural event" doesn't only change the context for Buck, it changes the entire world of this story. Left Behind does not take place in a world like our own. It takes place in a world in which the existence of God -- of a very particular, sectarian notion of God -- is a settled question. It has been demonstrated, verified, televised.

That undercuts all of these soul-searching pre-conversion and conversion scenes. These are meant to lead the reader to ponder their own relationship with God, but what they actually do is cause the reader to consider how they would respond to the "God" of this story if they lived in the fictional parallel universe of this story. If the question is "What would you do if you were in Buck's shoes?" then the only answer that makes any sense is, "If I were Buck, living in that world and under those rules, I would convert to Tim LaHaye's brand of PMD Christianity. Duh." But since that world is not this world, and its rules are not the rules we live under here, it seems strange for the authors to consider this a persuasive basis for evangelism.

(This rigged game also allows the authors to take some unwarranted cheap shots. Having created a fictional world in which you would have to be an idiot to be skeptical about the existence of God, they then turn around and portray all skeptics as idiots.)

It's odd to be reminded of the Babel-Fish incident this late in the story. Like Buck and everyone else in the book, I had nearly forgotten about it. That forgetting is necessary if almost anything else in LB is to make any sense. The context of "clearly supernatural event" No. 1, the injury-free nuclear war, would necessarily shape the interpretation of clearly supernatural event No. 2, the disappearances. A thousand possible scenarios suggest themselves from such a sequence of miraculous phenomenon,** but the events of this book are not one of them.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

* Here's a relevant, somewhat abridged, excerpt, from pages 126-129:

Simple anti-intellectualism, however, was not the major problem in fundamentalism for the life of the mind. More serious damage was done by the way in which the fundamentalist movement reinforced 19th-century assumptions about the conduct of thinking itself.

A major impediment created by fundamentalism for a doxological understanding of nature, society and the arts was its uncritical adoption of intellectual habits from the 19th century. Especially dispensationalism was heavily dependent upon 19th-century views of the goals and systematizing purposes of science. This overwhelming trust in the capacities of an objective, disinterested, unbiased and neutral science perhaps was excusable in the early 19th century, but by the early 20th century it was indefensible. Fundamentalist naivete concerning science was matched by several other 19th-century traits that undercut the possibility for a responsible intellectual life. These included a weakness for treating the verses of the Bible as pieces in a jigsaw puzzle that needed only to be sorted and the fit together to possess a finished picture of divine truth; an overwhelming tendency to "essentialism," or the conviction that a specific formula could capture for all times and places the essence of biblical truth for any specific issue concerning God, the human condition, or the fate of the world; a corresponding neglect of forces in history that shape perceptions and help define the issues that loom as most important to any particular age; and a self-confidence, bordering on hubris, manifested by an extreme antitraditionalism that casually discounted the possibility of wisdom from earlier generations. ...

The difficulty perpetuated by the objectivist language of 19th-century Baconian science is not with the notion that theology must proceed carefully, systematically, and by giving thorough attention to all relevant evidence -- that is, in "scientific" fashion. The difficulty is rather that the lack of self-consciousness characteristic of the 19th century's confidence in science continued in full force among some of the most influential popularizers of evangelical theology well into the late 20th century.

** Let's run with the "space alien theory." If we're going to consider this as a possibility for event No. 2, then we must also consider it a possibility for event No. 1. The first case would suggest that the space aliens were acting on behalf of Israel. Given that, the disintegration of the world's children would likely have been interpreted as somehow also occurring at Israel's behest. That would give the rest of the world someone to blame, thus making the need for Nicolae's peace treaty a bit more credible.

Comments

[MikhailBorg]

Tonio,
I assumed that Dr. Science was referring to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

I was thinking that Dr. Science meant the following: modern scientists have realized that there's little in science about which you can write "Done. The End."

At any time, someone might show up with (repeatable) measurements you didn't have the tools to make before, or a new theory that explains your previous measurements even more elegantly and with a better fit to the data, and you'll have to discard or at least edit your previous assumptions. (Though you're still free to argue if you want - perhaps new guy made an error in his work.)

This is a GOOD thing, because, the more we do this, the more we end up learning; though it can be a little trying to have to admit that your ideas needed correction. (Google "Stephen Hawking" and "Kip Thorne" for an argument where Hawking spent decades saying Thorne was wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong... oh. Oops. Bugger.)

Certainty means that you've now learned all there is to learn; in this vast Universe of ours, that always turns out not to be the case.

[Johnny Pez]

When I was in the Philippines, I saw a number of missionaries have a similar reaction; they'd come determined to spread the gospel to the heathen foreigners ... and wind up one of the majority-Catholic parts of the Philippines.

