![\"leftbehind\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/440\/2014\/01\/leftbehind.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nAn earlier version of this paper was delivered at an academic conference and some revisions were made at the behest of a reader for a journal publication that never materialized. For more information about the provenance history, see here<\/a>.<\/p>\n This paper is primarily concerned with the books, although some of the revisions deal briefly with the film adaptations. I include it at a film blog because the definitions influence my thinking about some, though not all, \u201cChristian\u201d films that are now being released more frequently.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n **********************************************<\/p>\n For most readers who are not evangelical Christians (and for many of us who are), the representation of reality in the Left Behind<\/em> series can come across as oddly distorted. I have adopted the term \u201cEvangelical Pornography\u201d to describe the Left Behind<\/em> franchise because its methods of representing its characters, particularly those who differ from its target audience, fit the description of what psychoanalyst Louise Kaplan calls a \u201cperverse strategy\u201d (123).<\/p>\n A perversion, according to Kaplan, is a psychological strategy that simultaneously attempts to gratify and hide a desire by acting it out while hiding its true meaning. Kaplan uses this definition to explore her thesis that perversions are \u201cas much pathologies of [\u2026] role identity as they are pathologies of sexuality\u201d (14). She focuses, of course, on gender as a primary factor in creating role identity, and hence concludes that the perversions (and pornographies) of women are substantially different from those of men. \u201cA perversion,\u201d Kaplan writes, \u201cis a central preoccupation of a person\u2019s existence\u201d (11). Male perversions use some \u201cmanifest form of \u2018kinky sex\u2019 to prevail over . . . otherwise devastating emotional states\u201d (10). Because females have different emotional states born of different emotional fears growing out of different sociological roles and expectations, their strategies for appeasing inner demons will be attached to different content.<\/p>\n I would like to extend Kaplan\u2019s analysis and categories to sociological and psychological roles grounded primarily in people\u2019s conception of their own religious identity. While authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins have argued that the Left Behind<\/em> books are evangelistic (and hence have non-Christians as their intended audience), they have acknowledged in interviews what the books\u2019 publication and marketing history bears out: the series is most widely read and championed by evangelical and fundamentalist Christians (Larry King Live). I would argue that the success of these books is largely because they serve a Kaplanesque pornographic function\u2014they allow readers to simultaneously gratify and hide a desire.<\/p>\n Furthermore, I contend that the consumption of these books becomes a perverse strategy. The protagonists become a fetish object used to create the illusion of a superior-inferior (dominant-submissive) relationship between the reader and the fetish object\u2014in this case people in the readers\u2019 own lives that are symbolically represented by characters in the text. Kaplan says of fetishism that it \u201cexemplifies the perverse strategy [because] the fetish is designed to divert attention from a whole story by focusing attention on a detail\u201d (123).<\/p>\n In deciding how effectively Kaplan\u2019s terminology can be applied to Left Behind<\/em>, the reader must ask certain questions not just about what work the books do, but also about what emotional or spiritual states require that sort of work. To be more precise in using Kaplan\u2019s terminology, what shameful or painful emotional states are being simultaneously indulged by and hidden in the Left Behind<\/em> series? Key passages and scenes show that unraptured characters engage in ritualistic self-humiliation, constantly thinking and proclaiming that their raptured friends and family members were \u201cright\u201d and that they, the left behind, were unworthy of their Christian friends and loved ones.<\/p>\n Kaplan says that a person creates a perverse scenario because \u201cit protects him from becoming conscious of some wishes and fantasies that would otherwise frighten or humiliate him\u201d (124). The frightening wishes and fantasies that would humiliate the readers of Left Behind<\/em> if openly acknowledged seem fairly easy to extract: a fear of sexuality born out of an ascetic legalism, a latent anger at loved ones for not converting and thus forcing the Christian family member to deal with the fear of eternal separation, and a feeling of resentment at the world for making the evangelical or fundamentalist reader feel ignored and marginalized.