L.B.: Knockin' on Heaven's Door

Left Behind, pp. 395-397

After hearing Rayford Steele's impassioned sales pitch for faith in "the Antichrist and all," Buck Williams is rethinking his own beliefs. At the same time, Jerry Jenkins is busy rewriting the preceding 21 chapters of his book, letting us know, retroactively, about things he had neglected or even denied earlier.

Part of that rewriting process here involves a fuller picture of the substance of Rayford's speech. Based on the rather sketchy accounts of that speech we've gotten so far, his key point was that the Trip and Die guys were a (disappointingly flameless) version of something predicted in Revelation, meaning the Antichrist would be here soon.

If one heard Rayford's speech the way it has been thus far described, and if one believed him, then the reasonable response would be something like stockpiling food and water and heading for the hills. That is, in fact, exactly what Jesus says to do. In the "mini-apocalypse" in Matthew's Gospel (Chapter 24), Jesus says:

When you see standing in the holy place "the abomination that causes desolation," spoken of through the prophet Daniel -- let the reader understand -- then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let no one on the roof of his house go down to take anything out of the house. Let no one in the field go back to get his cloak. How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath. For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now -- and never to be equaled again.

Many biblical scholars will tell you that the "abomination that causes desolation" is a reference to Antiochus Epiphanes' desecration of the Temple and to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E., but that's not important here.

What matters here is what Rayford, LaHaye and Jenkins believe this passage means. They believe this corresponds to the rise of the Antichrist as described in their End Times Checklist. The abominable Nicolae Carpathia may not yet be standing in the holy place -- Rayford and his friends may still have a little time to go back for their cloaks -- but he's quickly slouching in that direction, so what are they still sitting around for? No one heeds or even seems to notice Jesus' explicit, and very logical seeming, advice for those in what they believe is their precise situation: Run! Run for your lives! Fly, you fools!

These aren't the sorts of things the authors want Buck to be contemplating as he paces through the night. They don't want him worrying about famine, plagues, locusts, the seas turning to blood, the Mark of the Beast, or any of that. They want him to be worrying about the salvation of his soul.

From what we've seen so far, Rayford didn't say much of anything to Buck about salvation or souls. No problem, Jenkins will just go back and insert it from here in the following chapter.

Thus we get the following Standard Christian Fiction Conversion Scene. These two paragraphs could have been (and maybe even were) lifted verbatim from any Christian Brand work of fiction available at your local Christian bookstore. All Jenkins did here was insert the names of his own characters:

Buck was on a personal quest now, looking to satisfy deep needs. For so many years he had rejected the idea of a personal God or that he had need of God -- if there were one. The idea would take some getting used to. Captain Steele had talked about everyone being a sinner. Buck was not unrealistic about that. He knew his life would never stand up to the standards of a Sunday School teacher. But he had always hoped that if he faced God someday, his good would outweigh his bad and that relatively speaking, he was as good or better than the next guy. That would have to do.

Now, if Rayford Steele and all his Bible verses could be believed, it didn't make any difference how good Buck was or where he stood in relation to anybody else. One archaic phrase had struck him and rolled around in his head. There is none righteous, no, not one. Well, he had never considered himself righteous. Could he go to the next level and admit his need for God, for forgiveness, for Christ?

This is the masculine version of the standard preconversion scene, hence the football-coach lingo there -- "go to the next level." The feminine version tends to read more like something from a romance novel with lots of talk of "finally yielding" and "surrendering" and "offering herself up" (to Christ, of course).

This boilerplate doesn't fit here. It doesn't fit with Buck's character (to use that term generously) as we've seen it developed (to use that term extremely generously) over the previous 400 pages. Buck, as we've come to know him thus far, is a man whose self-concept is wholly out of proportion to his actual self. He's a 30-year-old virgin who imagines himself a worldly wise rogue. He's an unprincipled coward, willing to cut a deal with his friend's murderers to save his own skin, yet he imagines himself a hero. And he's a deadline-skipping, story-burying hack who imagines himself the subject of his peers' jealous fantasies.

That gap between who he really is and who he imagines himself to be is not sustainable. At some point, maybe just out of the corner of his eye, Buck is going to catch a devastating glimpse of who and what he really is. That will be an epiphany he may not even survive. That realization really would give him the sweaty chills and set him pacing through the long, dark night. Compared to that, the abstract argument of "Rayford Steele and all his Bible verses" is weak tea. Rayford's pitch, as described in this boilerplate insert, could never convince Buck to "admit his need" because Buck has never felt such a need. Need isn't something you can be easily talked into.

The mention of Buck's "personal quest ... to satisfy deep needs" might hint at some previously unsuggested longing for meaning on his part, but I'm not buying that either. Buck's pursuit of meaning and purpose, such as it is, has taken the form of his work, his vocation as a reporter. In Buck's case, to paraphrase G.K. Chesterton, that source of meaning has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found difficult and left untried. It's too soon for Buck to give up on his notion that being a great reporter might give his life meaning because he's barely even trying to be a great reporter.

It may be that Buck is heading down a dead end street, but he is making so little progress doing so that he shouldn't yet realize that he's going to have to turn around. Buck isn't all that different from the vast majority of those who suspect that, platitudes to the contrary, money might buy them happiness. Most such people will never have enough money to credibly test that theory. Until they do, they will never think, "Ah, I should look elsewhere for meaning," but only, "How can I get more money than I have now?" A counterfeit dream, half-heartedly pursued, is indistinguishable from a real one.

