L.B.: Losing Chloe

Left Behind, pp. 400-409

Buck Williams isn't intended to be perceived here as the ever-present, unshakeable, stalker-pursuer of Chloe Steele. That role is reserved for God. We're supposed to see Chloe here as chased by the very "Hound of Heaven." God has tracked her down, worn her down and now, at last, we come to Chloe's big conversion scene.

Then again, "conversion" may be too grand a word for what happens to the converts in Left Behind. None of them seems to be converted to anything. They do not become followers of Jesus, receiving and bestowing grace in pursuit of restoring right relationships with God and neighbor. Instead, they merely become believers in a series of propositions about "the Antichrist and all." Unlike Rayford and (shortly) Buck, Chloe undergoes a change in personality following her recitation of the magic words, but the change is entirely one of subtraction, not of addition. She ceases to be "independent" (the word is used more than once as a pejorative) in her thinking, becoming mindlessly receptive and obedient. Her coming to faith is not portrayed as the conclusion of an intellectual quest for meaning by a carefully thoughtful young woman, but rather as the abandonment and rejection of that intellect, that quest, that care and thoughtfulness.

Chloe's "conversion" is thus one of the saddest events in a book full of woes and calamities. We met her more than 300 pages ago as the spunky Stanford undergrad who somehow managed to transverse half the country, on her own, during the chaos of the aftermath of The Event. She alone voices the reasonable objection that the "God" of LB seems arbitrary, vindictive and cruelly pleased to be inflicting suffering. When that objection never gets a response, she has enough spunk to walk out of Bruce Barnes' evasive and shallow "skeptics meeting." And she alone sticks up for the badly mistreated Hattie Durham. All of that makes her one of the few even slightly realistic characters in the first half of the book, one of the only characters we can, or want to, relate to.

Yet after just a few days under her father's roof, Chloe begins to change. The brave, curious, skeptical character accidentally sketched earlier is replaced with a cowering, whining child, spending days at a time sitting alone in her room, doing nothing, constantly on the verge of unconsolable tears. The change is so stark that it seems to parallel the warning signs of abuse or assault that I was taught to be on the lookout for when I worked with teenagers. The abuse, in Chloe's case, is occurring at the hands of the authors.

Her conversion scene is intermixed with more of what passes as romantic-comedy banter between Chloe and Buck. She is charmed, moved and won over by his creepy seat-next-to-hers surprise, which she takes not just as a gesture of his affection, but of God's. The first thing she says to him is, "Have you ever received a direct answer to prayer?"

Buck shot her a double take. "I thought your dad was the praying member of your family."

"He is," she said. "But I just tried out my first one in years, and God answered it."

"You prayed I would sit next to you?"

"Oh, no, I never would have dreamed of anything that impossible. How did you do it, Buck?"

Yes, the same girl who nine days ago got from San Jose to Chicago while all commercial flights were grounded is now in awe of Buck's seat-booking skills. But let's get back to the wet fleece on the dry ground and the kind of faith that expects and requires a "direct answer to prayer":

She took his hand again. "Buck, this is too special. This is the nicest thing anyone's done for me in a long time."

"You said you were going to miss me, but I didn't do it only for you. I've got business in Chicago."

She giggled and let go again. "I wasn't talking about you, Buck, though this is sweet. I was talking about God doing the nice thing for me."

They both repeat their admiration for how sincere, serious and compelling her father's spiel had been the night before:

"If I didn't know better, Buck, I would have thought he was trying to convince you personally rather than just answering your questions."

"I'm not so sure he wasn't."

"Did it offend you?"

"Not at all, Chloe. To tell you the truth, he was getting to me."

Chloe fell silent and shook her head. When she finally spoke she was nearly whispering, and Buck had to lean toward her to hear. He loved the sound of her voice. "Buck," she said, "he was getting to me, too, and I don't mean my dad."

OK, I don't have the power to enforce this, but I'm declaring a moratorium on any further use of dramatic whispering until Jenkins demonstrates a better understanding of when it is and isn't effective. All this whispering makes me feel like I'm watching an M. Night Shyamalan film.

"Too bizarre," he said. "I was up half the night thinking about this."

"It won't be long for either of us, will it?" she said. Buck didn't respond, but he knew what she meant.

I appreciate that the last lines there were intended to be hopeful. She means that their salvation is close at hand. But those lines don't seem to convey that. They seem more full of unspoken dread and foreboding, like something Dana Wynter would have said to Kevin McCarthy while hopelessly trying to stay awake in that cave outside of town.

"When do I get to be the answer to prayer?" he prodded.

"Oh, right. I was sitting there at dinner with my dad pouring his guts out to you, and I suddenly realized why he wanted me to be there ... He wanted me to get it indirectly. And I did. I didn't hear how he started because Hattie and I were in the ladies' room, but I had probably heard that before. When I got back, I was transfixed. ..."

So it was the ladies' room. For half an hour. The ladies' departure from the table was presented as a significant and meaningful event. We weren't told where they were going or what they were up to in their absence. It seemed intended as a mystery. Now here, nearly 20 pages later, we're off-handedly informed that they were just in the ladies' room, which doesn't account for either the length of their absence or for the dramatic buildup surrounding their departure.

