Have we finally become the dumbest mofos on the planet?

[kliljedahl]

What the 'Left Behind' books really mean

Posted on Monday, December 19 @ 10:12:38 EST
Joe Bageant

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

That is the sophisticated language and appeal of America's all-time best selling adult novels celebrating the ethnic cleansing of non-Christians at the hands of Christ. If a Muslim were to write an Islamic version of last book in the Left Behind series, Glorious Appearing, and publish it across the Middle East, Americans would go beserk. Yet tens of millions of Christians eagerly await and celebrate an End Time when everyone who disagrees with them will be murdered in ways that make Islamic beheading look like a bridal shower. Jesus -- who apparently has a much nastier streak than we have been led to believe -- merely speaks and "the bodies of the enemy are ripped wide open down the middle." In the book Christians have to drive carefully to avoid "hitting splayed and filleted corpses of men and women and horses" Even as the riders' tongues are melting in their mouths and they are being wide open gutted by God's own hand, the poor damned horses are getting the same treatment. Sort of a divinely inspired version of "Fuck you and the horse you rode in on."

This may be some of the bloodiest hate fiction ever published, but it is also what tens of millions of Americans believe is God's will. It is approximately what everyone in the congregation sitting around me last Sunday at my brother's church believes. Or some version of it. How can anyone acquire and hold such notions? Answer: The same way you got yours and I got mine. Conditioning. From family and school and society, but from within a different American caste than the one in which you were raised. And from things stamped deep in childhood -- such as coming home terrified to an empty house.

One September day when I was in the third grade I got off the school bus and walked up the red dust powdered lane to my house only to find no one there. The smudgy white front door of the old frame house stood open. My footsteps on the unpainted gray porch creaked in the fall stillness. With increasing panic, I went through every room, and then ran around the outside crying and sobbing in the grip of the most horrific loneliness and terror. I believed with all my heart that The Rapture had come and that all my family had been taken up to heaven leaving me alone on earth to face God's terrible wrath. As it turned out they were at the neighbor's house scarcely 300 yards down the road, and returned in a few minutes. But it took me hours to calm down. I dreamed about it for years afterward.

Since then I have spoken to others raised in fundamentalist families who had the same childhood experience of coming home and thinking everyone had been "raptured up." The Rapture -- the time when God takes up all saved Christians before he lets loose slaughter, pestilence and torture upon the earth -- is very real to people in whom its glorious and grisly promise was instilled and cultivated from birth. Even those who escape fundamentalism agree its marks are permanent. We may no longer believe in being raptured up, but the grim fundamentalist architecture of the soul stands in the background of our days. There is an apocalyptic starkness that remains somewhere inside us, one that tinges all of our feelings and thoughts of higher matters. Especially about death, oh beautiful and terrible death, for naked eternity is more real to us than to you secular humanists. I get mail from hundreds of folks like me, the different ones who fled and became lawyers and teachers and therapists and car mechanics, dope dealers and stockbrokers and waitresses. And every one of them has felt that thing we understand between us, that skulls-piled-clear-to-heaven-redemption-through-absolute-self- worthlessness-and-you-ain't-shit-in-the-eyes-of-God-so-go-bleed-to-death-in some dark corner" stab in the heart at those very moments when we should have been most proud of ourselves. Self-hate. That thing that makes us sabotage our own inner happiness when we are most free and operating as self-realizing individuals. This kind of Christianity is a black thing. It is a blood religion, that willingly gives up sons to America's campaigns in the Holy Land, hoping they will bring on the much-anticipated war between good and evil in the Middle East that will hasten the End Times. Bring Jesus back to Earth.

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[Richard Steele]

1. Looks like Joe Bageant has some good insights. K'd and R'd

[EVDebs]

18. The origins of this kind of thinking start in the Counter-Reformation

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=1877885

This is how the 'need' for a Third Temple gets started. It was all downhill from there; the US was to be a 'New Jerusalem' but authoritarian ideologues needed to hijack religious eschatology in order to maintain a certain level of fear and to perpetuate the power of the authoritarian view. Freedom is not an option to these people, brainwashed as they are.