Nor does this awkwardly inserted Standard Conversion Scene fit, at all, with what we have been previously told of the actual contents of Rayford's speech. I've previously mentioned Rayford's strange confusion of evangelism and "prophecy." His idea of evangelizing, up until now, has been portrayed as offering an outline of the End Times Checklist while insisting, without ever demonstrating, that it has all been foretold in the Bible. He's never mentioned Jesus, sin, salvation, God's love, forgiveness or redemption.

That approach, as we discussed earlier, is completely unrecognizable to most evangelicals who tend to think of evangelism as presenting the gospel through some formal construct like the Four Spiritual Laws, the Romans Road, the Wordless Book or the Bridge Illustration. Rayford's "evangelism" hasn't followed any such standard approach. He hasn't even made use of the requisite Hypothetical Bus even though, if he were right about the checklist, he could point to a fast-approaching Rider on a Pale Horse and note that the current best-case scenario involves his listeners meeting their maker in less than seven years.

But now, suddenly, we're told that Rayford did, in fact, work some kind of more traditional gospel message into his speech about the checklist and "the Antichrist and all," including quoting Romans 3:10, "There is none righteous, no, not one."*

I am trying to imagine how this could work. "Jesus loves you, your sins are forgiven" is not easily combined with Wormwood falling from the sky and locusts given the power of scorpions to torture men and the plagues of fire, smoke and sulfur from the mouths of horses with heads like lions. "So you see, Buck, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Well, not for your life. Your life, the six years and 11 months that's left of it, will consist of suffering divine wrath in the form of seven seals, seven trumpets, seven plagues and seven bowls, each worse than the last. Let me describe those for you in detail ..."

The only way I can imagine fusing those two messages into one would be to promise Buck that he will experience Hell on earth and Heaven when he dies (soon, and violently). That's a connection through disconnection. It's a message so heavenly minded that it's no earthly good.

As Jenkins continues to revise and extend Rayford's earlier remarks, we learn that he also somehow worked good old Chapter 3 of the Gospel of John into his Antichrist speech:

Was it possible? Could he [Buck] be on the cusp of becoming a born-again Christian? He had been almost relieved when Rayford Steele had used that term. Buck had read and even written about "those kinds" of people, but even at his level of worldly wisdom he had never quite understood the phrase. He had always considered the "born-again" label akin to "ultraright-winger" or "fundamentalist." Now, if he chose to take a step he had never dreamed of taking, if he could not somehow talk himself out of this truth he could no longer intellectually ignore, he would also take upon himself a task: educating the world on what that confusing little term really meant.

Note again the contrast between intellect and intellectual honesty -- the two are constantly presented as opposites in Left Behind.

I'm not sure why Buck "had never quite understood" the meaning of "born again" or why he finds the term "confusing." Born. That word we know. Again. That one, too. Born again. Not terribly complicated. As the other John said, it would be just like starting over. The idea of starting over, a second chance, a clean slate -- that's not at all confusing.

What is confusing in the paragraph quoted above is what Buck takes this to mean now that, he suggests, he finally really understands the phrase. That confusion isn't specifically the authors' fault. It's part of a larger confusion in American evangelicalism that we've discussed before as the pyramid marketing scheme of the contentless gospel: "The good news is that now you can tell others the good news." (Yes, but what is that news? "To tell others the news." But this news you're going to be telling them, what is it? "That they can tell others the good news, too." Yes, but ...)

Buck nearly grasps something even more confusing. The hyphenated compound adjective "born-again" has become a label for attitudes and connotations that seem wholly incompatible with the simpler, more obvious implications of the term. Here's a group of people that chooses to self-identify with a phrase that announces that they have themselves needed a second chance. They are proclaiming that they are the second-chancers, the do-overs, the mulligan-takers, the fuss-ups and muck-ups who have had to return to Square One. We'd expect that such a group would be marked by a generosity of spirit toward others that reflected the generosity they have, themselves, benefitted from. Yet instead we find, as Buck says, a group of "ultraright-wingers" whose foremost defining characteristic for those both within and without the group -- according to the born-againers at the Barna Research Group -- is "excessive contempt and unloving attitudes."

Buck says he intends to start "educating the world on what that confusing little term really meant." I wish by that he meant that he wanted to start correcting this contradiction of being the unforgiving forgiven. But, of course, what Buck really means is that he's decided the ultraright-wingers are right and so therefore he intends to become just like them.

That contradiction -- the contrast between what it ought to mean to refer to oneself as a second-chancer and what it actually seems to mean in our culture -- somehow reminds me of this:

The kingdom of God is like a king who decided to square accounts with his servants. As he got under way, one servant was brought before him who had run up a debt of $100,000. He couldn't pay up, so the king ordered the man, along with his wife, children, and goods, to be auctioned off at the slave market.

The poor wretch threw himself at the king's feet and begged, "Give me a chance and I'll pay it all back." Touched by his plea, the king let him off, erasing the debt.

The servant was no sooner out of the room when he came upon one of his fellow servants who owed him $10. He seized him by the throat and demanded, "Pay up. Now!"

The poor wretch threw himself down and begged, "Give me a chance and I'll pay it all back." But he wouldn't do it. He had him arrested and put in jail until the debt was paid. When the other servants saw this going on, they were outraged and brought a detailed report to the king.

