L.B.: Back to school

Left Behind, pp. 442-443

Chloe Steele told her father of her plans to finally look into local college classes that Monday.

That makes sense, right? Chloe was just beginning the winter quarter of her freshman year at Stanford when her studies were interrupted by a loss in her family. She returned home to be with her father but now, after two weeks of sitting around at home, she's looking into resuming her studies closer to home. Makes perfect sense.

Or, rather, it would make perfect sense in a completely different novel -- one where the Steeles' family trauma was an isolated event and not part of a global apocalypse, a world-altering trauma heralding the end of the world. Here in Left Behind, the idea that Chloe would begin resuming classes -- or that there would even be classes for her to resume -- doesn't make any sense at all.

Part of the reason that she can't just pick up where she left off after her mother's funeral is that there was no funeral. Not for Irene, not for Rayford Jr., not for any of the 2 billion or so people all over the world who are now gone.

LaHaye and Jenkins could not allow funerals in this book. For them, everything depends on their ability to maintain an artificial distinction between "raptured" and "dead." This isn't just the alleged premise for this book, it's the linchpin for their entire End Times check list and the thing that reshapes every aspect of their theology -- not just eschatology but soteriology, ecclesiology, theodicy, the whole shebang. If they'd allowed funerals in Left Behind, then this artificial distinction would've been impossible to sustain and the wheels would have flown off their entire belief system.

In the early pages of the book, Rayford recalls his wife's cheerful description of this indistinct distinction:

"Can you imagine, Rafe," she exulted, "Jesus coming back to get us before we die?"

Her tone would have been a bit less exultant if she had avoided the euphemistic dodge of the "rapture": "Can you imagine, Rafe, Jesus coming back to grant us an instantaneous and painless death?"

But the latter is just as accurate as the former. Irene and every other real, true Christian and Raymie and every other innocent child on the planet have passed on. They are no more. They have ceased to be, gone to meet their maker. They've shuffled off their mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible. The plumage don't enter into it.

This transition from earth to heaven, from life to afterlife, is in every way indistinguishable from the inevitable form that this transition usually takes. We have a word for that experience. It's called "dying." Irene Steele went to bed, fell asleep and died. Saying that she was raptured does not, in any meaningful way, change the experience for her. Her experience of this event would've been no different had there been a carbon monoxide leak, or a gas leak and explosion, or a Donnie Darko-style jet engine through the roof. And the experience for those she left behind -- for her surviving husband and daughter -- isn't different in any meaningful way either.

The majority of the 2 billion or so "raptured" at the start of this book are children, those L&J believe are below some blurry "age of accountability" and who therefore would be regarded as innocents. (In interviews outside of the book L&J seem to underestimate the proportion of the earth's populace that falls into this age range. They seem to have assumed that developing countries would have the same basic ratio of old and young as we have here in the U.S.) These innocent children are included in the rapture, L&J say, because God is merciful, sparing them the suffering of the coming Great Tribulation.*

Viewing the rapture of these children as an act of divine mercy is entirely dependent on the dubious distinction between raptured and dead. As long as we think of it as a worldwide "snatching away," and not as a worldwide slaughter, then we can pretend that what has happened to all those children is somehow merciful. But that requires us to avoid anything that would allow or cause us to think more deeply about whether these things really are any different. Such deeper thoughts cast a disturbing light on Irene's exultant longing for the coming rapture -- and on the longing of her real-world counterparts (look again at that John Hagee sermon we looked at last week).

"To live is Christ, to die is gain," St. Paul wrote, but this longing for and celebration of a global rapture seems to have less to do with that than with something more like Jonestown, or Heaven's Gate, or the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments.

Hence no funerals in Left Behind. Better to describe an impossible world in which humans do not act like humans -- in which the universal human need to grieve and to ritualize mourning does not exist -- than to allow readers to reflect on the similarities between the indistinguishable statements "Irene was raptured" and "Irene was dead." Elephants mourn their dead. The alleged humans in Left Behind do not.

But even in the impossible, inhuman, no-funerals-allowed world of this book it seems unlikely that local colleges would or could so soon be resuming their normal routine.

