Originally posted July 8, 2005.<\/em><\/p>\n Left Behind,<\/i>\u00a0pp. 115-121<\/b><\/p>\n Chapter 7 of\u00a0Left Behind<\/i>\u00a0does not begin with a phone call. Instead, we are treated to another detailed explanation of travel plans.<\/p>\n In the first 100 pages of this book we\u2019ve learned about a nuclear war (it\u2019s OK, no one was hurt), and the disappearance of 2\/5 of the world\u2019s population. Yet these same 100 pages are strangely uneventful \u2014 the story of a man whose flight to London is detoured to Chicago, so he then charters a private plane to New York.<\/p>\n You don\u2019t need to wait for the\u00a0Left Behind Video Game\u00a0\u2014 you can capture all the excitement of the books right now by playing online at sites like Expedia and Travelocity.<\/p>\n This chapter continues the Amazing Race between Buck Williams and Chloe Steele. He is trying to travel the 750 miles from Chicago to New York. She is racing to cover the 2,000 or so miles between Palo Alto, Calif., and, let\u2019s say, Naperville, Ill. Buck is chartering a private jet because all the commercial airlines are shut down. Chloe is flying home by, er, commercial airline. Buck gets to the finish line first, but only just barely, and it costs him $1,500.<\/p>\n We meet Ken Ritz, Buck\u2019s hired pilot, deftly sketched for us with some quick strokes of the cliche brush: \u201cRitz was tall and lean, with a weathered face and a shock of salt-and-pepper hair.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLet\u2019s get down to business,\u201d [Ritz] said. \u201cIt\u2019s 740 miles from O\u2019Hare to JFK and 746 from Milwaukee to JFK. I\u2019m gonna get you as close to JFK as I can, and we\u2019re about equidistant between O\u2019Hare and Milwaukee, so let\u2019s call it 743 air miles. Multiply that by two bucks, you\u2019re talkin\u2019 fourteen hundred and eighty-six. Round it off to fifteen hundred for the taxi service, and we got us a deal.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Here\u2019s another fine example of Jerry Jenkins\u2019 Cliff-Clavenish eye for unimportant detail. I trust him to get things like this right. Without double-checking, I\u2019m sure it\u2019s true that it is, in fact, 746 air miles from Milwaukee to JFK. Jenkins is careful about details like this, even though they don\u2019t matter a bit as far as plot, theme and character go.<\/p>\n When Jenkins has to write about Buck\u2019s journey from Waukegan to New York, he becomes strangely careful and meticulous. He stops writing to look up the distance in air miles. This never happens when he\u2019s writing about that nuclear war, or the disappearance of billions of children. He rattles off those sections without a second thought, any concern for detail, or the slightest apparent curiosity about what such things might actually be like.<\/p>\n This is bad writing, but it\u2019s also more than that. Jenkins and LaHaye read the Bible through the same skewed lens. This same obsessive elevation of irrelevant detail shapes their interpretation of the scripture. Thus they read Jesus\u2019 sermon on the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25 and ignore everything it says about feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and caring for the least of these. Instead they latch onto the introductory bit about the Son of Man sitting on \u201chis throne in heavenly glory\u201d and speculate what that throne is made of, and where it its, and how big it is, and how many air miles there might be from that seat of judgment to Waukegan.<\/p>\n This is also characteristic of their politics, in which things like disastrous wars of choice or the bankruptcy of the federal treasury are viewed as tangential matters compared with so-called \u201cvalues\u201d issues that often have little to do with the government.<\/p>\n Ritz parked in a metal Quonset hut at the Waukegan airport and chatted while running through the preflight procedures. \u201cNo crashes here,\u201d he said. \u201cThere were two at Palwaukee. They lost a couple of staff people here though. Weirder than weird, wasn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This strangely glib tone characterizes the discussion of the disappearances that continues in this section. Ritz sounds like he\u2019s talking about the weather. This might\u2019ve worked as satire \u2014 like the desperate denial of the Sunnydale Press headline reading \u201cMayhem Ensues: Monsters Certainly Not Involved\u201d \u2014 but it doesn\u2019t seem intended as such. The authors are as strangely blase as the characters.<\/p>\n After an odd little interlude giving us Ken Ritz\u2019s backstory as a safety-conscious whistleblower fired by an unnamed airline, the two men get back to the subject of the disappearances via one of Jenkins\u2019 typically smooth segues:<\/p>\n As the jet screamed east, Ritz wanted to know what Buck thought of the disappearances. \u201cFunny you should ask,\u201d Buck said. \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cFunny you should ask\u201d?