<\/p>\n To understand this latter feeling, a brief overview of evangelicalism and fundamentalism is in order. While no synopsis can do justice to the diversity of developments within American Protestantism, it is possible to paint a broad picture which will help contextualize and explain the Left Behind<\/em> phenomenon. Today the term \u201cfundamentalist\u201d is often used to denote any politically conservative Christian, while its counterpart, \u201cevangelical,\u201d is the fashionable preface to denote a self-proclaimed Christian rather than a social or ethnic one. While these generalizations have some basis in fact, they tend to obscure the fact that evangelical was itself originally a pejorative term\u2014a curtailment of the phrase \u201cneo-evangelicals\u201d that fundamentalists used (and evangelicals appropriated) to describe the more moderate coalition that inherited and emerged from the attempts at fundamental coalitions of the 1920s (Marsden 62).<\/p>\n George Marsden describes the roots of fundamentalism growing out of a schism in Protestantism about how to respond to the challenges of its cultural dominance provided by Darwinian science, urbanization, and secularization. Marsden writes:<\/p>\n Protestants\u2019 apparent cultural dominance rested on a strong base of the wealthiest and the oldest American families and institutions. Protestants had been the first to settle almost everywhere in the American colonies and so naturally their heirs held most of the positions of power and influence\u2026. It is hardly surprising\u2026 that the prevailing moral values of the civilization reflected this heritage. (11)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Marsden also clearly outlines that the rise of fundamentalism was first and foremost a reaction against and an attempt to separate from liberal theology that it saw as accommodating secularization (56). For example, he cites Curtis Lee Laws as one of the first to coin the term\u201d fundamentalist,\u201d when he wrote in The Watchman-Examiner to describe those who were ready \u201cto do battle royal for the Fundamentals\u201d (qtd in Marsden 57).<\/p>\n The historical context also reveals that much of the anger in fundamentalism is directed at moderate or socially liberal Christians. The Laws quote, for example, presupposes a class of Christians who are not ready to do \u201cbattle royal\u201d for the fundamentals, and its attitude towards them is mirrored in Left Behind<\/em>\u2019s attitude towards the nominal Christians whose refusal to share their raptured brethren\u2019s separation from the world results in their failure to share in their pre-tribulation escape from it. It is in this attitude towards others that are less separatist than those who are raptured that Left Behind<\/em> is most deserving of the label \u201cfundamentalist.\u201d<\/p>\n Two of the most often referenced scenes are that of Rayford Steele, the protagonist of the adult series, coming home after the rapture and confronting the empty bedroom containing the relics left behind by his raptured wife and the story of an adolescent soccer player at an Indonesian missionary school who commits suicide after every other player on the field is raptured before his eyes. The former scene is described in detail in the adult Left Behind series and witnessed (secretly) by one of the protagonists of the children\u2019s series. It is worth quoting at some length:<\/p>\n At the end of the hall he paused before the French doors that led to the master suite. What a beautiful, frilly place Irene had made it, decorated with needlepoint and country knickknacks. Had he ever told her he appreciated it? Had he ever appreciated it?<\/p>\n There was no alarm to turn off here. The smell of coffee had always roused Irene. Another picture of the two of them, him looking confidently at the camera, her gazing at him. He did not deserve her. He deserved this, he knew, to be mocked by his own self-centeredness and to be stripped of the most important person in his life.<\/p>\n He approached the bed, knowing what he would find. The indented pillow, the wrinkled covers. He could smell her, though he knew the bed would be cold. He carefully peeled back the blankets and sheet to reveal her locket, which carried a picture of him. Her flannel nightgown, the one he always kidded her about and which she wore only when he was not home, evidenced her now departed form.<\/p>\n His throat tight, his eyes full, he noticed her wedding ring near the pillow, where she always supported her cheek with her hand. It was too much to bear, and he broke down. He gathered the ring into his palm and sat on the edge of the bed, his body racked with fatigue and grief. He put the ring in his jacket pocket and noticed the package she had mailed. Tearing it open, he found two of his favorite homemade cookies with hearts drawn on the top in chocolate.<\/p>\n What a sweet, sweet woman! he thought. I never deserved her, never loved her enough! He set the cookies on the bedside table, their essence filling the air. With wooden fingers he removed his clothes and let them fall to the floor. He climbed into the bed and lay facedown, gathering Irene\u2019s nightgown in his arms so he could smell her and imagine her close to him.