This sort of thing happens enough in LB that you sometimes get the sensation you're reading one of those group-written take-a-turn stories in which each writer contributes succeeding paragraphs. Also, what is it with LaHaye & Jenkins and rest rooms? (Feel free to supply your own Larry Craig joke here, but let the easy ones pass.)

"It wasn't that I was hearing anything new. It was new to me when I heard it from Bruce Barnes and saw that videotape, but my dad showed such urgency and confidence. Buck, there's no other explanation for those two guys in Jerusalem, is there, except that they have to be the two witnesses talked about in the Bible?"

Buck nodded.

That's nodded in agreement, I think, not nodded off to sleep because he's exhausted and Coke is a woefully inadequate caffeine-distribution device and here we go again with the Steeles and their sleep-inducing obsession with the Jerusalem street preachers, although the latter would have made more sense.

It's easy to miss the subtle dismissal above of Irene Steele. Chloe hears her manly man father's urgent and confident presentation of prophecy mania and she's shaken to the core. But she doesn't even remember that every word he said was something she had heard previously, over and over again for years, from her mother. "It was new to me when I heard it from Bruce Barnes," she said. No, it wasn't. I'm not sure whether the authors, too, have forgotten all about Irene's years of obsessive witnessing to her husband and daughter, or whether they're just suggesting that a woman can't be an evangelist. Either way, Irene turns out to have been so inept and ineffectual at spreading her prophecy gospel that it's a wonder she even qualified to be Raptured.

Next we get another 20-pages-later explanation, confirming what I'd pretty much expected about why Chloe was -- unnoticed and without explanation at the time -- crying at dinner the night before:

"So, Dad and God were getting to me, but I wasn't ready yet. I was crying because I love him so much and because it's true. It's all true, Buck, do you know that?"

"I think I do, Chloe."

"But still I couldn't talk to my dad about it. I didn't know what was in my way. I've always been so blasted independent. I knew he was frustrated with me, maybe disappointed, and all I could do was cry. I had to think, to try to pray, to sort it out ..."

Curse all that blasted independence and thinking and sorting things out! We -- thankfully -- are spared an explicit portrayal of Chloe's prayer of conversion, but if the pages leading up to it are any indication, these are the very things she confesses as sins and repents of.

"I've been convinced," she said, "but I'm still fighting. I'm supposed to be an intellectual. I have critical friends to answer to. Who's going to believe this? Who's going to think I haven't lost my mind?"

Intellectual pride can be a sin, of course, but it is not the only sin. Nor is intellectual pride and having an intellect the same thing. Yet Chloe, like Rayford before her, treats the very possession and use of her intellect as the foremost of her sins. This form of confession strikes me as itself a violation of the first commandment: "Love the Lord your God with all your mind."

"I got on this plane, desperate for some closure, pardon the psychobabble, and I started wondering if God answers your prayers before you're ... um, you know, before you're actually a ..."

"Born-again Christian," Buck offered.

"Exactly. I don't know why that's so hard for me to say. ... I prayed and I think God answered. ...

"Chloe, what exactly did you pray for?"

"Oh, well, the prayer itself wasn't that big of a deal, until it was answered. I just told God I needed a little more. I felt bad that all the stuff I'd heard and all that I knew from my dad wasn't enough. I just prayed really sincerely and said I would appreciate it if God could show me personally that he cared, that he knew what I was going through, and that he wanted me to know he was there."

And then she turned and found Buck sitting next to her. "It was as if God knew better than I did that there was no one I would rather see today than you," she tells him, and gives God full credit for a direct and specific answer to prayer.

So this is what it takes to impress her. The Event and the Israel Miracle didn't stir her in the least. The Trip and Die Guys she found impressive, but not sufficient. But this -- this tangential-at-best maybe-response to the vaguest of vague requests -- this she treats as proof beyond any reasonable doubt. This conversion of Chloe's would make very little sense in any other setting. In this setting, in this story, it makes no sense at all.

She announces her intention to recite the magic words and invites Buck to join her, prompting this bit of dialogue that reads like it was lifted from a Very Special Episode of Blossom:

Buck hesitated. "Don't take this personally, Chloe, but I'm not ready."

"What more do you need? ... Oh, I'm sorry, Buck. ... If you're not ready, you're not ready."

It's here that Chloe has the flight attendant summon her father to hear her "extremely good news." We cut back to Rayford's point of view because this is how Jenkins works: If Chloe sends her father a message, the next scene has to be of her father receiving that same message. This is part of his secret formula for cramming a 200-page novel into a mere 468 pages. He really could have skipped the three-paragraph detour into Rayford's perspective here, and we'll skip most of it too, except for the first sentence --

Rayford was manually flying the plane as a diversion when his senior flight attendant gave him the message.

-- just so we can do our best Butthead impression. "Heh heh. Heh. Heh. He said manual diversion." (Juvenile, yes, but the opening sentences of the book -- "With his fully loaded 747 on autopilot ..." -- introduced the jumbo jet as surrogate penis motif, so don't blame me.)

We quickly return to Buck's POV, which is the next best thing to fading to black for sparing us from the intimacies of Chloe's spiritual ecstasy.

[Buck] peeked back at Steele with his daughter, engaged in intense conversation and then praying together. Buck wondered if there was any airline regulation against that.