Which lead to a lot of very polite people explaining 1) they already considered themselves Christian, 2) they did know who Jesus was, and were allowed to read the Bible, and 3) they weren't interested in becoming the 'right' kind of Christian, thanks all the same. A lot of the missionaries were just not mentally equipped for the non-Chick Tract reactions.

Please please please tell me the Catholic natives were able to convert at least one of the missionaries.

Please?

[Donalbain]

Someone a little earlier said that the only options in LBWorld would be to either accept Jesus/God/PMDism or to completely lie to yourself. Well, I would posit there is a third option, the one I would like to think I had the courage to take. Namely to accept that this God person seems to exist, and is pretty powerful, but to come to the conclusion that he is a veritable monster and does not deserve a tip of the hat, let alone eternal worship. Similarly, Nicky Mountains later on falls into this category, although as yet he only seems to be a spectacularly silly man.

However, the End Timers (and many Christians in general) seem to have the idea that you are either with God or you are with Satan. It doesnt seem to cross their mind that, if they existed, I would not be on the side of either party in their little squabble. When the proverbial begins to hit the fan, I would gather my family, my friends and any like minded people, head for a suitably defensible position and let everyone else fight it out while we just did the best we could for one another.

[McJulie]

proceeded to ask me if I'd "ever heard of Jesus of Nazareth" and then tell me stories about him as if I had never heard anything about Christianity ever in my life

I have never had the presence of mind (or patience) to do this when confronted by these people, but I think it would be a fun game to play dumb and see how long it takes them to catch on. (Those buildings with crosses on them? I had no idea what they were for! You mean, there's a holiday celebrating the birth of this Christ person? What is it? Christmas? No, really?)

These days I pretty frequently come across atheists arguing that, faced with a miraculous event, they would rather doubt their senses and assume they were hallucinating than conclude that something supernatural was happening.

If the events described in LB happened, I would think the most likely explanation was that PMD terrorists had done it somehow. Eventually, as the weirdness piled up, I might conclude that it was some kind of supernatural event, but I wouldn't necessarily believe that THE GOD OF THE WHOLE UNIVERSE was behind it.

The LaJenkins "magic words" approach to theology opens the door to the possibility of all kinds of demons, powers, hellgods and other Buffyish things -- the fact that LaJenkins god is able to throw you into a hell dimension if you displease him doesn't mean that he was right all along, it just means that he has the power to do that. Which puts him in the league with Lovecraft's Great Old Ones, or Vernor Vinge's Transcendent Powers -- it doesn't demonstrate Truth, it demonstrates Power.

Which, I guess, is why their argument is so unconvincing in a moral sense. Is there really moral enlightenment found in acting a certain way because there's a metaphysical gun held to your head?

Re: Age of accountability. I read an article, which I cannot seem to find online, about the issue of trying children as adults, which went into a lot of detail about evidence that suggests there is a point after puberty where the ability to comprehend the reality of permanent consequences of actions such as murder starts to set in. The article put this age at around 16, but it varies from person to person.

[DonaQuixote]

Of course, about the time teenagers begin to be able to have the neurological capacity to comprehend what they are doing, they lose the neurological capacity to regulate their emotions appropriately and apply their understanding effectively to the decision-making process. Cruel joke, that.

On playing dumb: I didn't go quite so far as your hilarious example McJulie, but I did spend about a month in their Bible study pretending I'd never read it before and offering up the most outrageous interpretations I could think of in as innocent a tone of voice as I could muster. (The only specific one I can recall at the moment is that Thomas was rewarded for doubting, as evidenced by the intimacy of Jesus commanding him to touch his wounds ... which interpretation I actually rather like, but needless to say they weren't too enthusiastic about it.)Wasn't nice of me, but I'd like to think that I was planting cherry bombs of reason in a city of denial.

On small miracles: My perspective is panentheist, meaning I believe that God is both within the world and transcendent, so for me there's no contradiction between God being inherently natural and supernatural. I have no problem identifying everyday events as miraculous. On the other hand, I tend to shy away from miracle stories that involve self glorification, as the "isn't it great that God made my brother give me some money so I could eventually wind up being such an awesome minister?!" story seems to do. Great to identify God's hand in that, but in my opinion not usually so great to claim that ones ministry is nothing short of a miracle. I think God's call was involved in my own career path as well, and I can see ways that opportunities were opened to me that I never expected once I was following what I think is the right path. But I try not to let myself become complacent enough to feel certain I'm doing what God wants or arrogant enough to think that my work belongs in the same category as, say, the parting of the Red Sea, or even the series of unfortunate events of the trip and fall guys! On the other hand, the other night I was watching a woman on tv talk about how the kidnapper who had raped her and almost killed her passed out while firing his gun at her. I'm sure he passed out because of alcohol consumption and blood loss (the woman had stabbed him in the neck with a knife!), but I also agree with her 100% when she identifies this very natural event as a miracle.