<\/p>\n And Rayford cried himself to sleep. (53-54)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It is not a coincidence that this scene lies at the center of the Left Behind<\/em> franchise. It contains the ritualistic elements of self-abuse that evidence an antipathy or even outright hostility towards the characters that feeds the readers\u2019 desire to see their hurt, shame and rejection at the hands of their own loved ones who reject Christianity acknowledged and punished. The high degree of remorse is inextricably linked to an acknowledgement of the moral purity and superiority of the departed family member who is analogous to the reader. In two of the paragraphs the main character says he did not \u201cdeserve\u201d his Christian wife, in two he expresses a lack of appreciation for the domestic qualities (needlepoint, home decoration, cooking) which not-so-subtly links her moral superiority to a middle-class, social conservatism.<\/p>\n There is also a strong undercurrent of sexual tension in the above passage. Granted the \u201cflannel nightgown\u201d acts as a reminder of domesticated sexuality which is unappreciated and juxtaposed with the more dangerous (spiritually and emotionally) temptation of sex for pleasure offered by non-spouses. Later, in the children\u2019s series, part of Vickie\u2019s transformation from teenage slut to born-again Christian will be symbolized by her acquiring the wardrobe of Judd\u2019s mother\u2013another chaste dresser. The fact that the coffee is what \u201crouse\u201ds Irene also suggests an underlying insecurity about Rayford\u2019s own ability to satisfy his spouse.<\/p>\n More suggestive than the parody of copulation that fills the end of the scene (Rayford hugging the nightgown on the bed) are the connotations of \u201cmocked\u201d and \u201cstripped\u201d in the second paragraph. Both have strong sexual undertones, and both imply an element which at first seems missing from the scene but that is nevertheless central to its emotional power: an audience.<\/p>\n These elements become ritualized throughout the series as the central post-rapture experiences are told and retold in post-conversion \u201ctestimonies.\u201d The scenes that are told in greatest detail are not those where the characters convert but where they acknowledge their own sins prior to conversion. The central elements are an acknowledgement of the characters\u2019 unworthiness of their raptured Christian friends and family (the reader surrogates) and a testimony to the raptured Christians\u2019 (unheeded) efforts (always made in love) to convert or serve the unappreciative sinner. There is very little evangelical mention of the gospel; God\u2019s saving work is not accomplished through Christ on the cross but through contemporary Christians showing His love to unbelievers.<\/p>\n When I call Left Behind: The Kids<\/em> \u201ckiddie porn,\u201d I mean it in a dual sense. First, it is evangelical porn intended for children\u2019s consumption, encouraging the child reader to retreat to a fantasy world rather than face complex realities. Second, it is evangelical porn with children as the subject matter, inviting adult readers to participate in a fantasy world where rebellious, arrogant, and mocking adolescents come to acknowledge the moral superiority and sincerity of their parents. After the parents become raptured, the infantile fantasy of \u201cthey\u2019ll be sorry when I\u2019m gone\u201d is reversed. The children have to admit as part of their repentance process that their parents and pastors were both ideologically correct and morally uncompromised. There is, in short, a secondary audience: Christian parents, and the message the series sends to them is that their children\u2019s lack of faith is not their fault. Thus the series is \u201ckiddie porn\u201d in the second sense, and LaHaye\u2019s and Jenkins\u2019s dedication, \u201cTo our own kids,\u201d could be read as somewhat ironic.<\/p>\n Both target audiences are catered to in the first volume of the children\u2019s series where the character Judd, a sixteen year-old white male with one sibling, is portrayed as being unilaterally at fault for all of his family\u2019s conflicts. After having forged his father\u2019s signature to obtain an illegal credit card, Judd buys a plane ticket to London. While on the plane, he recalls steps his parents have tried to take to deal with his rebellion, including a father-son trip which Judd sabotaged: \u201c[His trip] was also supposed to be a time for him and his dad to bond\u2014whatever that meant. Dad had tried, Judd had to give him that, but there had been no bonding\u201d (11). In another example, Judd recalls how his younger brother, Marc (another reader surrogate) was mocked and ridiculed by Judd for his attempts at sibling love:<\/p>\n One day, after school, his little brother came into his room.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat do you want?\u201d Judd asked Marc.<\/p>\n \u201cI just wanted to ask you a question. Are you still a Christian?\u201d<\/p>\n Judd lied. \u201cOf course,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat\u2019s it to you?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI was just wonderin\u2019 because it doesn\u2019t seem like you\u2019re happy or acting like one.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhy don\u2019t you get out of here and mind your own business!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWill you be mad at me if I pray for you?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t waste your breath.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re makin\u2019 Mom cry, you know that?