The Rapture: Free Cars, No Fundies!

The Clearasil Jesus: This guy
couldn't kill nobody!

Greg:

Sgt. Rock, our brother, sent me a link to a blog by a guy name of Joe Bageant. Good writer. Mighty long-winded, though. Never say in five words what you can say in ten-and-a-half pages, I guess. Bageant was raving about what hate-seething tomes the ultra-rightwing-Christian novels of the "Left Behind" series are. Were it not for the fact that I read this particular installment, I never would have read any portion of the "Left Behind" series. Christian Hate Porno is not my bag. My thing is real estate. Send me pictures of a nice 3BR/2.75BA turn of the century Tudor revival with real mahogany plate-rail and wainscoting, vaulted ceilings and picture molding, and I may never leave the bathroom. I look at architecture the same way most men look at porn. (Yeah, baby! Lift those soffits! Show those dentils! Give the boys what they paid for!)

As usual, I have digressed.

Joe Bageant happened to reprint a paragraph or so of one of the series. It was some over-the-top kill-porn where Jesus was making the guts of the infidel - whoops! unbelievers - 'splode and their tongues dissolve in their mouths with a wave of his hand. Here's a chunk:

"Jesus merely raised one hand a few inches and a yawning chasm opened in the earth, stretching far and wide enough to swallow all of them. They tumbled in, howling and screeching, but their wailing was soon quashed and all was silent when the earth closed itself again." -- From Glorious Appearing by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins

"The best thing about the Left Behind books is the way the non-Christians get their guts pulled out by God."-- 15-year old fundamentalist fan of the Left Behind series

For a second I thought they were talking about some pee-o'd radioactive Guest Worker who had SuperPowers. I was so wrong. They're talking about Jesus H. Christ, the guy that Mel Gibson made that movie about. You know, the guy with all the compassion and stuff. Little Lord Jesus No Crying He Makes. That guy.

So yeah. Wow. I had no idea what a freaking blood-bathing hate-tome industry the whole "Left Behind" thing was until I read Joe's blog. 65 million copies of this stuff has been sold. And as he says, if the same books had been written from an Islamic perspective, we'd be burning them in the streets, expunging freedom of speech from the Constitution, and closing the borders.

To be fair, I didn't quite finish this blog entry. It sucked all the air out of the room and I passed out. And all I really know about the Last Days/Rapture stuff is what I've read on bumper stickers ("In the event of The Rapture, this car will be unmanned" - to which I reply, "Ossum! Free car!"). But the jist I got from it was that the popularity of these books is cause for a great deal of concern for non-theistic types like myself and everyone else who isn't either a honkie or a fundie (fundamentalist Christian) or both. We're all likely to get snuffed either directly or indirectly by these wingnuts any day.

I say "whoah now". Here's why. You know what type of media has a rate of consumption 5-to-1 over every other type of media? PORN. Yeah buddy. So that means for all 65 million of the "Left Behind" series that has been sold, 325 million copies of world-renowned smut classics like "Temple of Poon" ('Witness meat-eating hardbodies lunging on love lumber!') have gone before them. And out of all the people who buy all that porn, how many of them are people we should be really concerned about, viz., rapists and the like? A sheensy beensy teensy percentage, that's how many. Not none, but close. It's one thing to look. It's another to touch. It's the same sort of illogical panic people send up that equates homicidal sprees with video game usage.

The thing that concerns me about Christian fundamentalism - specifically the sort of fundamentalism the authors of the "Left Behind" series espouse, is that I don't hear any other Christians speaking out against it. If they are, they must not be very loud. I mean, isn't there a single priest or congregant out there trying to point out that Jesus was probably more of a touchy-feely and less of a killy-mcbloodbath? (Actually, from what I remember of catechism, I'm damn sure Jesus didn't kill anybody, so these jokers can kiss my left behind.) I mean, c'mon, isn't there even a single Episcopalian (where there's four, there's a fifth!) who can write a scathing letter or something?

So why not me? I'll tell ya why. Because my Vow of Refuge clearly states that I have to take refuge in the Buddha, the dharma and the sangha on this one. And not one of the the Three Jewels has told me (yet) that I can throw all their hate-filled fundie asses into a blazing chasm. Instead, I have to sit my own ass on my zafu and generate compassion for people who would really like to see me get flayed with the flaming sword of Jesus.

Cheers, and give my best to Marie.

-Thaddeus