The king summoned the man and said, "You evil servant! I forgave your entire debt when you begged me for mercy. Shouldn't you be compelled to be merciful to your fellow servant who asked for mercy?" The king was furious and put the screws to the man until he paid back his entire debt.

That parable illustrates part of why I find Buck's soul-searching so unconvincing. As impressed as he claims to be with "There is none righteous, no not one," he still sees himself more as somebody owing $10 than as somebody owing $100,000.

That's also related to why the connotations of "born-again" are so different than what the phrase would seem to suggest on its own. The label brings to mind people who are convinced that they owe God $10, but that everybody else owes him a lot more. Those others, they seem to think, really deserve debtor's prison, or Hell, or Tribulation. Those others deserve to be Left Behind.

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

* St. Paul himself was quoting the 14th Psalm, so evangelists have to be particularly careful when citing this passage. If they were to open their Bibles to Psalms rather than to Romans, they might accidentally convert someone to Judaism instead of Christianity.

Comments

[bulbul]

In response to Dan, I think it's very interesting that L&J seem to think that this work of fiction can function as real life proof that their beliefs are true. As though writing it has made it fact.

Spot on, Spherical Time. L&J don't treat the Bible as a text, they treat it as a powerful magic artifact* - repeat the words from it and you shall be healead/rich/saved. Therefore it shouldn't come as a surprise - especially considering the size of their egos - that they treat their own texts as magic artifacts capable of creating new worlds and realities.

*Incidentally, I believe that this is more or less the case with any biblical literalist and even those who espouse the doctrine of sola scriptura.

[Spalanzani]

"Robb: has there ever been anyone to defend these books (& their methologies) even after reading Fred's words? Has there ever been a "Y'all are mockin' some Godly men, Jesus strike 'em day-ed" type comments?"

There have been a few people over the years that have said things like "OK, so these aren't the best books ever, but isn't this a little excessive? Can't you just let it go?", some "Get a life!"-type comments, and I do remember one person who warned Fred about "making fun of God's prophecies". However, I don't know of anyone ever defending the books themselves.

[hamillhair]

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I'm getting the impression from some comments that the posters don't like Christianity very much and use the behaviour of some Christians to justify it. This is understandable but misguided. You cannot judge Christianity based on the actions of a few Christians, you have to look at the doctrine. Just because some Christians don't live out their faith particularly brilliantly doesn't mean that the faith itself is bad.

"We may take that extra cookie, to borrow an example form upthread, but that is nowhere near the level of depravity and depredation involved in murder, rape or genocide, which any atheist, no matter how New or Radical will admit is an evil the world can and should fight. To throw all us mild law breakers into the same mental cell with rapists and child molesters is absurd."

This is a problem. Let me explain the Christian point of view (as I understand it anyway). Let's say that every sin is given a score. So, for example, taking an extra cookie is rated at 1 point, and committing murder is rated at, say, 1000 points. Every person would be somewhere on the scale according to the various things that they have done. The problem is that God is on 0, and to be righteous (according to the biblical definition of righteous) you have to be on 0. No-one on Earth is, so everybody is sinful and in need of redemption, whether you are at 1 or 1 million.

I think that's how it works

[Spalanzani]

hamilhair: "This is a problem. Let me explain the Christian point of view (as I understand it anyway). Let's say that every sin is given a score. So, for example, taking an extra cookie is rated at 1 point, and committing murder is rated at, say, 1000 points. Every person would be somewhere on the scale according to the various things that they have done. The problem is that God is on 0, and to be righteous (according to the biblical definition of righteous) you have to be on 0. No-one on Earth is, so everybody is sinful and in need of redemption, whether you are at 1 or 1 million."

I think J's point was that it's crazy to say that you have to have a score of 0 to qualify as rightous and to say that everyone with a non-0 score is one the same level, even if their score is 10 or 10 million.

[Keith]

No-one on Earth is, so everybody is sinful and in need of redemption, whether you are at 1 or 1 million.

My point was that expecting everyone, including those who aren't Christian to by into this is absurd. I'm not a sinner. I'm not perfect but since I don't play those reindeer games, calling me a sinner, even a level 1 sinner is still bonkers.

Christians are playing football and getting on Atheists' case for not scoring enough touchdowns, even though they're playing baseball.

I think J's point was that it's crazy to say that you have to have a score of 0 to qualify as rightous and to say that everyone with a non-0 score is one the same level, even if their score is 10 or 10 million.

Agreed.

[Dude]

The minimum passing grade to get to heaven is 100%.

[hamillhair]

"I think J's point was that it's crazy to say that you have to have a score of 0 to qualify as rightous and to say that everyone with a non-0 score is one the same level, even if their score is 10 or 10 million."

I think that's because he's using a different frame of reference. From our perspective it would be. 1 would see itself as tiny compared to 1 million.
But from God's perspective they would be all on the same level. As far as 0 is concerned, 1 and 1 million are comparable, because they are both infinitely bigger than 0.

That's how I understand it anyway. I think it's a personal thing as well. I've never committed any big sins, but as a Christian, as I slowly get closer to God, I get more and more aware how much I do actually need His forgiveness, because the small sins are actually a lot bigger than they look.

[Cowboy Diva]

Dude, is that with the curve?