Buck Williams may not yet be ready to declare himself a born-again RTC, but he's already acquired their persecution complex. There must be an airline regulation against praying -- probably even a federal law -- because, you know, Christians in America are so often made to suffer for their faith. Those first-century Christians had it so easy by comparison. That's why John's Apocalypse wasn't written for or about them, you know, but for and about us 20th- 21st-century American Christians. And only us 21st-century American Christians.

Comments

[Jesurgislac]

Ursula L: But there are also things that you don't mind them seeing, but that you want to be able to address with them as they arise. So what you need is a heads-up if the kids have stumbled across something that you want to work with them on. Copies of what they've seen works for that type of need.

One of the things I always liked about my parents is that they didn't insist on supervising everything I read: I got to read whatever I wanted that was on their shelves (and my parents had several thousand books at home), and, once I was eleven, any book in the adult library, and, once I had the money to buy my own books, any damn book I could afford. If a book upset me, or I wanted to talk about it, I could: there was no such thing as a book or a paper that I shouldn't have read.

Parenting on your style, with my parents wanting to make sure I hadn't been reading things they wanted to "address with me as they arose", not when I wanted but when they felt it was necessary, would have led to my carefully ensuring that my parents could not find out what I was reading, when I was reading things that I didn't want to talk through with them. Active supervision leads to concealment as inevitably as abstinence-only sex education leads to pregnancy and STDs.

What I would be worried about if I had a child who was online a lot without supervision would be cyberbullying/harassment.

[SueW]

"Have you ever received a direct answer to prayer?"

Buck shot her a double take. "I thought your dad was the praying member of your family."
"He is," she said. "But I just tried out my first one in years, and God answered it."

"You prayed I would sit next to you?"

"Oh, no, I never would have dreamed of anything that impossible. How did you do it, Buck?"

God can zap thousands of nuclear missiles, make millions of people disappear, and, even more miraculously, two guys trip and die, but Buck sitting next to her is impossible. :-D

So, she just now prayed for God to do, uh, something nice, and then Buck showed up? Didn't he make his seating arrangement before she made the prayer? Does that mean God answered her prayer in advance?

I couldn't make head or tail of this scene.

[hapax]

would have led to my carefully ensuring that my parents could not find out what I was reading

Exactly. We have an awful lot of "cyber-monitored" children who come to the library for the majority of their online activity, for just that reason. (As well as the homeschooled children who beg us not to tell their parents what books they're reading. I'm pleased to say, even if I were inclined to, the laws of our state wouldn't allow me to reveal that information.)

So, of course, the control freak parents insist we put filters on OUR computers. This a)forces everyone to restrict their usage of the resource to what is considered appropriate for sheltered infants, b) accomplishes nothing because no matter what they say, all of the filters block huge numbers of useful appropriate sites while allowing some really creepy crud to sneak through, but c) teaches all moderately bright people useful hacking skills, which can bypass the filters but don't do our computers much good, as well as encouraging deception as a positive value.

What I would be worried about if I had a child who was online a lot without supervision would be cyberbullying/harassment.

Well, I'm pretty darn worried about actual physical and verbal bullying and harrassment in realtime meatspace, which is far more widespread and damaging. Attaching monitors to my kids won't do much to protect them. Teaching them effective coping skills, and working to change a culture that tolerates and encourages bullying is far more effective than yanking them out of school and encasing them in bubble wrap.

[ako]

A friend of mine in high school was a genius at getting around those parental monitoring programs. He rewrote the program so it would look perfectly functional, but by drag-dropping it into the trash, instead of closing it, it would go away and report nothing of what he did.

That's the most beneficial result I've ever heard of from one of those parental monitoring programs. He learned a lot of programming skills.

The 'reading the IMs' feature sounds creepy. I know it's supposed to monitor for online pedophiles trying to have cybersex with kids, but it makes me think of parents listening in on kid's phone conversations. It doesn't really leave the kid any room for privacy. I know I'd hate to have had to explain every joke and remark to my parents as I was growing up, and have it scrutinized for possible inappropriateness.

[ako]

One of the things I always liked about my parents is that they didn't insist on supervising everything I read: I got to read whatever I wanted that was on their shelves (and my parents had several thousand books at home), and, once I was eleven, any book in the adult library, and, once I had the money to buy my own books, any damn book I could afford.

Same thing here. I was allowed to read what I wanted. I did read inappropriate stuff (I read the Thomas Covenant books when I was nine; my mom noticed, and was relieved to learn that the rape scene had sailed straight over my head), didn't discuss it all with my parents (it's amazing what you can learn with an unabridged French dictionary), and I didn't go wild or turn into some kind of monster.

I'd have been more reluctant to discuss things if I'd know that my parents were monitoring, and that I'd snuck behind their back to get the non-approved book. Like I said, I didn't discuss everything with them (I think the potential of fiction to damage kid's minds is both exaggerated and oversimplified), but I discussed more than I would have otherwise.

[Jesurgislac]

Hapax: Well, I'm pretty darn worried about actual physical and verbal bullying and harrassment in realtime meatspace, which is far more widespread and damaging.

Yes, but that's no reason not to be also concerned about actual verbal bullying and harassment online. Just because cyberbullying is only verbal or pictorial, doesn't make it any the less real.