[Technomad]

I can never understand the Jack Chick view of unbelievers, with their "DURR what's a Jesus?" response to the RTC's approaches. It's about like someone in ancient Rome not knowing about the arena games: "D'oh! So that's what they're doing in that big circular building over there? Throwing Christians to lions? Hully-gee, I never knew!"

Now, not knowing about the "RTCs'" particular interpretation's a little easier to believe, but in this time and place, someone who hasn't run into at least one of these people trying to do for RTC-ism what Typhoid Mary did for typhoid would be very, very rare and probably from an extremely sheltered background.

As for non-Christians not wanting to convert because their families would be upset---well, in a lot of places, your family is your social support system---Uncle Ahmed makes sure you get a job when you're out of university, Aunt Fatima knows a few nice girls for you to marry (which, BTW, involves an alliance of your families, explaining why the elders of both families need to be consulted) Cousin Mehmed's got connections for you and your new wife to get a place to live, and so on and so forth. Cutting yourself off from this is extremely difficult, particularly if you're still living there.

[MikhailBorg]

Is there really moral enlightenment found in acting a certain way because there's a metaphysical gun held to your head?

Christianity (and I guess, Judaism, based on the OT) has a long history of that. Look at the Crusades:

"Believe in my God!" "Err... no thanks."

"Believe in my God or I'll cut your throat!" "Um... oh! Praise be! I have seen the light!"

And then you kill the newly converted anyway, because he's saved now, and you wouldn't want him to relapse. Besides, you want his stuff.

Of course, that's also what Hell is for: "Believe in my God and do everything I say he wants you to do or you will suffer for Eternity!"

[cjmr]

Cutting yourself off from this is extremely difficult, particularly if you're still living there.

And, if you're female, could end up getting you killed for 'dishonoring the family'.

[Vashti]

DonaQuixote, I've always thought exactly that when the story of Doubting Thomas is trotted out to sceptics - people overlook entirely that Thomas asked for proof before he would believe, and then he was *given it!* Jesus didn't say, "Oh, you aren't going to take the word of your comrades that I rose from the dead? Sorry, it's HELL FOR YOU." He said, "See, and believe".

Hardly the same thing as arguing that creation proves God, and so sceptics have no excuse.

[jamoche]

I read into the Thomas story that it was a way of saying "yes, we do know this story is hard to believe. Thomas was right there, and even he had trouble with it. So we totally understand if you're a bit sceptical."

[hapax]

If I honestly thought I was having a hallucination, I'd notice and react to that (basically, I'd freak right out).

I dunno. I have migraines, so I have hallucinations quite often. (Mostly auditory, some visual, though). I won't say that I enjoy them, but they hardly "freak me out" -- it's pretty clear what's happening.

A lot of people I know have had hallucinations -- for similar reasons, or, er, pharmacologically-induced. I don't know anyone who wasn't perfectly aware that it WAS a hallucination. I'm not saying it can't happen; I'm not saying that they're easy to escape; but, well, it isn't at all comparable to watching World War Naught on CNN.

[hapax]

C.S. Lewis was quite forceful in stating that there was nothing "supernatural" about miracles. Most miracles are God merely accelerating, or scaling up, or retarding, something that nature does anyway.

In his view, the only truly supernatural miracle was the Incarnation, since that was a deliberate impingement of the extra-natural world upon the natural.

[Cactus Wren]

Spalanzani: *snerk* Dead-on accurate. The thing is, this happens over and over and over: the boilerplate about Jesus dying for the listener’s sins is always greeted with a wide-eyed “**>>GASP<<** WHY didn’t anyone ever TELL me this?”

Wesley Parish:

“LaHaye and Jenkins have placed their cut-off for childish innocence at roughly the point of puberty.”
Which makes one wonder about the child soldiers of Africa, doesn't it? And the child prostitutes worldwide ... and the child of the famous (grim) joke, who killed his mother and his father, and then pled for clemency on the grounds that he was an orphan ….

What it always makes me imagine is the reaction if all the children in the world disappeared except for a very few. Imagine the love, the caring, the adoration these children would get from everyone around them, everywhere they went.

Unfortunately, the reason they didn’t make the Rapture-cut is because they’re all child sociopaths, like the ten-year-old girl in Law & Order who killed a preschool boy for no particular reason (“He just went dead. It wasn’t fun, like with the cat”).

Nameless Unknown:

“Was "Lisa" the Chick tract about D&D, where she was led by the elder, sexy, and presumably lesbian game master to give her soul over to Satan in the course of playing the game?”
No, that's Dark Dungeons, which is completely hilarious and, to the best of my knowledge, still in print.

If anyone wants to see Dark Dungeons it’s here, and the description “hilarious” is entirely justified:
“The thief, Black Leaf, did not find the poison trap, and I declare her dead.”
“NO, NOT BLACK LEAF! NO, NO! I’M GOING TO DIE!”