[Spalanzani]

Keith: "I'm not perfect but since I don't play those reindeer games, calling me a sinner, even a level 1 sinner is still bonkers."

This could make for one screwed-up RPG:

"Keith takes an extra cookie from the cookie jar. Keith gains one sinner point. Keith steals a cookie from a small child. Kieth gains 10 sinner points and reaches level 2! Keith kills the small child. Keith gains 1,000 sinner points and reaches level 13!"

[Lax Tool]

The above conversation sort of underscores for me why sin has always seemed to me one of the weakest aspects of Christian (if not Islamic) theology, at least compared to Buddhism. Buddhists define the problem of humanity as suffering, which is something that even atheists believe in. (They may not define it as the central problem, but they at least won't deny the existence of suffering.)

By comparison, sin seems pretty artificial and seems to get scored rather arbitrarily. (To the point where if you've never done anything to harm yourself or others, disbelief in God alone will get you that one point that knocks you out of the game.)

[Lax Tool]

Spala,

I think they have something like that in Ravenloft. You can do evil things and get powers for it. (Although it's been a while since I last played, and they may have changed the system.)

[hamillhair]

Christians do get on Atheists case, which we shouldn't really do. Evangelizing is one thing, but it's called the GOOD NEWS for a reason, it's not meant to be hammer to beat people with, which I think is a mistake a lot of Christians make.

I've had an interesting time learning this, because one of my best friends is a Sikh. I used to bash him over the head with the Gospel all the time, and he just got more and more resistant to it. It was only when I stopped getting on his case that we then were able to have some good chats and discussions about the whole thing.

[bulbul]

Did Jesus really *say* "let the reader understand" in the middle of that warning?
Good question. Same phrase crops up in the same context in Mark 13:14, too. In both cases, most editions of the Greek text separate that comment - ὁ ἀναγινώσκων νοείτω in NA27 - from the rest of the text. In fact, the word ἀναγινώσκων (the one who is reading, reader) is weird: only crops up 3 times in the New Testament - these two verses and Revelation 1:3 where John addresses the readers of his book. So I think it's a safe bet that these are comments made by whoever who wrote/compiled/translated the gospel according to Mark (it is generally assumed that it's older than all the others).
If it is indeed so, then it's quite interesting. Consider that the only time Mark and John break the fourth wall was to remind us to be careful around end of time prophecies. That's gotta mean something...

[hamillhair]

I know Sikhs aren't atheists, but the point still applies.

[Spalanzani]

hamilhair: "I think that's because he's using a different frame of reference. From our perspective it would be. 1 would see itself as tiny compared to 1 million. But from God's perspective they would be all on the same level. As far as 0 is concerned, 1 and 1 million are comparable, because they are both infinitely bigger than 0."

My Biblical knowledge isn't what it should be, so I have to ask where in the Bible it says that God sees all sins as equal.

Anyway, from a non-Christian (but still theistic) perspective, that idea seems rather strange (at least to me). After all, shouldn't (or couldn't) it be the other way around? Wouldn't God attach less signifigance to sins than humans do? After all, God can't be harmed by human actions (at least I'd think not), whereas humans can. Not to mention that God would have a greater perspective than humans (at least...oh, you get the idea). Why would God care more about our sins than the ones actually affected by them?

[mmack]

Sweet! I've managed, over the years, to work the term "diddly" into my daily speech, so I should be set as far as salvation goes!

Yes, but do you call your friends "neighbor-ino"?

[Mary]

While I'll freely admit that we all make our mistakes and have our moments of greed and envy, most people do not actively pursue lifestyles or activities that harm others or deprive them of their freedoms or joys. We may take that extra cookie, to borrow an example form upthread, but that is nowhere near the level of depravity and depredation involved in murder, rape or genocide, which any atheist, no matter how New or Radical will admit is an evil the world can and should fight.

Gah. I live a pretty normal middle class American life, but I'm not at all sure I'm not doing deeply evil things. I buy cheap clothes -- supporting sweatshops, with workers who in many cases are slaves in all but name. I eat meat (although not much!) and wear leather, and do those animals suffer any less than the squirrels serial killers are said to torture in their childhoods? I try to recycle, but I recognize I'm still doing deep harm to the environment with my lifestyle -- and if destroying the world isn't evil, what is? I live a life of comfort in a world filled with hunger and pain, and most of what I'm lucky enough to get, I keep for myself, even though I know others need it far more.

When you stop to think about it, who really scores a "one" or a "ten"? Maybe the monks and nuns who actually do give all their possessions away and spend their time caring for the poor in charity hospitals... (And I think a lot of *them* are driven by guilt and would be the last to claim to be "righteous.")

Nah, I think we really are mostly in the millions. We just don't like to think about it.

[Cowboy Diva]

Spalanzani,
Romans 3:23 is the short answer.
You may also find this...educational.
(standard disclaimer here disavowing all perceived attempts at proselytization ::shudder::)

[Grumpy]

"Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath."

Damn! That's pretty hard-assed, Jesus! Even if you're running for your life, you've gotta adhere to Sabbath travel restrictions??

Especially in light of Matthew 12:11-12 "If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a man than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath."

Note that this sentence is omitted from the rendition of the mini-apocalypse in Luke 21. Luke mentions the pregnant and nursing mothers, although his sign of doom drawing nigh is "Jerusalem being surrounded by armies," not abomination & desolation per se.