A mere two weeks after The Event, these schools would still be struggling to figure out which of their students and faculty members were among the disappeared. I realize that L&J view intellectual, academic types as inherently ungodly, but surely some of them would have been taken, and surely some would have been killed in the hundreds of plane crashes and thousands of highway disasters that occurred the night of The Event. And even if those who remained/survived aren't allowed to conduct funerals or memorial services, they would all, like Chloe, have been touched in some way by the disappearances and the concurrent carnage.

Consider also how The Event would forever alter most of the various academic disciplines. Physics and chemistry professors couldn't very well continue teaching their students about the Conservation of Matter, what with 50 million or so tons of the stuff having just vanished from the universe. Professors teaching early childhood education or obstetrics probably wouldn't see much sense in continuing with business as usual either. Those professors of religion and philosophy who remained would, of course, all be busy berating themselves because they were wrong, wrong, wrong not to have listened to Tim LaHaye.

It's hard to imagine a course of study that wouldn't have been shattered and turned upside down by The Event. But even if we assume that Chloe is studying subjects that might seem unaffected -- say, I don't know, Renaissance poetry -- it seems impossible that classes could just go on as before without the professor breaking down, sobbing, mid-lecture. "Today we're going to turn again to Petrarch's sonnets, and ... and ... and ..." (curls into fetal ball behind the podium) "My daughter. My beautiful daughter is gone and no one can tell me what has happened to her ... et le piaghe che 'nfin al cor mi vanno ..."

Then there's the question of where Chloe might be studying, of which local college she would be enrolling in.

This is trickier than it might seem. She's a convert now, a member of New Hope Village Church's prophecy-addled variant of the evangelical subculture. As such, somewhere like Northwestern or the University of Chicago just won't do. But if such hotbeds of secular humanism would no longer be an option for Chloe neither would she have any remaining religious options of the sort viewed as acceptable by her newly adopted subculture. Pre-Event she'd have had multiple options within commuting distance -- Wheaton College, Trinity Christian College, Judson University, even Christian Life College right there in town. But post-Event those campuses would be all-but deserted.** If the Christian alternatives are now closed and the secular schools are now unacceptable to her -- devoid even of the shelter of a Campus Crusade chapter, like Sodom without even 10 righteous to be found -- then where exactly is Chloe supposed to go?

Then again, the above difficulties all seem secondary to the larger question of why Chloe would even bother with college. The world is going to end in six years and 352 days. Spending three and a half of those years working toward her B.A. might not seem like a big priority at this point -- even if she thinks that she'd be able to finish in that amount of time without things like Wormwood poisoning the seas or an army of monstrous dragon-locusts interrupting her studies. (On the other hand, it would be pretty sweet to take out all those college loans knowing that you'd never have to pay them back.)

Alas, all of this discussion about Chloe's college plans turns out to be, well, academic. She soon ends up married to Buck and thus, in the authors' view, no longer needs to worry her pretty little head about getting an education.

"And I was thinking," she said, "about trying to get together with Hattie for lunch."

"I thought you didn't care for her," Rayford said.

"I don't, but that's no excuse. She doesn't even know what's happened to me. She's not answering her phone. Any idea what her schedule is?"

I appreciate the distinction Chloe makes there -- the obligation to care about people even if you don't care for them. That's a rare thing here in Left Behind. Note the contrast here between Chloe's willingness to go out of her way to meet with someone she doesn't really like and Buck's unwillingness, a few pages ago, to answer the direct questions of a friendly stranger. Even post-conversion Stepford Chloe seems like she could do better than Buck.

Her dad calls the airline to find out Hattie's schedule:

Rayford was told that not only was Hattie not scheduled that day but also that she had requested a 30-day leave of absence. "That's odd," he told Chloe. "Maybe she's got family troubles out West."

Not that he's going to bother checking in with her to find out if everything's OK. Rayford doesn't care for or about Hattie. He assuaged his guilt over their pseudo-affair by forcing her to sit silently through his gospel lecture, so as far as he's concerned, he doesn't need to give her another thought. And anyway, he's busy:

"I promised Bruce I'd come over and watch that Carpathia press conference later this morning."