I wouldn't want to supervise a kid's IM sessions or insist on having access to their e-mail accounts or their Facebook page. I would want the kid to know the basics of safe interaction online, and I'm fairly convinced that the only way to be confident that a kid will go to their parents if they have trouble is for the kid to know that they won't get into trouble by admitting they were IMing unsupervised, but to be able to say "I was IMing on this board and there's this creep who says s/he knows where I live..." As was being discussed recently on Pandagon in another context, the only sure way for a parent to have their child's confidence is to be the kind of parent who merits their child's confidence.

[Jeff]

There's all those Catholics and other "Not True" Christians.

Heathens! Heathens, the lot of them!

====================

Divorce, adultery and gay sex in crack houses, that's how.

You say that like it's a bad thing! (Gesundheit to your cat, BTW)

=====================

What I would be worried about if I had a child who was online a lot without supervision would be cyberbullying/harassment.

Especially by lesbians from Scotland.

[hapax]

I'm trying desperately to think of something I wouldn't let my kids read.

I don't let 'em read my manga until I've read it, but that's because I know they'll leave it under their dirty clothes or lend it out to friends and I'll never get my hands on it. My daughter has asked if she could read some of the yaoi stuff I have around, and I told her she may, but some of it was pretty graphic and I thought it would embarrass her, and she might want to wait a few years. She said she would -- I dunno if she did or not. Ditto when my son asked me if he could read PREACHER. I said he might, but I didn't think he would get most of the jokes, and that knowing his tastes he would find some of the images really upsetting. (Thinking more of the violence than the sexuality or religion).

My kids have unlimited Internet access, but only when one of us is in the room (not peering over their shoulder, just in the room). That's mainly to intervene when things freeze up, or the modem goes out, or they get stuck in a java cascade. I imagine they would tell me if they accidentally clicked on a "bad" site, or were bullied online, but I don't know it for a fact. They've both been taught the three useful principle lessons that apply just as well to the Internet as all other human interactions: 1) you're not responsible for what other people say and do, 2) nine times out of ten, the best solution is just to walk away / click the big red X and 3) when #2 doesn't work, there are people out there who can and will help you find a better answer.

But those are all visual images. I honestly can't think of a single book-with-words I'd say "no" to; most things kids aren't ready for, sail right over their heads.

[hapax]

Oh, Jesurgislac, I agree with you 100% about cyber-bullying, etc. My point was that the problem isn't the "cyber", it's the "bullying." Parents can't fix that by becoming bullies themselvees.

[Brandi]

I have a dear friend who is a fundamentalist Christian; she sincerely believes that God micromanages her life, to the point of, for example, making sure all the traffic lights are green so that she can get home as fast as possible when she's tired and not feeling too great.

This made me think of CS Lewis' comment about people who think "they can use the stairs of Heaven as a short cut to the nearest chemist's shop."

[Hibryd]

RE: Lisa Whelchel's site - wow, her face in the on the homepage FIVE times.

For for fun on the web, you can also check out:

http://www.visionarydaughters.com/
(Girls should not go to college or get jobs but become household helpers serving their fathers until such time as their servitude is transfered to their husbands)

http://www.ladiesagainstfeminism.com/artman/publish/
(Ladies Against Feminsim - pretty much what it implies)

If you're in a bookstore, see if they have "Fascinating Womanhood" - a gem which has been in print since 1964. This book advocates acting like a cute little girl if you're mad, being visibly frightened of everything from mice to cows, and repeatedly reminding him how of helpless you'd be without him. It actually says that if you're stuck having to do a "masculine task" (such as lifting something heavy or fixing something around the house) you should do it WRONG to show him how feminine you are. (In the example she gives, a wife tasked with installing a paper cup dispenser put it on the wall upside down, and when her husband pointed it out, she acted confused and asked "how can you tell which way it goes?" The husband gave her the warmest smile because she had made him feel so much more competent in comparison.)

[SueW]

It actually says that if you're stuck having to do a "masculine task" (such as lifting something heavy or fixing something around the house) you should do it WRONG to show him how feminine you are.

I'm pretty sure that if I did that to any man, he would know I was insulting his intelligence.

[hapax]

I'm pretty sure that if I did that to any man, he would think that I was trying to get out of installing the paper cup dispenser.

[Tonio]

This sort of thing happens enough in LB that you sometimes get the sensation you're reading one of those group-written take-a-turn stories in which each writer contributes succeeding paragraphs.

I've been wondering that myself.

So it was the ladies' room. For half an hour...what is it with LaHaye & Jenkins and rest rooms?

IBS?

Yet Chloe, like Rayford before her, treats the very possession and use of her intellect as the foremost of her sins.

That attitude, combined with the pejorative use of "independent," is why LB seems totalitarian to me. It reflects a deep hostility to human freedom.

It's here that Chloe has the flight attendant summon her father to hear her "extremely good news."

I took this to mean an allegory for evangelism or even for being "called" like Matthew.

you know, Christians in America are so often made to suffer for their faith. Those first-century Christians had it so easy by comparison.

That was my reaction when I heard Justice Scalia falsely equate governmental neutrality on religion with hostility to religion.

[burgundy]

I'm pretty sure that if I did that to any man, I would spontaneously combust from the self-loathing.

I had a friend in college who would do shit like that, but only at specific and strategically chosen times. For instance, getting extra help out of the mechanic by "not knowing" how to do things like pop the hood. (And then complaining to me about how men get a "penis discount" on auto repair.) Or crying to get out of speeding tickets. Or "forgetting" how to tie her karate belt correctly so that the hot karate teacher would have to put his arms around her waist. The rest of the time she was smart and competent.