[Angelika]

Keith My point was that expecting everyone, including those who aren't Christian to by into this is absurd. I'm not a sinner. I'm not perfect but since I don't play those reindeer games, calling me a sinner, even a level 1 sinner is still bonkers.

I guess the problem is, that the word 'sin' has gotten an extreme emotional ballast. This is unfortunate, since the meaning of the word is actually not all that problematic: We all know - or should know if we had at least a minimum of self-awareness - that we are not perfect. And I guess we could cheerfully agree, that each of us holds attitudes and does things that are not good for others and ourselves - and therefore there is good reason why these others, or somebody who happens to love these others and us might be less than pleased with us. Not necessarily all the time and always, but occasionally, each of us does.

Well, the point of Christian teaching about sin and the emphasis on 'everybody is a sinner' is that rather than looking at a murderer and feeling comparatively righteous, since we only made hurtful remarks rather than killing somebody, we should look at ourselves and stop making those damn hurtful remarks. There is little to be won by declaring oneself better than somebody else, but stopping one's own misbehavior (and apologizing for it) will quite practically make the world a somewhat better place.

I'm not quite sure, where the reindeer comes in, but maybe somebody can explain me that.

[cjmr's husband]

Wormwood falling from the sky

Apocalyptic Absinthe would be a great name for a band.

[Carl Rennie]

I doubt that people are arguing that Christianity isn't internally consistent (at least, several forms of Christian doctrine are internally consistent) -- after all, you've had a couple of millenia to hammer out the details. It's that to an outsider, Christian doctrine on sin and redemption is just -- honestly -- kind of silly.

There was a Darkwing Duck episode I saw as a kid (remember that?) where the lead character starts fantasizing about what he'd do with a time machine, and imagines himself going back in time and rewriting the Code of Hammarubi to change the punishment for all violations of the law, major or minor, to death. Most versions of Christian doctrine make God out to be the same way; it's easy to visualize him standing over his unwritten book of laws and saying "punishment for murder? death! stealing? death! lying? death! parking violation? hm.... death!".

When you say something like "...from God's perspective they would be all on the same level. As far as 0 is concerned, 1 and 1 million are comparable, because they are both infinitely bigger than 0.", it sounds ridiculous. Yes, it makes sense, yes, it's interally consistent, yes, it does create a need for salvation, which Christianity can then fill. But it also makes God sound like kind of a monster. That's no way to run a government, that's no way to run a preschool, and it seems like it's no way to run a universe.

[Dylan]

I guess the problem is, that the word 'sin' has gotten an extreme emotional ballast. This is unfortunate, since the meaning of the word is actually not all that problematic: We all know - or should know if we had at least a minimum of self-awareness - that we are not perfect.

This is a good point. The definition of "sin" in this discussion has gone from very strict to only including truly evil people, when the point really is "we are not perfect." When the argument goes anywhere beyond that, it becomes a question of God's valuation and accounting of sin.

Albert Outler makes the comment in Evangelism and Theology in the Wesleyan Spirit that much of modern Christianity is still based on attitudes from the (IIRC) Second Great Awakening, which relied on overbearing guilt to be effective. His point was that, to be viable, the church has to find a way to communicate the good news to modern culture which isn't prone to that sort of guilt.

Which brings another question--is the gospel no longer meaningful if the intense guilt of sin is removed? Outler argued that it was still meaningful, but a lot of Christians would probably disagree. I think that's why evangelists often push this point to an extreme (if only because they can't explain why people need Christ outside of intense guilt over sin), which is why the phrase "we are all sinners" carries such emotional connotation in a discussion like this (versus, say "we are not perfect").

[aunursa (vacationing in Kona)]

if he were right about the checklist, he could point to a fast-approaching Rider on a Pale Horse and note that the current best-case scenario involves his listeners meeting their maker in less than seven years.

Tiny, ticky-tack correction. According to L&J, the seven-year countdown doesn't begin with the Rapture, but with the pact between the Antichrist and Israel.

The good news is that now you can tell others the good news." (Yes, but what is that news? "To tell others the news." But this news you're going to be telling them, what is it? "That they can tell others the good news, too." Yes, but ..

Reminds me of...

Evangelist: [Insert any Evangelical doctrine or belief here] is true.
Skeptic: Why?
Evangelist: Because the Bible says so.
Skeptic: How do you know the Bible is true?
Evangelist: Because the Bible says so.
Skeptic: But if the Bible were false, then it wouldn't be true even if it said so.
Evangelist: God wouldn't lie about something like that.
Skeptic: How do you know that God said it?
Evangelist: Because the Bible says so.
Skeptic: [bangs head against wall in frustration]

[aunursa (vacationing in Kona)]

Spalanzani: My Biblical knowledge isn't what it should be, so I have to ask where in the Bible it says that God sees all sins as equal.

It's pretty clear that God doesn't see all sins as equal. Otherwise the penalties for violating any of the various commandments would be the same penalty.

[Randy Owens]

Angelika:

I'm not quite sure, where the reindeer comes in, but maybe somebody can explain me that.

I'm guessing you're not American? Most anyone who was would have recognized that as a reference to the story & song of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, in which "all of the other reindeer... wouldn't let poor Rudolph, join in any reindeer games."