And then, in a scene clearly heavily influenced by Patricia Pulling, Black Leaf’s player commits suicide, leaving a note reading “It’s my fault Black Leaf died. I can’t face life alone!” Because people so often kill themselves over what happens in games. I mean, there have been so many suicides over bankruptcy in Monopoly, right? Or Risk: “The enemy has taken over the world, and it’s my fault!”

Interloper:

"Lisa" is listed and described on this page, together with links to scans if you really want to read it.

Ewwww. Ew ew ew ew ew.

What bothers me is that we don’t even see the title character until literally the last frame – and that she’s only five years old!

But now Daddy is RTC, and so Everything Will Be All Right. Reminds me of those “Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven” bumper stickers: “I don’t have to atone for my wrongdoings in any way,” the idea seems to run, “because God has forgiven me so nothing else matters!”

I’ve always preferred the Jewish attitude towards forgiveness: didn’t a well-known Jew coin a prayer that included a line asking God to forgive our offenses as we forgive those who offend us? If I slap my best friend in the face, God’s forgiveness matters nothing, no more than any stranger’s – it’s my friend’s forgiveness that I need.

[hapax]

Abelardus: I however immediately thought of Augustine of Hippo -- I have always had it out for him. His interpretation of sex as somehow inherently sinful, and the followers of his interpretation pondering whether enjoying sex was a minor sin or damned you forever

Unfair rap of the Blessed African Doctor (although not of those who thought they were "interpreting" his writings.)

What Augustine actually taught was a bit more nuanced. He argued that human sexual desire as it is currently expressed is evidence of (and perhaps punishment for, he waffles a bit on that) our sinful nature.

Sexual desire and activity, like all else that God created, was "good", and is still "good" within the context of a healthy marital relationship, done for the right reasons -- having children, yes, but also expressing love and giving pleasure (what we might call "pair bonding") nowadays.

But since the human will is completely fractured and corrupted, sexual desire is no longer under the control of our wills, and it is impossible to engage in sexual activity without placing our own desires and pleasures above all other concerns -- it becomes an act of almost complete selfishness.

You may argue (I certainly do) with his psychology of sex, and his view of the complete depravity of the will, but it's only fair to condemn what he actually says, not what other people say that he says.

[MichaelR]

A friend has pointed out that the devil in Chick tracts is routinely self-defeating. The general idea here is that, in the Chickverse, the default state of a soul is "going right to hell." People in the Chickverse may or may not have heard of Jesus, but if they have, then they don't believe for whatever reason. And here's where the self-defeating part comes in: those souls are Satan's and all he has to do is wait for the sack of meat containing it to cease function. Instead, he goes and tempts people, alerting them that (a) he's real and (b) he owns their asses, which leads them to (c) they have to say the Magic Words in order to get into heaven or they get ETERNAL HELLFIRE.

Which makes me wonder: if you're in the middle of saying the Magic Words when you suddenly die -- say, you're skydiving and both your chutes fail and you don't finish before the sudden stop at the bottom -- what happens to your soul? Do you get into heaven because you were in the process of saying it, do you go to hell because you didn't finish, does Lightbulb Head tell you "nice try hedging your bets, your cynicism is not welcome here" and chuck you in the barbecue pit, or what?

Also, re: not being aware of Christianity, depending on what flavor of dickery you want, then when they tell you what churches are, be disappointed instead and ask if that means that your search for buildings with the other 25 letters has been in vain.

[MikhailBorg]

Because people so often kill themselves over what happens in games. I mean, there have been so many suicides over bankruptcy in Monopoly, right? Or Risk: “The enemy has taken over the world, and it’s my fault!”

That's nothing - you should see how many people commit suicide when Mario doesn't save the Princess. Why, they've lost so many that Nintendo can hardly sell a Wii anymore.

[Donalbain]

The world of Jack Chick, as seen by Websnark.

http://www.websnark.com/archives/jack_chick/

Scroll down to the second article for a simply perfect reading of the stories.

[ako]

Please please please tell me the Catholic natives were able to convert at least one of the missionaries.

Something like that did happen. I don't know if she actually converted, but one of the missionaries started arranging meetings with a priest to discuss theology, and was at least seriously interested in converting, after hearing more about Catholicism.

I dunno. I have migraines, so I have hallucinations quite often. (Mostly auditory, some visual, though). I won't say that I enjoy them, but they hardly "freak me out" -- it's pretty clear what's happening.

Good point. I was thinking more like sudden, unexplained hallucinations (I don't have migraines). Particularly sudden, unexplained hallucinations of mass vanishings. If I knew what was causing it, and it was fairly manageable, I probably wouldn't freak out so much, especially if I was used to it.