It might seem easy to mock Rayford and Bruce's idea of a good time here, but I'd be eager to see that press conference too. There's a chance, after all, that Nicolae could announce what the new One World Language was going to be, and if that didn't turn out to be English I might need to re-enroll in college myself.

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

* This Great Tribulation, according to LaHaye and his prophecy-studies compatriots, is a calamitous time shaped by war, famine, disease and, stalking in the rear, gigantic, inevitable death within seven years. It's worth noting that this is, right now, an apt description of what life is actually like for millions of children here in the real world. I would ask why God isn't doing something to change that for these innocents but, as the saying goes, I'd be afraid that God would just ask me the same question.

** I'm picturing poor Mark Noll, shell-shocked and wandering through the empty halls of Wheaton's campus, muttering to himself and ripping the pages one by one from Michael Williams' This World Is Not My Home like Ophelia with her wildflowers.

Comments

[Fraser]

Her experience of this event would've been no different had there been a carbon monoxide leak, or a gas leak and explosion, or a Donnie Darko-style jet engine through the roof."

Or getting hit by a piece of Skylab and becoming ... Dead Like Me.

[DanW]

'Ello. I wish to register a complaint." - always happy to see the Monty Python reference.

I would think maybe the counseling classes would be chalk-a-block full of people trying to figure out how to cope with the trauma. But in the world of L&J, people don't really need counseling, they just need Jesus.

[Jenny Islander]

But every sweet co-ed must go to college for a little while before taking her MRS degree. It's what those gals do. Never mind how--it's a woman thing, she'll figure it out. Back to the manly-man plot full of manly men!

[Winter]

"That's odd," he told Chloe. "Maybe she's got family troubles out West."

Family troubles? It's only a few weeks post-Rapture, everyone on the planet is likely having family troubles. What with large chunks of the population and any children having died been Raptured and all.

There comes a point where one begins to wonder if the authors are not, in fact, humans, but merely an elaborate and ultimately unsuccessful Turing test.

[Doctor Science]

No, poor Mark Noll has already proved his ungodliness by moving on to Notre Dame, that Jesuitical hotbed where he'll surely still have plenty of non-RTCs to talk to. Not to mention the emeritus George Marsden, whose position he'll be taking. It's perfectly ironic in a completely American way that the two greatest historians of American Protestantism are at a Catholic university.

[Jos]

So, would it now be fair to say that a literal reading of Left Behind clearly shows that Chloe is 'trying to get together with Hattie' (LB p442/443) and, thus, by extention, that LH&J-type Christians are fully supportive of gay rights?

[Jon]

I just watched Left Behind: The Movie the other night.
I'll avoid spoilers, but I will mention that in many regards it's vastly superior to the book, though this is largely a result of the fact that as a visual medium it can't really follow the dictate of "tell, don't show."
In any case, my point is that in the synopsis printed on the Netflix envelope the DVD was in, the number of dead Raptured people is a scant 100 million. In the movie itself, a TV news broadcast shows the count as 130,000. I have no idea if this takes into account the number of accidental deaths, suicides, and murders (there would inevitably be murders, some opportunistic, others the result of people cracking up under the stress).
Is there ever an official number given in any of the books?

[Froborr]

Physics and chemistry professors couldn't very well continue teaching their students about the Conservation of Matter, what with 50 million or so tons of the stuff having just vanished from the universe.

It's actually worse than that. Emmy Noether (my favorite example of the rampant sexism in the way science is taught -- she is quite possibly more important to modern physics than Einstein and yet virtually no non-physicist has heard of her) demonstrated around the turn of the century that all conservation laws are mathematically equivalent to statements of symmetry. The statement "energy is conserved" turns out to be equivalent to the statement "the universe is symmetrical across time."

Thus, in order for ANY event to not conserve energy, it must occur at the boundary between two different temporal regions of physical law. In other words, the laws of physics after the Event MUST be different from the laws of physics before the Event.*

So, the question is, what changed? Only one way to find out. Every single experiment in the history of physics has to be repeated.

And it's worse than that. We now have a confirmed moment at which the laws of physics changed. How many other such moments are there? Cosmology and long-range astronomy basically have to be thrown out, because we have no way of knowing what conditions created the light arriving to us from distant galaxies millions or billions of years in the past. Engineering is screwed, too, because we have no way of knowing whether the laws of physics according to which that bridge we're designing is sturdy will still apply tomorrow.