A related goog read is Chris Hedges Harpers article Feeling the Hate

www.harpers.org/FeelingTheHate.html

and George Monbiot's (however, he only takes the history back to the 1800's with dispensationalism...it actually goes back to Francisco Ribera and the Jesuits)
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0420-03.htm

[FSogol]

2. They are all nuttier than a fruit cake. The time I was in 3rd grade and..

"got off the school bus and walked up the red dust powdered lane to my house only to find no one there."

I didn't panic or become filled with terror, I took the opportunity to eat all of the marshmallows out of my sister's Lucky Charms.

Great post btw.

[ananda]

3. A few are dumb meaning stupid.

Others are dumb meaning mute.

Many others are cowed and supine, just like the
Congress and Senate.

Sue

[0007]

9. You have right mahaSue.

[Aviation Pro]

4. The main reason why the Rapture nutjobs...

...believe so strongly in their false, evil prophecy is that they are convinced that their lives are useless here. These sick, twisted fanatics are praying, PRAYING, for the incineration of the Earth. My suggestion to them is to stick whatever large caliber handgun they own in their filthy, disgusting mouths and go see Jesus sooner.

These uneducated bastards disgust me.

[raccoon]

6. Well, at least they're right about that.

"they are convinced that their lives are useless here. "

[Imagine My Surprise]

8. I share your sentiments...BUT...

many of these nutjobs are HIGHLY educated. Believe me I know, as I was once among their ranks -- doctors, dental professors, pharmacists, lawyers, etc. But I do share your sentiments.

[Greyhound]

12. There is no correlation between education and intelligence.

I would think that is obvious to anyone by now.

[sharp_stick]

5. One more reason to despise fundies

The fact that they wallow in and welcome this kind of horror is scary. Who in their right mind would want to go to a heaven populated by these disgusting turds? It sounds like hell to me.

[YOY]

23. More to the point...

The "god" they describe sounds like a real dick! If their version of God is right, then rip my flipping guts to shreds and you'll not get one damn "moan" or "cry" out of me as the earth swallows me up.

I remember my (non-fundemental) upraising in which God and Jesus were described as loving beings...

[CornField]

7. "sophisticated language" ??? ROTFLMAO!!

Sophisticated language?!? Obviously the author of this piece has never actually read one of those "Left Behind" books. They win my award for the worst writing on the planet.

As for the rest, the books outline what is predicted in Revelations and that is the destruction of all who oppose the Christian God. If we are going to take issue with these books, then we must also take issue with the Bible itself.

As for my belief: The rapture is kinda like garbage collection day. If it would ever come, we'd have a much cleaner and nicer planet afterward.

[htuttle]

10. If you take issue with what is predicted, blame William Miller,...

...not the Bible. He was a sideshow preacher in the 1840s who cooked up the 'rapture' story from the arcane symbolism in Revelations.

He used to predict the end of the world about every other year. Did wonders for his revenues...

edit: speling

[CornField]

15. Hmmm... no, all I need is the passages themselves

Let's only look at Chapter 6, verse 8 to the end:

8 I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.

9 When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained.

10 They called out in a loud voice, "How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?"

11 Then each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and brothers who were to be killed as they had been was completed.

12 I watched as he opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red,

13 and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as late figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind.

14 The sky receded like a scroll, rolling up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.

15 Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and every slave and every free man hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains.

16 They called to the mountains and the rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb!

17 For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?"

-----

The thing of it is, many Christians believe the Book of Revelation (or John's Apocalypse) to be unique. The truth is that it and the symbolism it contains are very commonplace in the realm of writings of the same type. Many religions have beliefs that their Almighty will come and avenge them to the non-believers. It goes to the all-powerful and also provides an insight as to why an all-powerful would allow freewill. After all, why would a God allow his subjects to roam about doing and worshipping whatever they pleased unless he would one day come back to judge them and stand on his rightful throne?