I probably wouldn't think the situation in Left Behind was a hallucination. If all my perceptions were consistent with each other in telling me a big, unexplained thing happened, I'd be more likely to conclude that a big, unexplained thing happened. My big reason for hesitating to accept the Christian explanation, if all of this was happening, would be the fear that the missing people weren't safe, and just assuming they were would get in the way of trying to rescue them or stop it from happening again.

But now Daddy is RTC, and so Everything Will Be All Right.

That's it. All sane reactions to that situation get tossed out the window because The Magic Words Fix Everything. Doctors who learn kids are abused seriously aren't allowed to preach at abusive parents instead of reporting it. And we're all supposed to be happy, and go "Jesus fixed it!" at the ending.

Plus, because it's a Chick Tract, Molester Daddy must give and incredibly unconvincing, "But I'm a good person. Er, aside from sexually abusing my daughter. And giving her an incurable disease. And sharing her with a neighbor," line. Otherwise, people might be more concerned about the evil of child molestation than generic inherent evil.

[Cyllan]

I have always wondered if the Chick Tracts weren't an elaborate and subversive hoax perpetrated by ... and then that's where it falls apart. I'm not sure I can think of anyone willing to keep up that kind of targeted assault on RTCs for as long as the Chick Tracts have been being published. But they're so self-parodying and horrible that I have trouble thinking that anyone actually means them sincerely.

My pastime when reading Chick tracts is to take a cue from Seanbaby and pretend that everyone in the comic is being sarcastic.

Personal favorite tract (using that very special definition of "favorite") is probably Flight 144, about a missionary couple who devoted their lives to charity, but go to hell anyway because they never converted anybody. Seriously, if you find yourself living in the Chickverse, just give up right away, because YOU AREN'T GOING TO MAKE IT.

[Vermic]

Oh, and that was me just now.

[hapax]

My favourite Chick Tract moment was in the one on homosexuality -- I forget the actual title -- which devoted exactly one page to lesbianism It showed an innocent fluffy looking blonde, who unfortunately looked a great deal like me, being enticed by a short curvaceous brunette, the absolute spit and image of my best friend and room-mate, who incidentally is bisexual. The caption read, in its entirety: "If You See This, STAY AWAY!"

An enlarged photocopy of that page stayed on our door all year.

[cjmr]

A lot of people I know have had hallucinations -- for similar reasons, or, er, pharmacologically-induced. I don't know anyone who wasn't perfectly aware that it WAS a hallucination.

FWIW, I have had pharmacologically-induced hallucinations that I didn't know at the time were hallucinations, but I was 11, and the drug involved was a codeine cough syrup. They were, I guess you'd say, tactile hallucinations. It felt like something was crawling all over me, and my brain said it must be spiders. Oddly enough I had the same reaction to the epidural/spinal I had with child #2, but I was able to tell it was just the drugs that time.

[hapax]

Ah, I've found the tract I remembered! It's "The Gay Blade" (great title, though not as good as my all-time favourite, "Death Cookie") but they've revised the copy and altered the illustration to cover up more of the slinky seductive lesbian. Boo! Hiss!

[ako]

I quite like the one where the strange older man goes up to the young boys (skateboarders dressed in what appears to be a completely random assortment of fashions) in the park, and actually says, "Know what a virgin is?" to the kids he's known for all of five minutes. But it's okay because he's spreading the gospel.

[Betty]

I think the Aliens Did It theory makes perfect sense: The aliens like the taste of sweet, delicious, child-flesh, so they sucked them up with their sky-vacuum, along with some human care-givers to keep the kids in line until they got around to gnawing on them. They prevented the vapourization of Israel because they disapprove of the wanton destruction of breeding stock.

[Ray]

Reminds me of one of the (many) irritating things about CS Lewis' Narnia - the atheis... sorry, dwarves in the barn in the Last Battle. Aslan arrives, there are strange signs and wonders, and everyone is transported to heaven. But those dwarves - they think they're still in a barn! Ho ho ho, aren't people who refuse to see the plain truth of God's works right in front of them just wilfully blind and obtuse!

[McJulie]

I have always wondered if the Chick Tracts weren't an elaborate and subversive hoax perpetrated by ... and then that's where it falls apart.

I find it most useful to regard Chick Tracts as outsider art.

Mr. Chick is obviously delusional and paranoid, and his passionate screeds exert a certain weird, mostly ironic fascination. I have encountered his work far, far more often in a non-sincere context.

The strange part is the people who don't seem to recognize his outsider status -- they seem to take his religious rantings as serious theology, instead of as part of an elaborate personal fantasy world.

Is it just because he's working in a context where he uses familiar Christian terminology for his fantasies?