Of course there'll be great skepticism at the notion that conservation of energy was violated. The majority of physicists will instead assume that energy WAS conserved, and be trying to figure out where it all went.

Regardless, physics is going to need unprecedented revision. Teachers will probably still teach the old theories, but they (or at least the competent ones, who are virtually nonexistant below the university level and rare below the graduate level) will append the caveat that the study of the Event is going to change everything.

*Of course, within the fictional universe of Left Behind, what happened was that God changed the laws of physics for the infinitestimal fraction of a second in which the Rapture occurred, and then changed them back. Theoretically, another violation of energy conservation could have occurred during the switching-back.

[Jon]

So, would it now be fair to say that a literal reading of Left Behind clearly shows that Chloe is 'trying to get together with Hattie' (LB p442/443)

Hmm, interesting.

Rayford: I thought you didn't like her.
Chloe: Well, I don't like her, exactly, but, well...dad, there's something I need to tell you about Hattie.
Rayford: What's that, sweetheart?
Chloe: Your whole "non-affair" with her? You were totally missing out.

[Cyllan]

look again at that John Hagee sermon we looked at last week).

I finally took a look at this, and I was struck by two things. First, this is a monstrous world view, and it is far more loathsome to listen to a nine minute "message" of this frothing diatribe than it is to read it at one remove each Friday. I felt unclean.

Secondly, I found deep irony in the middle of the piece in which Hagee mocked the "New Agers" who would gather together and speak about the Aliens Come At Last! "After all," says Hagee in a tone dripping with mockery and disdain, "they've only been waiting for TWENTY YEARS."

[Jon]

a TV news broadcast shows the count as 130,000

Oops, that should be 1,300,000.

[damnedyankee]

Those professors of religion and philosophy who remained would, of course, all be busy berating themselves because they were wrong, wrong, wrong not to have listened to Tim LaHaye.

And I'll bet that thoughts like that keep that rug-wearing reptile warm at night, giggling himself to sleep.

(On the other hand, it would be pretty sweet to take out all those college loans knowing that you'd never have to pay them back.)

I've actually seen a book recently - I forget the title - where the protagonist's preacher sets a definite date for the Rapture. The believing protagonist, hearing this, decides to take advantage of his imminent ascendance to heaven by borrowing a large amount of money from the Mob and blowing it.

Unfortunately for him, the date passes without incident. The Mob, whose guiding philosophies don't include PMD, wants its money back. With interest. Or else.

[Cyllan]

In any case, my point is that in the synopsis printed on the Netflix envelope the DVD was in, the number of dead Raptured people is a scant 100 million. In the movie itself, a TV news broadcast shows the count as 130,000.

Jon, does the movie also include children vanishing? Or is it merely Christians of the appropriate type?

[MM]

Is there ever an official number given in any of the books?

An explanation of why so many of them were flying planes and driving cars in Chicago at 11pm on a Monday(?) night would be helpful, too.

[MikhailBorg]

I would ask why God isn't doing something to change that for these innocents but, as the saying goes, I'd be afraid that God would just ask me the same question.

Eris: WHAT BOTHERS YOU, MAL? YOU DON'T SOUND WELL.

Mal: "I am filled with fear and tormented with terrible visions of pain. Everywhere people are hurting one another, the planet is rampant with injustices, whole societies plunder groups of their own people, mothers imprison sons, children perish while brothers war. O, woe."

Eris: WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH THAT, IF IT IS WHAT YOU WANT TO DO?

Mal: "But nobody wants it! Everybody hates it."

Eris: OH. WELL, THEN STOP.

At which moment She turned herself into an aspirin commercial and left [Mal] stranded alone with his species.

[Vermic]

Maybe Chloe wants to head back to college so she can spread the Good Word (using a very generous definition of "good", anyway) to her still-unsaved classmates. That would at least be something constructive.

[Jon]

Jon, does the movie also include children vanishing? Or is it merely Christians of the appropriate type?