There was a really good Frontline (PBS) piece which discussed the apocalypse belief. Here's a link: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/apocalypse/

[htuttle]

26. There's no rapture in there

The belief in a 'rapture' comes from one passage in Thessalonians, as far as i can tell. It's not even in Revelations.

1 Thessalonians 4:13-17: "But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord."

That's it. Miller took that, plus the fire and brimestone of Revelations and spun a whole *new* revelations story around it.

[Imagine My Surprise]

19. and from that group sprang the Seventh Day Adventists

...courtesy of Ellen G. White's "revelation".

[hwmnbn]

17. I've taken issue with the bible....

since I was 8 years old. Once I figured out Santa was just a story, I asked myself what other bullshit were adults handing me? And there it was, the bible. My suspicions were confirmed as I grew older and started questioning the nuns and priests at my catholic school.

One way to counteract the bible? Be a thinking human being.

[Canuckistanian]

21. I think the author meant it sarcastically

There's nothing subtle or hard to comprehend about these books.

[shenmue]

11. That kid...

:scared: :cry: :puke:

"...the way the non-Christians get their guts pulled out by God."

Oh jeez.

Run away! Run away! Run away!

[Beam Me Up]

13. "The delay in the arrival of the Second Coming exists for those whose

expectations lie in literal meaning and linear time." --Norman O. Brown

[derby378]

14. I think a better argument for "dumbest mofos" deals with US patent laws

It used to be that lifeforms of any kind could not be patented, but then you got a patent judge who apparently didn't know a damn thing about biology who approved a patent on an organism, saying that it looked more like detergent rather than life.

You want a slippery slope, you got one. Now the US Patent Office says it's legal to patent any lifeform just short of a human being. That includes your genetic code, folks...

[C_U_L8R]

16. It's Friggin GI Jeezuz

These fundie people are living in a state of delusion...
like a dungeons and dragons fantasy meets Rambo.

I'd feel sorry for them if they weren't so fckn MEAN.

[YOY]

24. Actually they hate D&D too...

http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0046/0046_01.asp

Please note that this fundie tract has nothing to do with the actual game...

[laheina]

32. You aint kidding

Check these out.

http://www.christianshirts.net/designs.php?id=103

http://www.thepraisefactory.com/87664.html

http://www.christianshirts.net/designs.php?id=4

[kliljedahl]

33. Wow, those are downright scary

Keith’s Barbeque Central

[enigma000]

20. Could be worse

These "uneducated bastards" who believe their lives "are useless here" are just buying books, going to church and living in trailer parks. Islam also has a mirror-image end-of-the-world belief. Unfortunately, it seems one subscriber to this theory is now President of Iran. And this Holocaust-denying, anti-Semitic, wanna-be genocidist, is on the verge of acquiring weapons of the apocalypse.

What's the ETA on the Rapture? Time to start packing........

[JohnyCanuck]

22. From my understanding of history,

the reason for the dispersal of the Jews from their land in the first century CE was due to the reaction of the Romans to repeated insurrections and disturbances instigated by pretend messiahs and prophets ( of whom, some believe, Jesus himself might have been one http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/maccoby.htm )who preached to their followers the scriptures taught that if the people would only put their faith in God and rise up with them in rebellion against their Roman oppressors, God would come to their aid and assist them in kicking the pagan Roman occupiers out of their land.

Unfortunately their understanding of scripture appeared flawed because what happened instead was the Romans finally had enough of these terrorist types disturbing the peace and preaching insurrection against Rome; and decided they had to put an end to it once and for all. Which is more or less what they did. They sent in the army in 70 CE, lay siege to Jerusalem, captured and destroyed the temple and scattered the Jewish population off their land.

Nowadays we've apparently got a similar situation with the fundamentalist end timer preacher men believing beyond any doubt they know through their interpretation of scripture what God intends for the world. And this time these fundy fruitcakes aren't just armed with swords and spears, they're in control of nukes while their feeble minded attempts at interpreting scripture and deriving from that an understanding of God's intentions will in the end prove just as fallible as those of their first century predecessors.