[McJulie]

God can zap thousands of nuclear missiles, make millions of people disappear, and, even more miraculously, two guys trip and die, but Buck sitting next to her is impossible.

This peculiar aspect of the Left Behind universe -- that people are amazed by events inversely proportional to how amazing they are -- reminds me of somebody I knew who was really into weird phenomena.

We talked about it a few times, because I am an enthusiastic amateur Fortean. But I gave up talking to him after an argument we had about some photographs he had taken.

They were of fireworks at night and there was one interesting visual effect that he called a "spirit being" or somesuch. I told him, "that's not a spirit being, that's a picture of fireworks. Long exposure, dark background, moving light source -- I've taken fireworks pictures before, they just look like that."

He accused me of being too skeptical and I accused him of being an idiot. He really seemed to believe in some kind of reverse Occam's Razor. He was *more* likely to buy something the *less* it conformed to normally accepted reality. I put it down to "true believerism" and left it at that.

So maybe this is a manifestation of that same thing. I mean, millions of people vanish without a trace, that's something *anybody* would think was pretty weird. But only a true believer would find bizarre significance in the trip and die guys. And only a *real* true believer would interpret some guy getting seated next to her on an airplane as the most significant event ever in the history of the universe.

[Jesurgislac]

Jeff: Especially by lesbians from Scotland.

No, from homophobic assholes who think lesbians are a threat to children, Jeff. Sheesh.

[Jesurgislac]

Hapax: But those are all visual images. I honestly can't think of a single book-with-words I'd say "no" to; most things kids aren't ready for, sail right over their heads.

That was my parents' attitude. (It's from them that I got the ready-reckoner rule that people over 12 shouldn't read Roald Dahl.)

I feel there are images that a kid under a certain age may not be ready for - but when I think about trying to restrict access to the Internet so that a kid won't encounter them until I think they're old enough, I think, well: If I do, the kid will find a way round that, because that's what kids do. And if the kid thinks they might be in trouble because they've gone to a site where they weren't supposed to be, they might not want to tell me that an image they saw bothered them - and honestly: I think for most kids aged 10+ (or so), deciding to talk about something that really bothers them is difficult enough without them also getting into "And am I going to get in trouble for admitting I was somewhere I wasn't supposed to be?"

Then again, I'm speaking as a childminder rather than a parent: I have every sympathy for parents who make different decisions based on living with a specific child 24/7/365/18. Just the same: I feel that trying to protect your child from information that it might be hurtful to them to possess is a bit of a loser's game.

[Monkay]

From the synopsis of the latest L&J to clutter up the new book shelf at the local library:
Yet evil still lurks in the hearts of the unbelieving.
Sir Bedevere: "There are ways of telling whether she is a witch."

[hapax]

Yay! Let's throw all the LB books into the pond and see if they float or sink!

[MikhailBorg]

I'm with you, Jesu. As someone who hasn't yet raised a child, I'm aware that I'm no expert. But as someone who hopes to raise an intelligent, computer-savvy child, I fear that attempting to shield him or her from the Internet (or from the outside world in general) will be like playing an unusually futile game of Whack-A-Mole.

[Jesurgislac]

Hapax: Yay! Let's throw all the LB books into the pond and see if they float or sink!

*waves sword* Thou shalt not pollute drinking water!

[Dorothy]

Jesu: your parents sound cool. I read some unusual stuff as a teenager but there was no point trying to discuss any of it with my parents. I mean, to put things in perspective, we were not allowed to watch All in the Family. I did my share of sneaking.

This peculiar aspect of the Left Behind universe -- that people are amazed by events inversely proportional to how amazing they are -- reminds me of somebody I knew who was really into weird phenomena. - McJulie

I'm guessing he would be totally unimpressed if you served him this grilled cheese sandwich.

[Dorothy]

Damn, why didn't that link work?
Try this:
http://www.misspoppy.com/catalog/xcart/customer/product.php?productid=16399

[Karen]

I'm also of the opinion that prohibiting kids from reading anything is at best a waste of time and at worst actually counterproductive. I analogize to a friend of mine whose parents prohibited ALL junk food and went so far as to make a chart for each of their kids showing what they should eat each week. My friend naturally snuck Fritos and bean dip at my house. To this day, Fritos and bean dip are huge joke between us. My parents only prohibited me reading one book: The Late, Great Planet Earth. Ironically, I became obsessed with PMD Christianity in a way that I never. did with, say UFO's from reading Von Dainikken.
.
On the Wechdel, et alia type of advice to women, they define female as "dimwitted, weak, coward" and wonder why so many men are gay. Who in his right might wants to spend time with woman who fakes being stupid? FAKES stupid?

[SueW]

I'm supposed to be an intellectual. I have critical friends to answer to. Who's going to believe this?

All this moaning and groaning about how she's resisting becoming a True Believer because it would require a virtual lobotomy might make sense in the context of normal life. But in the world of LB it makes no sense. After having been hit over the head repeatedly with evidence of God, starting with the minor incident in Israel and culminating with the world-shattering experience of the Trip & Die Guys, you would think that mainstream society would now be starting to regard belief in God as almost intellectually respectable. "Who's going to believe it", indeed? Who else has she even spoken with lately? Does she ever spend time with these alleged critical friends anywhere in the series?