Yes, children also disappear. There's actually a pretty moving scene - which demonstrates how loosely the filmakers based the story on the book - in which a young couple is seen clinging desperately to their child's empty stroller in the airport as Buck walks past.

[Amaryllis]

I agree that the difference between "rapture" and "death" is indistinguishable from the outside. It's very peculiar that no one seems to be mourning or memorializing the vanished people in any way, let alone all the ones who died in car crashes and the like.

But L&J's whole hope is that there is a difference from the inside. You take your body with you, for instance; you don't have to undergo that moment of final dissolution, whatever that may be like. We don't know, no one's ever come back to tell us, but we suspect there may be some pain and some fear involved, even for the truest of believers, even in the quickest of deaths. Who wants to go thourgh that? And then there's that whole "judgment" thing. The raptured wouldn't have to go through that consciously either: Jesus has already judged them as worthy or they wouldn't have been raptured. They really do want to skip over that potentially awkward moment and head straight to Gloryland, no muss, no fuss.

[The Old Maid]

Agreed that Chloe would have trouble finding a college to go to. But I must disagree that there's "no point" in going back to school. Chloe does not consider it pointless to pursue romantic love, marriage, and [in the next book] a job [i.e. money] just because the world is ending. Why is it that an education, something that she would be doing just for her own improvement, is something that even her friends [here in this forum] have to think about it before they'll defend it?

Doesn’t the world end for other people every day? Consider: your grandparent decides to return to school in his or her eighties. Your grandparent might die before graduation. But how old will your grandparent be if he or she lives, and doesn’t pursue the diploma or degree? The same age.

Consider: a terminally ill teenager decides to devote his or her remaining strength toward the goal of graduating with the rest of the senior class. Graduation will not prolong this student’s life. But the student wants to do this. Is that pointless?

If we follow the "why bother" line too long, do we get into the question of why anyone should go to school, since it won't stop us from dying either?

It is true that the existing schools would be in chaos, if open at all, and later Carpathia seizes the schools to his own purposes. But is that a good enough reason for Chloe to move home and spend the rest of her single life sitting in her room? Even by L.B. terms, should Chloe have gone back to college—if only for a little while—to witness to her unsaved friends?

(I wonder if anyone else caught the line where Chloe seems interested in witnessing to Hattie. Remember the "she doesn't know" line above, a paraphrase of how Hattie hasn't heard Chloe's "extremely good news" yet?)

It's more than college, particularly in Book 2, but college happens to be the piece of the puzzle we see today. Have to admit, wasn't expecting people to dismiss that piece so casually. Put it another way: Doesn't Chloe need to get out of the house? Even Irene had friends.

And it seems strange that Chloe's desire to go back to college is squelched here faster than her dad, boyfriend, and pastor can squelch it. If study "speaks" to her, let her go for it. We are mortals. A little college won't save her (or us) from inexorable mortality, but then again Rayford going back to work, flyign airplanes, won't make him immortal either.

[Jim]

But if such hotbeds of secular humanism would no longer be an option for Chloe neither would she have any remaining religious options of the sort viewed as acceptable by her newly adopted subculture. Pre-Event she'd have had multiple options within commuting distance -- Wheaton College, Trinity Christian College, Judson University, even Christian Life College right there in town.

Hey, you forgot good old Moody Bible Institute, located in downtown Chicago, right between the River North bar district and the Roman Catholic Cathedral. Presumably they chose that location because they could not find suitable real estate in Boystown.

[Jon]

Aargh, still not right: it was 130,000,000.
My brain and working: not so much.

[Froborr]

There's actually a pretty moving scene - which demonstrates how loosely the filmakers based the story on the book - in which a young couple is seen clinging desperately to their child's empty stroller in the airport as Buck walks past.

This is actually an excellent demonstration of what Fred was talking about. Including that scene makes the movie a better story, but at the price of undermining the absurd notion of the Rapture. The child is dead, and the parents are mourning it, but the readers of the book must not be allowed to consider that fact.