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe shouldn\u2019t waste her tears either.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cJudd, what\u2019s the matter? You used to care\u2014\u201c<\/p>\n \u201cOut! Get out!\u201d<\/p>\n Marc looked pale and tearful as he left. Judd shook his head, disgusted, and told himself Marc would be a lot better off when he outgrew his stupidity. I used to be just like that, Judd thought. What a wuss!\u201d (13).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Like Rayford Steele, the protagonist of the adult series, Judd\u2019s post-rapture conversion comes with a repentance not so much of his sins against God but against his family, a confession not so much of his own faith but of his family\u2019s irreproachable conduct towards him. He finds his family\u2019s abandoned clothes, and his response is a miniature version of Rayford Steele\u2019s:<\/p>\n They loved him so much, cared for him, worried about him. And look how he had treated them. He held their clothes close to his chest and closed his eyes, realizing he had gotten just what he deserved (138).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In volume two of Left Behind: The Kids<\/em>, this conditioned response will resolve itself into rote characterizations of his pre-rapture life that acknowledge the sincerity of both parents and sibling:<\/p>\n Though he knew he had had every chance and could have been in heaven with his parents and brother right then, everything in him still fought to blame somebody else. But whom could he blame?<\/p>\n His parents had been wonderful examples to him. Even his little brother had recently asked Judd if he still loved Jesus (3).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Nor is this attitude towards one\u2019s former life unique to Judd. Vickie, the fifteen year-old daughter of a trailer-park couple admits both before and after the rapture that her parents\u2019 behavior has been above reproach since their conversion and that her rejection of Christianity is based solely upon her own need to feel morally superior:<\/p>\n Vickie didn\u2019t understand herself. Often she asked herself why she had to be so mean, so angry. It was obvious that this . . . this thing, whatever it was, was working. Her dad was a new man. He never missed work, was always on time, got promoted, had more friends. He was always sober. He looked happier. The only sore point in his life, besides his smoking, was Vicki. She could see him getting more and more frustrated with her, and she had to admit her goal was to make him explode in anger. Why? So she wouldn\u2019t feel so bad about herself (67).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n After the rapture of her parents, Vickie, like Judd, takes full responsibility for all of the problems in her pre-rapture family:\u201dI saw big changes in their lives [\u2026] but actually I hated it,\u201d (8-9) she says. Later she admits, \u201cHer mother was right [\u2026] she simply didn\u2019t want to change\u201d (17), and again: \u201cShe saw what a fool she had been, what an ungrateful rebel. [\u2026] She had not wanted to admit that her parents had really changed, but it was obvious to everyone, herself included\u201d (71).<\/p>\n Thirteen year-old Lionel Washington finds himself unraptured despite his immediate family\u2019s devout Christianity. Lionel tells his drug-addicted and alcoholic uncle that God \u201cuses the people who love them to show them His forgiveness\u201d to which his uncle replies, \u201cWell, I can\u2019t deny my family has done that\u201d (40). He also reminds his twelve year-old friend, Ryan Daley, that Ryan had heard the truth from Raymie Steele (Rayford\u2019s son) and is, hence, without excuse for his own unraptured state.<\/p>\n The previous quotes are designed to demonstrate the prevalence of a spiritually masochistic theme that runs through the Left Behind<\/em> series. To understand that masochism as pornographic, however, requires that we accept it as symbolically representing the consumers\u2019 anger at another rather than at himself. Self-flagellation, emotional and physical, is, after all, not a recent innovation in Christian narration. Might Rayford\u2019s castigation of himself be seen as a latter-day example of puritanical self-abasement? Jonathan Edwards writes in his \u201cPersonal Narrative\u201d:<\/p>\n I have often since I lived in this town, had very affecting views of my own sinfulness and vileness; very frequently so as to hold me in a kind of loud weeping, sometimes for considerable time together [\u2026.] My wickedness, as I am in myself, has long appeared to me perfectly ineffable, and infinitely swallowing up all thought and imagination; like an infinite deluge, or infinite mountains over my head. I know not how to express better, what my sins appear to me to be, than by heaping infinite upon infinite, and multiplying infinite by infinite [\u2026.] When I look into my heart, and take a view of my wickedness, it looks like an abyss deeper than hell. (475)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This theme of self-chastisement is especially prevalent early in the respective series, when the reader is more apt to identify with the raptured family members than the left behind protagonists. As the children\u2019s series progresses, a bit of a transfer takes place. The kids continue to maintain a subordinate relationship with the departed that is ritually reinforced through the periodic repetition of their \u201ctestimony.