[Jeff Weskamp]

A few more of those wacky Chick Tracts:

"Boo!": Apparently Satan appears periodically on Earth in physical form and commits mass murders with a chainsaw! Hmmm, what chapter and verse support that idea? And it also teaches us that if Satan even appears before us, he will flee if we say "The Lord rebuke you, Satan!"

"Curse of Baphomet": If you become a Freemason, your kid will commit suicide. Also, God hates obelisks because they're disguised phallic symbols (y'know, sometimes an obelisk is just an obelisk...).

"Reverend Wonderful:" Being a good person and doing good deeds does not count if you don't say the Magic Jesus prayer. This tract starkly outlines the LaJenkins Magic Incantation theology.

Apparently Satan appears periodically on Earth in physical form and commits mass murders with a chainsaw!

Whoa! That would be the best metal song EVER. I've changed my mind, Jack Chick totally rocks.

[Robin Lionheart]

Contrast the injury-free nuclear war with how Robert Silverberg handled a Babel Fish event in his novella "Thomas the Proclaimer".

In that story, an evangelist uses his influence to get millions of people to simultaneously pray for a sign at a specific time. He gets one -- the earth miraculously stops rotating so the sun stands still a la Joshua. Unlike Left Behind, even the skeptics acknowledge some higher power, and the world is in constant debate over what it all means. New sects form, some fanatical. Inevitably, conflict ensues. Alas, Thomas does not bring the world together as he hoped, but tears it apart.

[Hibryd]

"Mr. Spencer, I'm sure the thought of your daughter dying breaks your heart, right?"
"Of course!"
"Well, God was even more heartbroken when He sent His Son from heaven to die on earth."
"Why did God have to do THAT?"

My god, I thought this was a parody. I was laughing and thinking, "Yeah, Chick's about that bad, isn't he? This is hilarious!"

Then I saw the link. Not so funny any more. Chick never preaches about love, charity, or doing anything unto others - he's a strict "magic word" kind of Christian who tries to scare the crap out of children with a "Hell is right around the corner! Convert or else!" message.

[Nick]

Reminds me of one of the (many) irritating things about CS Lewis' Narnia - the atheis... sorry, dwarves in the barn in the Last Battle. Aslan arrives, there are strange signs and wonders, and everyone is transported to heaven. But those dwarves - they think they're still in a barn! Ho ho ho, aren't people who refuse to see the plain truth of God's works right in front of them just wilfully blind and obtuse!

That bit really annoys me too. "The Last Battle" is really the only Narnia book I actually really dislike, because of its sheer anviliciousness. What I especially hate is the "Susan is no longer a friend of Narnia" thing. What complete rubbish. If you remember "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe", Susan spent about TWENTY YEARS living in Narnia as a queen. This is HALF HER LIFETIME. There is NO WAY she is going to just forget that happened, or dismiss it as childish games. Susan no longer believing Narnia exists is the CS Lewis equivalent of Buck's reaction to being at Ground Zero in Israel.

[Scott]

Reminds me of those “Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven” bumper stickers: “I don’t have to atone for my wrongdoings in any way,” the idea seems to run, “because God has forgiven me so nothing else matters!”

"God has forgiven what I do to you, so f-ck what you think about it", says the evilvangelical.

[Dylan]

I think the reason the "*GASP*, I never knew what Christianity is about!" is used in Chick tracts (and other places) is the way these people view mainstream Christianity.

If all of those other, mainstream churches really read the Bible or really knew the first thing about Jesus, then they'd all convert to Real True Say-The-Magic-Words Christianity immediately. Since these mainstream churches don't have the same view of God, Jesus, and salvation as they do, then obviously they're ignoring (or even denying or keeping secret) the basic tenets of Christianity. Their God must be generic and deistic, they must completely ignore the Bible, and their view of salvation must revolve around doing good works and acting nice.

That might be exaggerating a bit, but I think many people with that mindset can't imagine anyone encountering Jesus in any other way than theirs.

[Alex Scott]

That "Lisa" tract illustrates why I'm starting to find the idea of penance more appealing, at least in a more general sense, even though I'm no longer Catholic.

I described the tract to a friend of mine at a cafe earlier tonight, and he was so horrified, I felt compelled to apologize, not just to him, but to the lady behind me who overheard.

That reminds me, I've seen a book at B&N, I think called, "God's Brothel," which is all about sexual abuse in fundamentalist churches. I've never read it, but I couldn't help but think of it when I read "Lisa."

I find it most useful to regard Chick Tracts as outsider art.

If you want to see proper Christian outsider art, then you should check out Henry Darger, who illustrated fantastic epics, or Paul Lafolley, who is the only Catholic I have ever heard of to make a coherent argument (through drawings of genetically engineered Erdeblume and Living Klein Bottle houses) that genetic engineering can potential be a good thing. (How do I put up links to their Wikipedia entries, BTW?) Chick is a cheap hack in comparison. He's like Disney in the sense that he's anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, and rarely does his own drawings...which is REALLY scary now that I think about it and makes me appreciate Osamu Tezuka all the more *worship worship*.