Carl Rennie:

When you say something like "...from God's perspective they would be all on the same level. As far as 0 is concerned, 1 and 1 million are comparable, because they are both infinitely bigger than 0.", it sounds ridiculous. Yes, it makes sense, yes, it's interally consistent...

Actually, I don't think I'd even grant it internal consistency. After all, the only way to make 1 and 10^6 equivalent is by comparison to zero, which both are infinitely greater than. Note that "infinitely" part. That means we would all be infinitely evil by God's standards. Now, is God's allegedly infinite love for us great enough to overpower His revulsion at our infinite evil? If it were so superbly infinite, why couldn't it cover those who don't believe in Him/say the magic words?

Fred:

Rayford's pitch, as described in this boilerplate insert, could never convince Buck to "admit his need" because Buck has never felt such a need. Need isn't something you can be easily talked into.

Madison Avenue would surely enjoy a quiet chuckle over that one, and happily allow you to persist in your little delusions.

[Toby]

hamillhair,

Your numerical analogy would run better, and fit better with traditional theology, if it went the other way around. God gets a score of infinity, while those of us who are imperfect are all wallowing in finitude. I suppose it is possible that there are perfect humans walking around today. As for the rest of us, some might be at 1, some might be at 100. While 100 is greater than 1, it is no closer to infinity.

[Lax Tool]

It's pretty clear that God doesn't see all sins as equal.

It's made pretty clear in the OT. Some sins will get you put down with extreme prejudice. Others require cattle sacrifice. Some only require pigeons. I think Jesus and/or Paul muddy the waters a bit.

[Carl Rennie]

Dylan said:

Which brings another question--is the gospel no longer meaningful if the intense guilt of sin is removed? Outler argued that it was still meaningful, but a lot of Christians would probably disagree. I think that's why evangelists often push this point to an extreme (if only because they can't explain why people need Christ outside of intense guilt over sin), which is why the phrase "we are all sinners" carries such emotional connotation in a discussion like this (versus, say "we are not perfect").

I think it becomes very hard to justify the need for salvation without the intense guilt of sin. Again, because most of us don't take it as a given that we're "bad people", we don't particularly feel a need for salvation (I don't know if this is a recent phenomenon; it certainly seems that the new testament assumes a universal or near-universal acceptance of guilt). Christianity can still justify itself as a good moral code, or a way to personal happiness/prosperity, or even "just the truth", but to make people feel like they need to be saved, you need to have something they're saved from.

The problem with Christianity is that the good guy and the bad guy are the same person. God isn't saving you from the devil, and he's not really saving you from yourself -- he's saving you from his own wrath. So theologians are put in the awkward position of justifying God's wrath against all non-believers; hence the emphasis on how even little sins are a huge offense to God.

I'm not sure this is resolvable, or how. Ditching the concept of hell would be a start; then salvation becomes salvation from a hopeless or meaningless life.

[Randy Owens]

aunursa:

It's pretty clear that God doesn't see all sins as equal. Otherwise the penalties for violating any of the various commandments would be the same penalty.

What, like eternal damnation for all (unless you redeem your get-out-of-jail-free card)? Yeah, obviously, that's not at all the case.

[LMM]

The GIRAT has never heard of Jimmy Carter?

Good point, but move the story ahead (say) 20 or so years, and he'd be right on the mark. Because, present company excluded, the vast majority of born-again Christians one encounters these days *are* pompeous asses.

[movablenu]

I think that describing sin in terms of point-scoring is (ha) pointless. We're not really talking about marks on some celestial board, but about a weakness and corruption in our being that leads us inevitably towards unloving, selfish, petty and unjust behaviour. Some are corrupted further than others - he murders a small child, you only steal from a cookie jar, but the root problem is the same. The question for Christianity is not "are you good enough?", where average folks who just try to live as well as they can are able to get by and live are okay. The question is whether the integrity of your 'person' (moral, psychological, emotional, even physical) can stand up to the light of absolute truth and the eternal reality of God. As C.S. Lewis said in one of his novels, 'How can we stand face to face with the gods 'til we have faces?'. In that context, the question of needing a saviour arises more naturally, and that is my understand of what St Paul was talking about in Romans.

[Toby]

Spalanzi: My Biblical knowledge isn't what it should be, so I have to ask where in the Bible it says that God sees all sins as equal.

I don't think that is said. However, there is something close: "For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. For he who said, "Do not commit adultery," also said, "Do not murder." If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker." (James 2:10-11)

Wouldn't God attach less signifigance to sins than humans do? After all, God can't be harmed by human actions (at least I'd think not), whereas humans can.

God places such significance on sin out of love and concern for us. As you say, he is not harmed either way, except insofar as it hurts when you see someone you care about living an awful life.

[Carl Rennie]

Randy Owens said:

Actually, I don't think I'd even grant it internal consistency.

An internally consistent framework:

• God is perfectly pure.


• Any sin is impurity, no matter how small.


• Any person who commits a sin is therefore impure.


• God, in his perfect purity, must punish any impurity.


• Ergo, the necessity of salvation.

I'm not saying that's the ONLY internally consistent Christian framework, but it's the one I grew up with. It works, it just makes a lot of questionable assumptions and has some rather scary implications.