\u201d This process is repeated when they hear the testimonies of new Christians. Each reinforces the same basic themes\u2014how they were intolerant of (and inferior to) the respective Christians in their lives. For example a woman with a Jewish-Christian husband tells the kids in Volume 4:<\/p>\n I believed I was the most open-minded and tolerant person in the world until Isaiah converted to Christianity [\u2026]. I was mortified. I was angry. I refused to discuss it. I would not attend with him. Our marriage was nearly on the rocks, and yet I could not deny the change in him. No matter how I treated him, he loved me and forgave me and treated me kindly. (135)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The kids\u2019 subordinate relationship to previous Christians remains, but it is increasingly supplemented with a stance of superiority towards their living, post-rapture acquaintances that remain unconverted. This is especially true as the kids return to school and face systematic political and social opposition that attempts to marginalize them. They find themselves, in short, in a position oddly similar to that of contemporary Christian readers suffering from (perceived or real) persecution. The clear superiority of the Christian kids to their non-Christian contemporaries in the areas of courage, compassion, love, and above all, integrity, allow the readers to identify with their situation when they are interacting with non-Christians. This compartmentalized identification allows the series to simultaneously gratify the reader\u2019s desire to be flattered while alternately allowing him to feel unfairly persecuted.<\/p>\n Take for example the following quotes from Volumes 4-5, when the kids return to school and form a junior \u201cTribulation Force\u201d (a secret cadre of Christians designed to spread the gospel):<\/p>\n Because the world of Left Behind<\/em> is one in which legitimate human authority has been taken away, it offers to new or marginal Christians a path to instant leadership without the hard work of discipleship or transformation. There is a condescension in the attitude of the above quotes towards both the world and, if one looks closely, towards politically or socially moderate Christians. The Christian who does not evangelize to the point of offense is \u201cashamed\u201d or \u201ca coward.\u201d<\/p>\n School is pointless. Governments and organizations are never used of God and are increasingly hostile towards Him. Transformation in and of the world is increasingly eschewed in favor of a separatist impulse. Transformation is relatively pain-free and backsliding is limited to rebellious acts that are the product of easily identifiable (and repentable) sinful attitudes, and seldom does the habitual nature of sin present a problem. Judd is \u201cnot even tempted\u201d by things that had enthralled him before. Any sexual temptation between the two teenagers who live together with no parental supervision is swept aside with an assurance that Vickie thinks of Judd as \u201ca brother\u201d and feels it is \u201cway too soon\u201d to even contemplate such a thing as a romantic or sexual relationship.<\/p>\n With the smugness, however, there is also an undercurrent of guilt. In fact, guilt trips seem to be the primary mode of persuasion throughout the series. Are you offending people with the gospel? Do they ridicule you and ostracize you? Is the emotional temptation to stay silent strong? Just imagine how guilty you will feel if you don\u2019t do this. Guilt, more than even fear, is the driving motivation in the kids\u2019 life, and the vast majority of their actions seem to be a self-inflicted penance for their former treatment of their parents and siblings.<\/p>\n If there is a problem with the Left Behind<\/em> as evangelical pornography metaphor it is that any theory or metaphor that conceptualizes contradictory impulses\u2014in this case the desires to cater to and hide shameful impulses\u2014is impervious to contradictory evidence and hence unfalsifiable. For that reason, a pornographic reading of Left Behind<\/em> could be seen as an example of what Eve Sedgwick calls a \u201cparanoid\u201d reading in her essay, \u201cParanoid Reading and Reparative Reading; or, You\u2019re So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Introduction is About You.\u201d<\/p>\n In this essay, Sedgwick argues that a hegemonic \u201chermeneutics of suspicion\u201d (5) characteristic of much criticism (including her own) has stifled contemporary critical practice by privileging \u201cparanoid inquiry\u201d (6) and dismissing \u201creparative\u201d (8) reading strategies as \u201cna\u00efve, pious, or complaisant\u201d (5). Sedgwick describes paranoid theory as \u201canticipatory\u201d in its \u201cimperative\u201d to avoid \u201cbad surprises\u201d (9) and its insistence that \u201cbad news be always already known\u201d (10). She sees reparative positions as focused on positive affects\u2014as pleasure-seeking, \u201cameliorative\u201d (22), and open to \u201csurprises\u201d (24). She concludes that paranoid reading has its place but that it should be balanced with reparative reading.