[Praline]

It's easy to miss the subtle dismissal above of Irene Steele. Chloe hears her manly man father's urgent and confident presentation of prophecy mania and she's shaken to the core. But she doesn't even remember that every word he said was something she had heard previously, over and over again for years, from her mother.

There's an explanation for that, if you accept the Mary Sue/narcissist element of Ray. Whatever Irene may have said to Chloe over the years, we didn't see it said in Ray's presence. After all, from what we've heard described ('Chloe was a spirited 8-year-old, so Rayford disengaged as much as possible'), Ray spent as little time around Chloe as he could manage; her relationship with her mother happened entirely off-stage, as far as he's concerned.

And if it happened off-stage Ray-wise, that means it didn't really happen, because Ray's the only person in the world who actually counts. Nobody in this book can have a relationship with anybody else that trumps their relationship with him: even his daughter and her future husband spend all their time talking about Ray. People don't relate to each other directly, they relate to each other through Rayford Steele.

By that logic, it's reasonable to assume that Irene, Chloe and Raymie didn't really know each other. The had a patriarch in common, but that's no reason to assume a close acquaintanceship. If Chloe didn't do it around Ray - and he never wanted her company - it can't possibly have made much of an impression on her. God didn't make an impression on her till he was filtered through Ray's Passion and Sincerity. Her mere mother didn't stand a chance.

In her father's house, there are many mansions - and everyone lives in a separate masionette with no visiting hour.

[Vermic]

And only a *real* true believer would interpret some guy getting seated next to her on an airplane as the most significant event ever in the history of the universe.

Especially since Buck's presence can easily be explained by some confluence of electromagnetism in the atmosphere.

[Zonko]

On Starship Titanic: The book is really lame, but the game is fantastic if you like exploration and puzzles and Douglas Adams. The robots' dialog is sheer genius. Not to mention awesome puzzles like making pureed parakeet and giving to the Bar Tenderbot to get some obscure computer part, and the 3D star map at the end. Heck, even the instruction manual is funny.

On LB: I think Buck's made bad career move. What's he doing wasting his time being an award-winning incompetent reporter when he could be a world-class stalker? If he goes pro and calls himself a P.I. (except, of course, he wouldn't relay any of the information to his client) he could make a mint.

[Brandi]

(It's from them that I got the ready-reckoner rule that people over 12 shouldn't read Roald Dahl.)

Somehow I doubt Kiss Kiss and Switch Bitch were meant for 12 and under readers, and let's not even get started on My Uncle Oswald...

[inge]

Dash: Come to think of it, maybe Ishtar is just the goddess to deal with our boy Rayford.

Somewhere there's a Left Behind/American Gods crossover waiting to be written...

[inge]

harpax: as well as encouraging deception as a positive value.

Reminds me of my family. My grandparents were control freaks. My mother was the obedient good girl who nearly failed school for playing by the rules -- "volunteering to stay stupid", she says -- so she let me could read what I wanted, when I wanted, no questions asked (though there was snark, which was sufficent to make me put that deception skills I had drilled into me from when I was old enough to let things slip to my grandparents to good use).

[Jeff]

Ladies Against Feminsim - pretty much what it implies

It should be Ladies Against Feminsim Forthright -- it's a LAFF!

==============================

No, from homophobic assholes who think lesbians are a threat to children, Jeff. Sheesh.

You didn't think I meant you, did you? [smiles sweetly]

=============================

Yet evil still lurks in the hearts of the unbelieving.

So now Ray is The Shadow? I don't think so!

=============================

Somewhere there's a Left Behind/American Gods crossover waiting to be written...

I saw American Gods in the bookstore and gave it the Page 120 test. FAILED. I've found I like a little of Gaiman's works (Sandman was, for me, a colossal waste of time, except for 1 or 2 issues.).

On the other hand, I've just started the latest Tim Powers book (Three Days to Never and based on his earlier work, he could write an Ishtar-based Left Behind that would knock your socks off. (I recommend Stress of Her Regard if you like Shelly and Byron, Last Call for poker / Tarot fans, On Stranger Tides for pirate fans, and if you like time travel.)

[Jeff]

Once again, I thank my parents (I thanked my Dad a lot when he was alive, and I still thank my Mom) for how they raised me. No book off-limit, a partner-ship marriage, Mom working (in-home, writing for the local paper) or going to school (which she still does -- she's taking three Life-Long Learning classes this semester). They never abused me or my sister, never tried to break or independent spirit (even when my sister made some pretty stupid choices).

Way cool people to hang with, and so said a LOT of their friends at their 50th Anniversary.

[Jesurgislac]

Brandi: Somehow I doubt Kiss Kiss and Switch Bitch were meant for 12 and under readers, and let's not even get started on My Uncle Oswald...

I try not to think about Roald Dahl's stories for older people. I've read a few of them. Urk.

inge: Somewhere there's a Left Behind/American Gods crossover waiting to be written...

It must be done! Yes.

Jeff: You didn't think I meant you, did you?

Actually, it would speak better of you if you were making one of your standard poisonous comments about me, and had decided to use my sexual orientation as if it were an insult: that would make you less homophobic than if you really felt that lesbians are a threat to children. Either way, actually, as a lesbian who has been a childminder, I find the insinuation that lesbians are by default a threat to children peculiarly insulting, threatening, and frankly disgusting. Whether you'd used a tiny modicum of intelligence, realized this would be an especially nasty thing to say to me, and were for some reason feeling like being especially nasty: or whether you were brainlessly floundering and hadn't thought about it at all, only you can say.