From www.wsws.org :

Christian fundamentalist bigotry reigns at US Air Force Academy

According to an account published in the Los Angeles Times, Mikey Weinstein, a graduate of the academy and lawyer in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who is Jewish, was outraged by the religious bigotry expressed against his son Curtis when he entered the academy. His son was called a “filthy Jew,” among other slurs.

“When I visited my son,” he told the Times, “he told me he wanted us to go off base because he had something to tell me. He said, ‘They are calling me a ... Jew and that I am responsible for killing Christ.’ My son told me that he was going to hit the next one who called him something.”

“When I was at the academy, there wasn’t this institutional notion that if you didn’t accept Christ you would burn eternally in hell,” he added. “This is not a Jew-Christian thing, it’s an evangelical versus everyone else thing. I am calling for congressional oversight and for the academy to stop trivializing the problem by calling it non-systemic. If they can’t fix it and Congress won’t fix it, the next thing to do is go to the federal court and file a lawsuit alleging a violation of the Constitution and civil rights.”

Members of the Yale Divinity School who visited the academy last year sent a memo subsequently documenting the overtly fundamentalist environment. During Protestant church services, they said, cadets chanted, “This is our Chapel and the Lord is our God.” They were encouraged to proselytize to others and “remind them of the consequences of apostasy.” Speakers declared that those not “born again will burn in the fires of hell,” and cadets were “regularly encouraged to ‘witness’ to fellow” cadets.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/apr2005/acad-a30.shtml

Doesn't it make you sleep soundly knowing these brainwashed true believers are going to be one day not just flying a nuclear armed B52s, or in charge of a missile silo with nuclear tipped ballistic missiles, but likely in charge of whole fleets of B52s or nuclear ballistic missiles while the religious leaders many of them hold in high esteem and depend on for religious instruction and guidance are preaching the end of the world, armagedon and the ultimate battle between God's righteous and Satan's evildoers is just around the corner.

[MountainLaurel]

28. Right on, JC

As one person here put it when the AFA story broke: "Religious fundamentalists flying airplanes. Where have I heard that story before?"

[JohnyCanuck]

29. And God isn't just their copilot, he's their Commander in Chief.

From the WSWS article linked above:

The tone is set from the top: the academy commandant, Brig. Gen. Johnny Weida, is a professed “born-again” Christian who addresses the cadets in chapel service and urges them “to discuss their Christian faith” with other students. In an official “Commander’s Guidance,” he declared that cadets “are accountable first to your God.” He also instructed cadets to engage in a call-and-response in which he would shout the word “Airpower” and they would reply “Rock Sir!”, invoking the New Testament image of the church built on a rock.

<snip>

Perhaps the most ominous allegation in the report from Americans United for Separation of Church and State is the following: “At a more basic level, we have been informed that General Weida has cultivated and reinforced an attitude—shared by many in the Academy Chaplains’ Office and, increasingly, by other members of the Academy’s permanent {staff}—that the Academy, and the Air Force in general, would be better off if populated solely by Christians. A stronger message of official preference for one particular faith is hard to imagine.”

The implications of this are quite staggering: it means the Air Force officer corps is being educated not as a military force subordinate to a civilian authority, but as soldiers who are “accountable first to God.” Those who will be placed in control of the vast destructive power of modern aerial weaponry, including “smart bombs” and nuclear missiles, are to constitute a sort of praetorian guard of Christian fundamentalists.

[killbotfactory]

25. Ever listen to right-wing christian radio?

It's a paranoid nightmare alternate reality.

[roguevalley]

27. The LeHays are the most awful people alive. Now you see why

I no longer practice Christianity. I wish Israel and the Jews everywhere would wise up and get it straight. When the rapture 'comes' they will be in the blood lake. They hate you, Israel, and covet your land. God help us all.

[kliljedahl]

30. Punt

Keith’s Barbeque Central

[eppur_se_muova]

31. Adolescent revenge fantasies. No different from Columbine shooters.

In the next volume in the series, maybe JC will return in Goth dress, hoard weapons, and start a blog.