While we're thinking about eternal souls, I just got a dog. She's a Lhasa-Apso/King Charles Cavalier spaniel mix and her name is Luna. And last night, while I was drifting off to sleep with my friend's two cockapoos who sometimes spend the night, I was thinking:

"Dogs herd our livestock. Dogs guide the blind and deaf. Dogs keep people with epilepsy safe. Dogs work with autistic children and adults (like me). Dogs sniff for land mines, drugs, and endangered animal parts. Dogs rescue people buried in avalanches. Dogs help police, firefighters, and the armed forces. Dogs guard our houses. Some researchers are even training dogs to sniff for cancer. And after all these things dogs do for us without asking or being paid [except in biscuits], then how can Christians, like that stupid priest on EWTN who has probably never owned a dog in his adult life, seriously believe that Luna and Lassie and Sirius (the dog who died looking for people trapped at Ground Zero) won't go to heaven?"

Please share your views. Even if your view is that you don't believe in God and are a cat person.

[1982_Cygni]

I find it most useful to regard Chick Tracts as outsider art.

If you want to see proper Christian outsider art, then you should check out Henry Darger, who illustrated fantastic epics, or Paul Lafolley, who is the only Catholic I have ever heard of to make a coherent argument (through drawings of genetically engineered Erdeblume and Living Klein Bottle houses) that genetic engineering can potential be a good thing. (How do I put up links to their Wikipedia entries, BTW?) Chick is a cheap hack in comparison. He's like Disney in the sense that he's anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, and rarely does his own drawings...which is REALLY scary now that I think about it and makes me appreciate Osamu Tezuka all the more *worship worship*.

While we're thinking about eternal souls, I just got a dog. She's a Lhasa-Apso/King Charles Cavalier spaniel mix and her name is Luna. And last night, while I was drifting off to sleep with my friend's two cockapoos who sometimes spend the night, I was thinking:

"Dogs herd our livestock. Dogs guide the blind and deaf. Dogs keep people with epilepsy safe. Dogs work with autistic children and adults (like me). Dogs sniff for land mines, drugs, and endangered animal parts. Dogs rescue people buried in avalanches. Dogs help police, firefighters, and the armed forces. Dogs guard our houses. Some researchers are even training dogs to sniff for cancer. And after all these things dogs do for us without asking or being paid [except in biscuits], then how can Christians, like that stupid priest on EWTN who has probably never owned a dog in his adult life, seriously believe that Luna and Lassie and Sirius (the dog who died looking for people trapped at Ground Zero) won't go to heaven?"

Please share your views. Even if your view is that you don't believe in God and are a cat person.

[Ember Keelty]

Is it just me, or are the conversion scenes that seem the most realistic (indeed, the only ones that are even remotely realistic) the ones between Li'l Susy and her friends? They talk the same way all the other characters do, but it's actually fairly believable coming from small children without much life experience to speak of. When I was that age, I bought into an elaborate mythology invented by my best friend about the reincarnation cycles of pillbugs, ants, and eucalyptus leaves. Of course, when that same friend went on to tell me that Hell was not just for evil people (as I believed at the time, having not put much thought into theology) but for anyone who didn't accept every last one of her Church's doctrines, I told her she was full of it.

[DonaQuixote]

I'm with you on the animals having souls bit, though the Luna close to my heart is a rabbit not a dog. If I remember rightly (and that is a pretty dubious proposition on most days), in the Bible humans are originally given only vegetation for food and are not granted permission to eat meat until after the flood (meat-eating being one of the human evils said to have caused God's wrath in that incident). Will have to go back and check on that. Maybe I got that from Midrash instead?

On faith vs. works: I took an adult ed series at my (very liberal) church, wherein we saw a video series with a bunch of contemporary progressive theologians. One said that the question of "how can I be saved" is, when taken to extremes, a fundamentally neurotic concern that distracts us from what Jesus was saying about how we are to act in this world. Jack Chick strikes me as an extremely neurotic person, with a special brand of infectuous neuroticism. L&J seem more Narcissistic than Neurotic, but fundamentally they are both about anxiety, one existential, the other self-centered.

The only reason I prefer salvation by faith to salvation by faith and works (in a strictly abstract, philosophical sense, since if we're positing rescue dogs in heaven, how much more so should we be pondering non-Christians like Gandhi there!) is in the way it can be taken as a release from trying to earn what you can't control, so you can get down to the real business of living life in this world as a follower of Jesus. Alternatively, I guess I think of the child abuse situation this way: even if you can't be saved by works, you sure as hell can get yourself damned that way.