The funny thing is, I *can* see a difference between Rapture and death, if there's no afterlife. If there is an afterlife, then raptured and dead people end up there. Nobody ever *really* dies, and therefore there is no difference between losing touch with a friend (you might see them again someday, but you might not, and until then you'll have no idea where they are or how they're doing) and a friend dying (you might see them again in the afterlife someday, but you might not, and until then you'll have no idea where they are or how they're doing). If there's no afterlife, then a friend dying is different (there is absolutely no possibility that you will ever see them again, at all, ever). In that case, somebody getting raptured *is* different than them dying, because they're whisked off to eternal life in another world.

In short, the difference between Rapture and death only exists if you believe that nobody else is going to Heaven, which describes the PMDs quite nicely.

As an aside, because I missed my flame war Thursday this week: I have never in my life met anybody who does not mourn their dead loved ones more than their alive-but-out-of-reach loved ones. From this I conclude that life after death is one of those things that many people try to believe in, but no one completely succeeds. Of course, this has no bearing on whether or not the proposition's true.

[Froborr]

Old Maid: I completely agree. If I found out my world was ending (whether that's the end of the world for everyone else is an unrelated question), I think I'd go back to school. I can think of no better way to spend my last days than absorbing sweet, delicious knowledge in a supportive environment.

[Hawker Hurricane]

Wait, I thought the Rapture occurred in LBverse in February? That would be near the start of the Spring semester in most colleges...

Borrowing money from the mob and thinking you won't have to pay it back because the world is going to end was played with in the very loud movie "Armegeddon". One of the astronaut/miners decides it's a suicide mission, so borrows large amounts of money, promises to pay it back next month, knowing that there will be no next month.

[Vermic]

I guess I've never understood how death and Rapture and corporeality are supposed to work in the PMD worldview. Is the deal that everyone has their body in heaven, and if you're Raptured you get to take your old body with you, while the un-Raptured get resurrected in a new body? My Sunday school upbringing left me with the impression that after you die, you leave your body behind, and in the afterlife you're sort of a spiritual being. I gather the PMD viewpoint disagrees with this.

[Andy]

A real-life example of what damnedyankee was talking about occurred in 1988, one of the more recent dates for the supposed rapture/end of the world. (Anyone remember "88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will be in 1988"?) A number of Christians, so I'm told, deliberately ran up large credit card bills, fully expecting that they would never have to pay them. They were wrong, of course, and their credit card companies were not amused. Not very Christian behavior, obviously, but I guess they figured they were going to heaven anyway, having said the "magic words". In their view, what's one more sin before they go?

[Jon]

The child is dead, and the parents are mourning it, but the readers of the book must not be allowed to consider that fact.

I had a friend and fellow LB Friday reader over watching the movie with me so that we could give it the MST3K treatment. He said, "They must have just fallen asleep on the stroller, because they can't possibly be mourning the loss of their child. This is Left Behind, after all."

[kodiak]

This poem seems strangely appropriate here, so appropriate that I don't have anything to add to it by way of commentary. I wonder how different Left Behind might have been if Lahaye and Jenkins had read this first.

Elegy for My Father, Who Is Not Dead
by Andrew Hudgins

One day I'll lift the telephone
and be told my father's dead. He's ready.
In the sureness of his faith, he talks
about the world beyond this world
as though his reservations have
been made. I think he wants to go,
a little bit--a new desire
to travel building up, an itch
to see fresh worlds. Or older ones.
He thinks that when I follow him
he'll wrap me in his arms and laugh,
the way he did when I arrived
on earth. I do not think he's right.
He's ready. I am not. I can't
just say good-bye as cheerfully
as if he were embarking on a trip
to make my later trip go well.
I see myself on deck, convinced
his ship's gone down, while he's convinced
I'll see him standing on the dock
and waving, shouting, Welcome back. (1991)

[Lucia]

ripping the pages one by one from Michael Williams' This World Is Not My Home like Ophelia with her wildflowers.
He exists, He exists not, He exists, He exists not...

[MikhailBorg]

Is the deal that everyone has their body in heaven, and if you're Raptured you get to take your old body with you, while the un-Raptured get resurrected in a new body?

Since Heaven, by definition, does not obey the physical laws of matter and energy, your old body would be useless to you.

Perhaps you just gain the body you always wished you had - this is supposed to be Paradise, right?

Of course, that could be interesting for an RTC furry. (Yes. I have met a few.)