[Karen]

Here, scroll down from the top is an example of the problem with the Christian (tm) view of the relationship between men and women. I don't actually even understand the reference in that I just don't see what men having one switch and women having a bunch of dials is supposed to represent. It's the idea that women are SO VERY DIFFERENT AND COMPLICATED that a man has an excuse of not even making an effort to understand. Then again, maybe that explains Buck and Rayford's behavior in this book; it's just too damn much trouble to try to see what a woman would be thinking.

[Karen]

"excuse for" doggone it, "excuse for"

[Jesurgislac]

Karen: I don't actually even understand the reference in that I just don't see what men having one switch and women having a bunch of dials is supposed to represent.

Men Are From Onoff, Women Are From C++?

From the site you linked to, I found a curious family 'game' which I thought was just weird. You make a ring of salt dough, stick toothpicks in it for a crown of thorns, and every time someone makes a "sacrifice", they get a toothpick.

In my family, if my parents had tried anything like it, my brother and sister and I would have turned it into a competition, defined smaller and smaller "sacrifices", and within two or three days, there wouldn't be any toothpicks left and someone (probably my brother: he was the most ingenious) would have won Easter. ;-)

While my mother would have been saying, in tones of mild, resigned exasperation, "This was meant to encourage a spirit of self-sacrifice" as the three of us gleefully counted up our bundles of toothpicks.

[Drak Pope]

I'm pretty sure that if I did that to any man, he would think that I was trying to get out of installing the paper cup dispenser.

The funny thing is, doing it wrong takes about as much time as doing it right, and what if the man doesn't know how to do it (or, alternatively, sees through you and decides to let you deal with a broken paper cup dispenser for the rest of your life)? I can see "advice" like that turning a woman's life into one long, bleak nightmare of permanent infancy, where you spend so much time feigning incompetence that you push away all your friends and aren't able to get help for the things that you actually don't know how to do. And then your only options will be to purchase more self-help books from the scammers who wrote "Fascinating Womanhood". And, quite frankly, if you let your life get into that situation then a lot of people would think that you deserve to be unhappy. And I can't say I'd blame them.

[YetAnotherKevin]

Wait, wait. Jesu is Scottish? Is this in the notebook?

[hapax]

On the other hand, I've just started the latest Tim Powers book

Omigosh. THE ANUBIS GATES. Tied with SILVERLOCK as the Book I Most Wish I Could Read Again For The First Time.

I don't actually even understand the reference in that I just don't see what men having one switch and women having a bunch of dials is supposed to represent.

It isn't a religion joke. It's a sex joke. (Not a very good one, but..) I've seen it in lots of contexts. Mainly the point is that men are only interested in One Thing (geddit?) while women insist on the talking and the kissing and the touching and all that silly bs.

I dunno about the game, Jesu. It does sort of seem to violate the spirit AND the letter of Matth 6:1-6. But my family did similar things during Advent and Lent (e.g., an Advent calendar that has good deeds to do instead of chocolate candy to take; a Lenten jar filled with slips of "buried alleluias" to remind us of what we had to be grateful for*, and the like) and I remember having a vague clue of the actual point of the exercise.

*e.g., "put in a nickel for every pair of shoes you own"; "put in a quarter for every day you could go to school this week"; and my personal favorite, "stand on the back porch and yell "The President is an idiot!" Put in a dollar if nobody arrests you" -- I wonder if that one would still hold true if I tried it with my kids? The money would go to the local soup kitchen at Easter.

[Skyknight]

Let's see...Women are supposed to be utterly submissive to their husbands (or, if unmarried, their fathers. Should be interesting to see what happens if they have no husband and no living father...). Men are supposed to be utterly submissive to God.

So...why do they think God imbued humanity with free will to begin with? The way this goes, I'm waiting for someone to claim that free will was actually Satan's invention, not God's (complete with implication that God doesn't have free will, either).

{sigh} First J pointing out two or three years ago that there are indeed fundamentalists who regard good and evil as applicable only to humans (i.e. God is inherently amoral, since there's no one to reward or punish him; in fact, this implies that in their understanding of metaphysics, good and evil are necessarily subjective to whoever is the Most High, not objective), now this. Come to think of it, there's the whole respect/love definition problem alluded to above. When dispensationalists speak of loving God, what do they think the word "love" entails in that context? I worry that it's going to be pretty far removed from anything we'd associate with affection...

[Skyknight]

Drak Pope: "I can see "advice" like that turning a woman's life into one long, bleak nightmare of permanent infancy..."

First, you'll have to convince the advice recipients (male AND female) that permanent infancy is somehow bad. Through the words Jesus uses to castigate the Satan towards the end of "The Glorious Appearing", LaHaye and Jenkins show that they think of Eden as having literally been a Utopia. Remember that there was only one direct decree: Don't partake of the Tree of Moral Knowledge (I hope every OTHER plant there was hooked up to it like orchids, so Adam and Eve could get understanding of good and evil anyway, just at a more sane rate). I know they were also tasked to generally take care of Eden, but this seems to be glossed over. Is an eternity of naught but glorifying God the authors' idea of inifinite infant-like bliss?