[Cowboy Diva]

Remember kids, as far as RTCs are concerned, Romans 3:23 and Romans 6:23 begin and end the conversation regarding sin.
as for using the 1:1,000,000 ratio of sin, and pointing out that it wouldn't work in human interactions, you could look at theologians like Augustine (but only if you really wanted to) who says (roughly) that all earthly interactions, human and non-human, are broken due to original sin.
LJ are simply pushing a concept of salvation that is dependent on guilt and perceived need "to get right with god," and requires saying the magic words and convincing as many other people as you can of doing the same thing.

[aunursa (vacationing in Kona)]

Randy Owens: What, like eternal damnation for all (unless you redeem your get-out-of-jail-free card)? Yeah, obviously, that's not at all the case.

My Bible describes various penalties (dove sacrifice, lamb sacrifice, goat sacrifice, execution, etc.) for various infractions. I don't recall any passage that replaces all of those penalties with eternal damnation. Apparently the bible that proscribes eternal damnation for every sin must be a different bible from mine.

[Carl Rennie]

movablenu said:

The question for Christianity is not "are you good enough?", where average folks who just try to live as well as they can are able to get by and live are okay. The question is whether the integrity of your 'person' (moral, psychological, emotional, even physical) can stand up to the light of absolute truth and the eternal reality of God. As C.S. Lewis said in one of his novels, 'How can we stand face to face with the gods 'til we have faces?'. In that context, the question of needing a saviour arises more naturally, and that is my understand of what St Paul was talking about in Romans.

Right, but why is that the question? For this to be the case, we have to assume that a completely righteous God must necessarily be unable to physically stand the presence of beings who have weaknesses -- must not only be unable to stand them, but feel the need to punish anyone who is not as perfect as He (and it's always He) is. Weakness that he built into us in the first place. If I accept that premise, then yes, Christianity is great news -- there's a way out of the terrible bind that God placed us in. But if I reject the premise, what then?

It's a lot easier to convince someone that they need salvation if you can first convince them that they're a bad person worthy of being punished. This implies the need for a punisher, and a punisher should be someone above reproach, so then the Christian concept of God kind of clicks into place.

Here's an interesting question: pagan religions (i.e. those w/ multiple gods; pagan in the technical sense) often have flawed, human people as gods -- even the good ones have moral failings and shortcomings. Is the idea of a perfectly good, perfectly just, supremely powerful god a by-product of monotheism, or is it just coincidence that the monotheistic faiths by and large have such a god? I'd argue that the idea of there only being a single, flawed god is so scary, that we must imagine god being perfect, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

As a side note, CS Lewis is a great, personable, eminently readable author, someone whose work is so fluid and enjoyable that you barely even notice that there are times it really doesn't hold together. I've read all of his fiction and much of his (christianity-related) non-fiction, and there are a lot of unspoken assumptions, cultural biases and poor arguments that are smoothed over by how good he is at what he does.

[J]

"...but I'm getting the impression from some comments that the posters don't like Christianity very much and use the behaviour of some Christians to justify it. This is understandable but misguided. You cannot judge Christianity based on the actions of a few Christians, you have to look at the doctrine. Just because some Christians don't live out their faith particularly brilliantly doesn't mean that the faith itself is bad.

No. Nope. Not a chance. Not buying it. Not eating one bite of it. I do not "have to" like Christianity because it has a nice "doctrine" (and I'm not sure it does). This is like that bullshit about "Islam is a religion of peace". Well, if that were true then wouldn't Muslims be a boundingly peaceful people? Well they're not. Not enough of them to justify the "religion of peace" moniker.

You may not like it, but every religion is going to get judged by the behavior of its' adherents. This of course puts Christianity in a real awkward spot because you guys have premised your faith on the laughable claim that how we act doesn't matter. Try selling that at the local shul or to the pilgrims walking the 1,200 kilometer route of the 88 shrines of Shikoku.

And of course it gets really hairy when you guys are caught acting shamefully--crusading sometimes, more often embezzling or soliciting rent bosy--because, like it or not, that rather communicates that you have ulterior motives for claiming that all sins are equal.

[J]

As C.S. Lewis said in one of his novels, 'How can we stand face to face with the gods 'til we have faces?'.

I read that book. I read it over and over and never understood it. I've decided it's just Clive being all smarty-pants and tossing around analogies that even he didn't understand in an effort to bamboozle people into thinking him wise.

[Carl Rennie]

J said:

I read that book. I read it over and over and never understood it. I've decided it's just Clive being all smarty-pants and tossing around analogies that even he didn't understand in an effort to bamboozle people into thinking him wise.

Mostly what I retained from it was an overwhelming feeling of lostness and pain, which resonated with adolescent me. Haven't read it in a while.

It was trippy though.

[Dylan]

Carl Rennie: It really depends on which denomination you're talking about. Salvation, specifically from hell, is the primary focus of Christianity. It's especially true of the say-the-magic-words approach to salvation, because there's something mechanical about it--God's wrath is looming, so we have to get as many people as possible to do the minimum required for salvation. (Incidentally, "God is the bad guy" is also very dependent upon what a denomination believes about the wrath of God and atonement.)

Albert Outler was distinctly Methodist/Wesleyan, so his approach is one of many alternatives to this thinking, which is why I mentioned his book in the first place. For Outler (and John Wesley), justification/salvation was merely the doorway to faith--the important focus of the Christian life was sanctification, being perfected in love in this life.

