{"id":30154,"date":"2015-05-08T12:46:02","date_gmt":"2015-05-08T16:46:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/?p=30154"},"modified":"2015-05-08T12:46:02","modified_gmt":"2015-05-08T16:46:02","slug":"the-message-of-left-behind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2015\/05\/the-message-of-left-behind.html","title":{"rendered":"The Message of Left Behind"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I just watched the Left Behind<\/a>\"\" movie with Nicholas Cage. I won\u2019t bother summarizing the film since most people are familiar with its premise and plot. Instead, I\u2019d like to offer some observations about what I think the story is trying to accomplish.<\/p>\n

First, I have to note that the characters who are left behind ask\u00a0perfectly reasonable questions<\/em> early in the film about natural disasters and how this relates to faith in God.<\/p>\n

That is the starting point for what the movie then does. There is no rational answer to why a good God would send\/allow a tsunami, and then bury a woman and child who survived it\u00a0and who thanks God for their survival<\/em> in a subsequent landslide.<\/p>\n

And so the movie adopts the stance that John Hick called \u201ceschatological verification.\u201d But it does so in a manner which lacks all the philosophical rigor of Hick\u2019s own articulation of that approach. It says, in essence, \u201cwe sound like we are out of our minds and have no good answers to your questions, but just wait and see, and we will be proven right.\u201d And then it makes a movie\u00a0to try to shortcut the process, hoping that\u00a0cinematic realism will give the impression that their view corresponds and will correspond to\u00a0reality.<\/p>\n

In fact, the Rapture\u2019s\u00a0only<\/em>\u00a0apparent function is to prove the premillenial dispensationalists who believe in it right. It serves no other useful function, except to exempt those who believe (and wear kitschy Evangelical\u00a0jewelry) from a particular period of suffering, in a way that believers have never, ever been exempted from suffering at any point in history. There is no adequate rationale provided for what unfolds after they are gone, either. There will be seven terrible years \u2013 but why has God ordained that things should become so bad?<\/p>\n

And so the Rapture, as depicted in the movie, is just one more problem, and not a solution. It may \u201cprove dispensationalists right,\u201d but it doesn\u2019t\u00a0cause their beliefs to make sense any more than they do in the present.<\/p>\n

And the movie tells at least one outright lie<\/em>, claiming that these things \u2013 millions of people disappearing leaving their clothing behind, etc. \u2013 are found in the Bible. That\u00a0is simply not true in any way, shape, or form.<\/p>\n

The movie also depicts almost everyone\u00a0who disagrees with this Rapture dogma as fundamentally immoral. People start looting as soon as the disappearances have occurred.<\/p>\n

Those raptured include children up to a certain age, who have every bit of what makes us human in them. And yet they are all automatically forgiven, while adults are blamed. It\u00a0makes no sense \u2013 and I say this as someone who used to\u00a0accept these things.<\/p>\n

And so this is the message of Left Behind<\/a>\"\", although not its intended message: the fundamentalist worldview doesn\u2019t have answers, and believes in a future which makes as little sense as the things it asserts in the present.<\/p>\n

Left Behind<\/a>\"\" shows that fundamentalism of the sort that believes in a \u201cRapture\u201d is an incoherent story. They imagine a terrible future which they simply assume will happen,\u00a0even though it isn\u2019t even Biblical, much less reasonable. Then they irrationally assume that by depicting it in a movie, it provides the basis for saying now \u201csee, we told you so\u201d that they believe they will say from heaven when the Rapture actually occurs. But they come across throughout the movie as mean-spirited, uncaring, and delusional. And with respect to those attributes, they have made God in their own image.<\/p>\n

Turning it into a movie helps make that clear. And it makes me repent once again of ever having believed such things myself.<\/p>\n

Did you see Left Behind? If so, what did you think of it?<\/p>\n

For\u00a0a more detailed critique of the book on which the movie is based, see Fred Clark\u2019s great blog series<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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