[kodiak]

"Of course, that could be interesting for an RTC furry. (Yes. I have met a few.)"

I'm going to charge you for that brain bleaching!
GAH!

[The Old Maid]

On school again ... Fred is correct that the chaos would be demoralizing, to say the least, and would make it mighty hard to get even the local one-room schoolhouse up and running. But that too is the point. There are people alive, now, who already have to live through that chaos. In parts of Africa there is a generation missing. Grandparents are left raising their grandchildren. The adults in between are in their graves because of AIDS. Can the survivors, on either end, repair the home, work a small farm, tend big animals, or carry buckets of water? They have to; they're all they've got. Do people who have to live with post-Event chaos consider schools for the grandchildren"pointless"?

Pardon the double post, but this bothers me. The idea that it's not a big deal when it's already happening to someone else, that it's only a big deal when it hits "civilization."

[Froborr]

Perhaps you just gain the body you always wished you had - this is supposed to be Paradise, right?

So in Heaven I'd be Spider-Man? Sweeeeeeet.

[aunursa]

Hawker Hurricane: Wait, I thought the Rapture occurred in LBverse in February? That would be near the start of the Spring semester in most colleges...

Late February: "Major League Baseball teams in spring training face the daunting task of replacing the dozens of players lost in the cosmic disappearances"

[damnedyankee]

Perhaps you just gain the body you always wished you had - this is supposed to be Paradise, right?

So in Heaven I'd be Spider-Man? Sweeeeeeet.

*ahem*

SHAZAM!

[Michael]

Froborr, when we get to heaven I'll challenge you to a web-swinging contest.

Mikhail, I imagine lions and lambs are popular "fursonas" among the RTC furry crowd.

You have to think part of Chloe's reason to want to talk to Hattie is because she's the only other young female character in the book. "Jeez, Dad, if you think I'm going to spend the next seven years with no one to talk to about girl stuff besides Loretta, you're out of your mind."

[Jessica]

The elephant story almost made me cry.
Left Behind makes me cry, too, just not the same way.

[aunursa]

Vermic: Is the deal that everyone has their body in heaven, and if you're Raptured you get to take your old body with you, while the un-Raptured get resurrected in a new body?

According to LB: the Raptured get a new-and-improved body. The un-Raptured keep their old body until they die (at which point they get their new-and-improved body), or until the end of the Millenium following Jesus' return.

Thus we see the curious instance in which, following the Rapture, Christians who fail to survive the Tribulation immediately receive their new bodies. Meanwhile, those who succeed in surviving the Seven-year period of suffering remain in their original, weakening, increasingly decrepit bodies for the entire 1000 years.

During the 1000-year period...

Rayford (survived) -- old, decrepit body
Irene (raptured) -- new, perfect body
Buck (martyred) -- new, perfect body
Chloe (martyred) -- new, perfect body

[zzyzx]

"(my favorite example of the rampant sexism in the way science is taught -- she is quite possibly more important to modern physics than Einstein and yet virtually no non-physicist has heard of her)"

And mathematicians. Notherian rings are taught in undergraduate math classes.

"Eris: WHAT BOTHERS YOU, MAL? YOU DON'T SOUND WELL."

I quote that all the time. It's by far the best page of the Principia.

[Socks]

"Of course, that could be interesting for an RTC furry. (Yes. I have met a few.)"

Geez, me too. "In Heaven I really will be a winged antelope/badger/kangaroo thing!" *twitch* Eh. Some of them are still...okay in person...but then some of them already have that "OMGFURSECUTION!" thing going; add to that the RTC Persecution Complex and you've got some entertainment. Not to mention the double standard of being into Furry while preaching against Harry Potter and anime, which make people stumble. While Furry does not. Nope. Nothing in Furry that could get in the way of your walk with Christ.

[SchrodingersDuck]

These innocent children are included in the rapture, L&J say, because God is merciful, sparing them the suffering of the coming Great Tribulation.

To be truly "merciful" to the innocent, LB&J!God would have to also render everyone on Earth infertile, so that people born post-Rapture don't suffer Trib either. Yet instead, he lets un-Rapties have as many kids as they want, so in other words, no 8 year olds will have to suffer drinking Wormwood Water, yet all the little babies and toddlers will.