[Jesurgislac]

Hapax: But my family did similar things during Advent and Lent (e.g., an Advent calendar that has good deeds to do instead of chocolate candy to take; a Lenten jar filled with slips of "buried alleluias" to remind us of what we had to be grateful for*, and the like) and I remember having a vague clue of the actual point of the exercise.

It's entirely possible you were better material for it than the three of us. The words "hellishly competitive" do not begin to describe our family interactions whenever a game was proposed: each of us wanted to win. (My mother used to spend a lot of time and effort trying to figure out games that would be by default non-competitive: we used to spend easily two-and-a-half times as much time/effort circumventing her and finding a way to win the unwinnable.)

The game of putting money into a jar for things like shoes and school days and being able to shout political criticism to the world does sound good, though. And hard to "win" or "lose".

[Tonio]

My parents only prohibited me reading one book: The Late, Great Planet Earth. Ironically, I became obsessed with PMD Christianity in a way that I never. did with, say UFO's from reading Von Dainikken.

My wife and I have a No Bratz rule in our house, and we're concerned that we're turning the dolls into forbidden fruit. We also have a concern about Veggie Tales, since we have some religious relatives who are fans. After seeing one of the videos, one of my children said something about "that hurt's God's feelings."

No, from homophobic assholes who think lesbians are a threat to children, Jeff. Sheesh.

Was that intended as a slam against you? I assumed Jeff was joking about what lesbians would sound like if they spoke with Highland brogues.

[burgundy]

Tonio, I had interpreted it as "Jeff is making a dig at Jesu and calling her a bully, so he is describing her by her most obvious and easy-to-sum-up traits." The fact that this touched on the "eeek! homos will molest your kids!" trope was, I have been assuming, unintentional. But I never thought it wasn't about Jesu.

[jamoche]

Or "forgetting" how to tie her karate belt correctly so that the hot karate teacher would have to put his arms around her waist.

That only works if the hot karate teacher is playing along, because after years of teaching kid's karate I'm as good at tying from the front as I am from the back.

The one time I let my ex-boyfriend work on my car was a very trivial thing - replacing the rearview mirror. Not sure why I let him, except I'd only had a car for a year and he'd had several for much longer, but he managed to not apply any logic at all and put it in the wrong place, which meant we had to remove it, which cracked the glass... and I was less than tactful when, after he said he didn't mark the old spot because you can't mark where it is on the side it's on, I pointed out you *can* mark the other side because transparent, duh. Guess I fail at pandering to male egos.

[Fraser]

My niece loved Bratz when she was younger. She grew out of it.

On Eden as Utopia: While I'm not a fan of C.S. Lewis's Perelandra trilogy, Perelandra does show God having genuinely Great Things in mind for humanity had we not fallen and been expelled from Eden.

And both Lucy and Polly in Last Battle were grown up, independent and heroic along with the other friends of Narnia.

RTCs and Destiny: I remember listening to a group of people in a friend's church praying for a fellow believer whose car had crashed, which was literally the work of demons sent to destroy him, while his survival was due to divine intervention to save him. Since I was a guest, I kept my mouth shut. A later conversation showed they also consider gossip (and I presume other human misbehavior) to be the work of Satan.

On psychobabble: This reminds me of a religious station I caught channel surfing some years back before I had a CD player in the car, discussing how you should never take drugs for mental problems because they could be the gateway for Satan to take over your mind.

On free will: This prompts me to get back to a short story I've been working on about a cult that believes Fate/prophecy/destiny is an oppressive force that wants to reduce us to sheep so they go around causing prophecies to not come true (this was prompted by a couple of Marion Zimmer Bradly fantasy novels where the protagonists kept kicking themselves for questioning what the gods told them to do, instead of submitting like sheep)

Tim Powers could not only have done a good Left Behind, he could have done a good DaVinci Code--secret meanings behind everyday reality are something he does in a lot of books (Declare, for instance) and he does it well.

Fascinating Womanhood reminds me creepily of a porn site I found in which most of the stories involve women being not only brainwashed but stupidified, so apparently some people do find that attractive, at least in fantasy.

That aside, I have seen variations of the "play dumb" advice in lots of secular venues (sitcoms, for instance).

Is anyone out there old enough to remember Total Woman from the seventies? A bestseller at the time that preached women should be absolutely obedient to their husbands, with the understanding that hubbie will then love them so much he'll do anything they want. As a sample of dealing with husbands, the author suggests that if he doesn't shave on the weekend, the wife says something to the effect of "Oh darling, your big strong manly beard is just too tough for my delicate girlish skin," thereby reinforcing his manliness.

[Brandi]

I try not to think about Roald Dahl's stories for older people. I've read a few of them. Urk.

Some of 'em were pretty fun in a twisted way; hell, Alfred Hitchcock directed adaptations of two of them for his TV show.

[Fraser]

Thumbs down on American Gods. I like a lot of Gaiman but this felt like "Hey, Mom, watch me right the great American magical realist novel." Plus I get very annoyed when Hinduism—-a living religion--gets lumped in with "mythology" because of being polytheistic (the chick-lit fantasy Goddess for Hire gets it right and is quite funny at times--"Honey, if we'd known you were going to become an avatar, we'd never have made such a fuss about you being out of work!").