[ako]

I prefer salvation by works. Granted, this is hypothetical, as I don't believe in any afterlife. But salvation by faith sets up a very specific task, and judges you by whether you pass or fail at that. I never quite understood why faith was valued so highly that people would get saved for it, or damned for lack of it. I suspect I have entirely the wrong mindset for that kind of concept.

And some people do turn faith into as much of an obsession as works when it comes to ensuring their salvation. Look at Left Behind; you've got Irene lauded for pouring all her energy to having enough of the right kind of faith. And you've got Bruce Barnes with the whole, "I thought I had faith, but I didn't," thing, leaving some vague, unguessable benchmark of good enough. People are perfectly capable of obsessing over whether they truly believe with sufficent zeal, and at least obsessing over feeding the hungry gets hungry people fed.

As for animals in heaven, the prospect of no afterlife for animals bothers me if, and only if, humans get one. I know that's not entirely reasonable (a dog without an eternal soul is a dog without an eternal soul), but it seems like snottiness, or a dig at animals to say "We get heaven, they don't." Besides how much of a paradise would it be without any?

[DonaQuixote]

Well, keep in mind that "faith" as we define it is not necessarily the same as it has been throughout history and in different languages. I personally like Kathleen Norris' rendering of faith as "to give one's heart to." Meaning not "to say some magic words out of self-centered concern about where one's individual soul will spend the afterlife." The main point of the faith vs works argument as I understand it is that salvation through works obviates grace, since grace is by definition freely given as a gift of love from God, not a reward for good deeds. That doesn't mean God has no standard for good and bad behavior, but that the love/forgiveness part is only predicated on a sincere desire to receive it (which necessitates actually feeling ongoing for one's errors, since you can't sincerely desire forgiveness if you feel you have nothing to be forgiven for). Which is why the whole "magic words" idea is really salvation by works, as is even the act of becoming a Christian (rather than the intention to try to be one), since faith is a word to describe the act of perpetually trying to arrive at something by definition elusive.

[DonaQuixote]

Oy. Meant "feeling ongoing contrition for one's errors."

Point being faith doesn't have to be about belief (which is a one-sided, subject-object proposition) so much as desire (which goes two ways and is intersubjective, in other words, a relationship).

[Dahne]

@MikhailBorg: Ah, that explains that suicide note.

It was always another castle.

[Spalanzani]

I went to a Catholic elementary school, and every now and then a priest would come in to talk to us about Church teachings and answer our questions. It was fairly interactive, so we usually covered a lot of different topics. One time, I think it was around fifth or sixth grade, the issue of animals in heaven came up. The priest told us all the standard thing about how since animals didn't have souls, they had no afterlife and therefore would not be in heaven. This caused a huge uproar, since pretty much everyone thought this was horrible. Some kids argued with him, but he remained resolute. Finally, one girl said to him that there were probably a lot more animals in heaven than there were priests.

[bad Jim]

So, what, Heaven is not a sustainable ecosystem? Not only no dogs, but no trees?

[Jesurgislac]

Heaven is a city. No need for dogs, cats, or trees.

Salvation either by faith or by works makes equal logic, but Jesus said explicitly it was both, equal time, which makes the most sense of all: first you have to believe in that religion in order to get into that religion's heaven, then you have to deserve to go there. (Or the other way round. Either way.)

When people ask, would Gandhi go to heaven, they forget that Gandhi was a devout Hindu, and believed he was going to be reincarnated: he said, in fact, he had prayed he would be reincarnated as a Muslim. If Gandhi were sent to Heaven, you can be certain that he'd raise a peaceful gathering of determined non-Christians, and practice non-violent resistance against God until they got what they believed.

Somewhat to my regret, at times, what I believe is that when we die, we die: nothing more can or will happen.

[Cactus Wren]

1982_Cygni:

(How do I put up links to their Wikipedia entries, BTW?)

[a href="http://thisisthe.url"]Link Title[/a]

and substitute angle brackets for the square ones. You'll get this:

Link Title

[ako]

I've always been scared of the "You get what you believe" option. Because if I found myself dead and still a personality, the first thing that would pop into my head would be "The Christians were right, I'm going to Hell!" Because I don't believe, but I've got enough cultural absorption of religion that if an afterlife was definitely true, my first expectation would be a Christian one. The type that doesn't take non-believers.

So if you went where you believed you went, and I got called up before some cosmic sorting entity (yes, I have read a lot of Discworld), I'd go "Oh, Hell!" and then down I'd go.

Then again, they could be efficient and just go "Oh, she thinks her mind and personality just won't exist. So don't send anyone for a personal visit, just let her stop existing." Which wouldn't be that bad.

[Jos]

So, what, Heaven is not a sustainable ecosystem? Not only no dogs, but no trees?

Of it isn't. Trees don't grow on clouds, after all.