<\/p>\n Can a reparative reading of Left Behind<\/em> be productively paired with a more critical, pornographic one? Certainly there are surprises in Left Behind<\/em> and acknowledging them, rather than undermining the claim that Left Behind<\/em> is performing specific cultural work, may help explain the franchise\u2019s popularity by explaining its broad appeal. Two possible surprises deal with the somewhat unexpected treatment of groups that would not be expected to be portrayed favorably in eschatological fiction: Catholics and Blacks.<\/p>\n<\/a>This context is designed to explain the sense of disenfranchisement felt by many conservative Christians. As the Laws quote shows, political and social activism is nothing new for conservative Christians. I would argue, however, prior to the ascent of Ralph Reed\u2019s Christian Coalition in the 1980s and 1990s, the dominant mood of the Christian community was one of dismay at the loss of perceived privileged status as the dominant worldview of the country. For that reason, I think it is easy to see the portrayal of Christian persecution the post-apocalyptic world as being allegorical rather than prophetic. That Bibles are banned from public school in Left Behind: The Kids<\/em> is not meant to be a prediction of post-apocalypitc secularization for the benefit of secular readers but a lament of current secularization to be recognized by Christian readers. That Buck Williams loses his job almost immediately after converting to Christianity can be viewed as a fictional parallel to the sort of anti-Christian prejudice that Rams quarterback Kurt Warner related as accepted fact to a Christian audience but shied away from when picked up by the large media networks.<\/p>\n<\/a>How does this historical rift between fundamentalism and evangelicalism manifest (or hide) itself in a Kaplanesque \u201cperverse strategy\u201d? To answer that question, we must begin to summarize and look closely at some of the scenes in Left Behind<\/em>. Works in the Left Behind series are composed of loose episodes built around central characters. The climax of individual volumes usually focuses around a sermon, dialogue, or experience that prompts one of the central characters to acknowledge a previous failing and commit himself or herself to a \u201ctrue\u201d theological understanding. Epiphanies are combined with a denunciation of one\u2019s previous willful ignorance. Within both the adult and youth series are a number of what I call \u201ctouchstone\u201d scenes: scenarios or incidents that are mentioned prominently in more than one volume. While in much postmodern literature or film this style of revisiting the same events from different perspectives is done to underline the subjectivity of individual perception, there is a uniformity in the reiteration (and retelling) of these scenes in Left Behind<\/em> that underscores rather than extending their most overt themes.<\/p>\n<\/a>There is an element of performance in Rayford\u2019s emotional flagellation that is prompted by the symbolic reminder in the previous sentence that his wife has been (and indeed still is) \u201cgazing\u201d at him. The concept of a male gaze is nothing new to feminist criticism: it is the axiom that the point of view or perspective of the audience is an inferred masculine view and that its object is the female body. The female body is objectified because the viewer is invited not to identify with the subject but rather with a surrogate viewer (or maybe even a surrogate participant who is acting upon the subject.) Rayford has the fe-male gaze turned upon him; he becomes the object in a fantasy construction in which the reader is invited to identify with the surrogate viewer, his wife, both symbolically in the picture and presumably from heaven.<\/p>\n<\/a>Extending this thematic formula to Left Behind: The Kids<\/em> is fairly simple. While in much of the best literature readers are invited to identify with the protagonists (and thus face realities they might not otherwise consider) here, as in the adult series, the readers are invited to identify with the raptured siblings or parents of the kids \u201cleft behind.\u201d Thus the attitude invited is one of superiority and vindication: those who symbolize people in the lives of Christian adolescents and parents who teased, ridiculed, or disobeyed them are symbolically and ritually chastened and humiliated for the entertainment of the Christian audience.<\/p>\n<\/a>Is Rayford\u2019s self-excoriation different from Edwards\u2019s or, for that matter, from Paul\u2019s who says he counts all things but dung (Phil 3:8)? One could point out that both Paul\u2019s and Edwards\u2019s laments are products of post-conversion reflection, while Rayford\u2019s precedes his own acceptance of the gospel. In fact, the film version of the bedroom scene culminates not with Rayford stripping but with his smashing a bedroom mirror with his wife\u2019s Bible. More telling for me, however, is the extent to which the self-derision of the characters in Left Behind<\/em> is focused on their treatment of departed Christians rather than their rejection of God. It is not God, but Rayford\u2019s wife, Irene, who appears to him in a confirming vision in the Tribulation Force<\/em> film.<\/p>\n\n