And what about little kids who get Raptured, but have to watch their parents and siblings die painfully and go to Hell. That's hardly merciful. To be truly merciful, he'd have not only have to Rapture all the kids' parents, siblings, grandparents, friends etc., he'd also have to Rapture all their parents, siblings, grandparents, friends etc (because if your parents are crying because all their friends are burning in Hell, you're not going to be a happy camper), and probably their parents, siblings, grandparents and friends too, just for good measure.

[damnedyankee]

Meanwhile, those who succeed in surviving the Seven-year period of suffering remain in their original, weakening, increasingly decrepit bodies for the entire 1000 years.

Rayford: Gee, thanks, Lord!

God: Hey, like it's My fault you didn't listen to Irene in the first place?

(Rayford shuffles off, muttering. God watches him go and shakes His head.)

God: What a prick.

[J]

An explanation of why so many of them were flying planes and driving cars in Chicago at 11pm on a Monday(?) night would be helpful, too.

Nah, that part is fairly realistic actually. O'Hare is the busiest airport in North America--I think three years ago some new carriers added and now you can fly direct to EVERY location on Earth--and as far as driving goes, L&J are spot on: Every highway is clogged at EVERY hour, EVERY day in Chicago and will continue to be until the Blue and Brown line L's are finished with their interminable construction.

[zzyzx]

Actually, if you buy into the age of discernment and believe that going to heaven for free is a great thing, wouldn't the morally correct thing to do be to abort all fetuses? That way they'd immediately go to heaven. Sure YOUR soul would suffer, but what greater good could there be to sacrifice your own eternal reward in order to save that of millions of people who might never say the magic words?

[Froborr]

To be truly "merciful" to the innocent, LB&J!God would have to also render everyone on Earth infertile, so that people born post-Rapture don't suffer Trib either.

I have always been rather fond of the end-of-the-world scenario I encountered in some movie or another in which the first event in that particular End Times Checklist was that Earth's allotted supply of souls waiting to be born ran out. All babies born after that time were soulless Antichrists with a wide variety of creepy evil powers.

[Nobody_Special]

An explanation of why so many of them were flying planes and driving cars in Chicago at 11pm on a Monday(?) night would be helpful, too.

Hey, have YOU ever tried to get somewhere using the Dan Ryan, the Kennedy, or the Eisenhower on a weekday in Chicago? Hell, those RTC's who were raptured probably tried to leave downtown early!

:^)

And don't even THINK of trying to use the Tri-State or the Stevenson to get anywhere, anytime. The good thing is anyone Left Behind on 294 or 55 wouldn't get killed. How can you die in a car crash in bumper to bumper traffic moving 2 mph?

>:^(

[damnedyankee]

Actually, if you buy into the age of discernment and believe that going to heaven for free is a great thing, wouldn't the morally correct thing to do be to abort all fetuses?

Annnd... we're off!

[Robert]

The Old Maid: ''The idea that it's not a big deal when it's already happening to someone else, that it's only a big deal when it hits "civilization."''

I do not think that this is what Fred is suggesting. If Chloe were going back to school to give some sense back to her live after all that has happenened, if it was a means for her to go on in spite of it all, I would find that applaudable. This would make her more or less equal to the grandfather who goes to school even if he knows that the education will not help him for a long time (or whether he will even finish it). I know examples of this in real life, and I highly respect them.

But this is not what we see from Chloe in Left Behind. Her going back to school seems more like: "Oh well, disaster has struck, half of my family has gone, the world is in turmoil and will end soon... Nothing important there, let's go to school again."

[Nobody_Special]

The plumage don't enter into it.

"This is an EX Christian!"

I encountered in some movie or another in which the first event in that particular End Times Checklist was that Earth's allotted supply of souls waiting to be born ran out. All babies born after that time were soulless Antichrists with a wide variety of creepy evil powers.

Froborr, I think that movie was The Seventh Sign.

[Spalanzani]

Socks, quoting RTC-furry: "In Heaven I really will be a winged antelope/badger/kangaroo thing!"

So in heaven they want to be the Jersey Devil?