Thus the choice doesn't have to be between salvation in the afterlife and salvation from a meaningless life; the church is only relevant if it can balance those two understandings. That doesn't require throwing out the concept of Heaven/Hell, but it does mean understanding the judgment of God as more than mechanical, and salvation as something more than fire insurance or a "Get Out Of Hell Free" card.

[Dylan]

Er, that should probably have been "It really depends on which denomination you're talking about whether salvation, specifically from hell, is the primary focus of Christianity."

[Technomad]

Actually, as I understand it, present-day Jewish law requires that in any case where sticking to the letter of the law (the Sabbath as a day of absolute rest and no work whatsoever, eating non-kosher food, etc.) might put human life at risk, the law is to be violated.

This comes up in one of Chaim Potok's novels---not The Chosen, but its sequel, about whose title I'm blanking at the moment. The narrator's best friend, a psychologist and the son of a very prominent (Hassidic? At least, extremely orthodox) rabbi, is told that one of his patients has gone really, really off the deep end, and they need him there like right now---on the Sabbath. His father is shoving money into his hand for the taxi (handling money on the Sabbath is a no-no, at least as they see it, and same goes for riding in a taxi) and pushing him out the door, because saving human life takes precedence over observing the Sabbath.

Apparently it was different in ancient times. I've read accounts of Jewish attempts to revolt against the Selucids before Maccabeus pulled it off, and they always fell apart because the Selucids' soldiers figured out quickly that they could butcher the rebels while they were observing the Sabbath, without even meeting any resistance. Maccabeus managed to figure a way around that; I disremember just what.

And the Darkwing Duck episode my learned friend Carl Rennie refers to above sounds very like "Time and Punishment." That was a real masterpiece of an episode.

[cjmr]

Technomad--I think you mean The Promise. It has the same protagonists as The Chosen but isn't, strictly speaking, a sequel.

[Dash]

It's too soon for Buck to give up on his notion that being a great reporter might give his life meaning because he's barely even trying to be a great reporter.

It seems to me that he is trying to be a great reporter--or, more accurately, perhaps, a Great Reporter. What he's not doing is trying to be a good reporter.

[Toby]

J: This is like that bullshit about "Islam is a religion of peace". Well, if that were true then wouldn't Muslims be a boundingly peaceful people? Well they're not. Not enough of them to justify the "religion of peace" moniker.

I know! You can hardly find a dozen Muslims in the entire world who haven't already blown themselves up!

This of course puts Christianity in a real awkward spot because you guys have premised your faith on the laughable claim that how we act doesn't matter.

Hm. I must have skipped over the bit where Jesus says, "Do whatever you want, our Father couldn't care less."

[Dash]

L&J don't treat the Bible as a text, they treat it as a powerful magic artifact* - repeat the words from it and you shall thou shalt be healed/rich/saved.

Fixed!

[Iorwerth Thomas]

That means we would all be infinitely evil by God's standards. Now, is God's allegedly infinite love for us great enough to overpower His revulsion at our infinite evil? If it were so superbly infinite, why couldn't it cover those who don't believe in Him/say the magic words?

That's going to depend on which size of infinity we're talking about, really. If God's infinite love is of the order of aleph_0 (the set of all natural numbers) whereas our infinite evil has a magnitude of the order of the set of all real numbers (which is larger), then quite obviously, God's infinite love won't be sufficient to cover those outside of its remit.

Actually, what this suggests is that modelling 'sin' and 'righteousness' and 'love' after the fashion of numbers gives Very Silly Results, and that we should look at some other way of doing it. Anyone want to try using the category of topoi rather than that of sets? (I would do it myself, but I have non-linear Schrodinger equations to solve.)

[Mau de Katt]

The abominable Nicolae Carpathia may not yet be standing in the holy place -- .... -- but he's quickly slouching in that direction

Yay for the Yeats reference! ;D

As C.S. Lewis said in one of his novels, 'How can we stand face to face with the gods 'til we have faces?'."

I read that book. I read it over and over and never understood it. I've decided it's just Clive being all smarty-pants and tossing around analogies that even he didn't understand in an effort to bamboozle people into thinking him wise.

Yeah, I don't think I really understood it either, or at least "got" whatever point Lewis was trying to make with it. But it is a story that has stayed with me over the past decades... and what I did get out of it was how personal needs can blind a person to their own self-delusions, how acting on those needs thoughtlessly can cause devastating unintended consequences... and it was also a good reworking of the latter half of the "Prodigal Son" motif, at least in the sense of the older sibling's jealousy and outraged pride over the younger sibling's being given seemingly undeserved favors and preferential treatment. Even if I'm not sure I "got" the book, it was a very good examination of human nature.

This is one of the reasons that I often feel antipathy for Christians, that so many of them exhibit the arrogance of saying "we're all right; it's YOU lot that need to get on your knees before us and repent."

Hrm... didn't Jesus have a parable about that or something...?

[Iorwerth Thomas]

Is the idea of a perfectly good, perfectly just, supremely powerful god a by-product of monotheism, or is it just coincidence that the monotheistic faiths by and large have such a god? I'd argue that the idea of there only being a single, flawed god is so scary, that we must imagine god being perfect, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

It's coincidence. It's the result of certain elements of Greek philosophical monotheism interacting with early Christianity, and then trickling down into the laity. (There aren't any statements, AFAIK, of big-O Anselmian Perfect Being theology in the Bible, for rather obvious reasons...)