<\/p>\n Yes, by some odd coincidence, Buck and Ritz just happen to be thinking about the very same thing. What are the odds?<\/p>\n Ritz at least has a theory about the disappearances: Space aliens.<\/p>\n Good for him. Space aliens ought to be on anyone\u2019s short list of possible explanations for this kind of phenomena. We listed several such possibilities\u00a0a while back, including: \u201cmass hallucination\/insanity, alien abduction, \u2026 spontaneous human combustion, rapid-acting flesh-eating bacteria, wormhole in the space\/time continuum, \u2026 an evil sorceror from an alternate dimension plucking away slaves to work in his sulfurous mines.\u201d Plus the \u201cHoney, I Shrunk the Kids \u2026\u00a0all<\/i>\u00a0the kids\u201d theory that the disappeared are still there, just very, very small.<\/p>\n These are all kind of Mulderish, but extreme situations call for extreme theories. We\u2019re not dealing with a fuzzy amateur video purporting to be Bigfoot here. We\u2019re dealing with a worldwide phenomenon affecting billions of people, one that both demands and defies explanation. So we can\u2019t just Scully away theories about space aliens or alternate dimensions just because they seemed implausible in the pre-event world.<\/p>\n Ritz offers his version of the space alien theory:<\/p>\n \u201c\u2026 It\u2019s not like\u00a0E.T.,<\/i>\u00a0with creatures and all that. I think our ideas of what space people would look like are way too simple and rudimentary. \u2026 And I agree with people who think those beings are more intelligent than we are. Otherwise, they wouldn\u2019t have made it here, if they are here. And if they are, I\u2019m thinking they\u2019re sophisticated and advanced enough that they can do things to us we\u2019ve never dreamed of.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLike making people disappear right out of their clothes.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSounded pretty silly until the other night, didn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n Buck nodded.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n That\u2019s not a bad summary of a basic space alien theory. I\u2019m sure, however, that the commenters here can do better, and I eagerly invite your ideas and elaborations.<\/p>\n The pilot\u2019s musing prompts Buck \u2014\u00a0finally,<\/i>\u00a0on page 119 \u2014 to think about one of the first questions he should have been asking when he woke up on the plane:<\/p>\n \u201cWith all the people disappeared, you think they had something in common? \u2026 Something that set them apart, made them easier to snatch?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Ritz notes that everyone he\u2019s heard about among the disappeared \u201cwas either under 12 years old or was an unusual personality.\u201d So he speculates that the space aliens took only those who weren\u2019t \u201cstrong enough to resist.\u201d<\/p>\n This is disappointing. Forget for the moment that we already know this is a rapture story and let\u2019s run with Ritz\u2019s space alien theory. The children \u2014 the space aliens have taken all the\u00a0children.<\/i>\u00a0Why would hyperintelligent space aliens take the children? I\u2019m sure we can come up with better answers than just that they weren\u2019t \u201cstrong enough to resist.\u201d Let\u2019s consider the benign as well as the sinister possibilities (and, again, I look forward to reading your suggestions below).<\/p>\n To his credit, though, Ritz is also the first character in\u00a0LB<\/i>\u00a0to give serious consideration to the possibility that these billions of people might return as suddenly and mysteriously as they disappeared:<\/p>\n \u201cThey disappeared in an instant, so they had to be dematerialized. The question is whether they were destroyed in the process or could be reassembled. \u2026 Maybe they\u2019re somewhere specific in some form, and maybe they can return.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Given that every parent on the planet has just lost their child, you\u2019d think at least\u00a0some<\/i>\u00a0of them would be pursuing a similar line of thinking \u2014 and demanding that every official and agency help them get their kids back. But that, of course, doesn\u2019t happen here.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the first 100 pages of this book we’ve learned about a nuclear war (it’s OK, no one was hurt), and the disappearance of 2\/5 of the world’s population. Yet these same 100 pages are strangely uneventful — the story of a man whose flight to London is detoured to Chicago, so he then charters a private plane to New York. You don’t need to wait for the Left Behind Video Game — you can capture all the excitement of the books right now by playing online at sites like Expedia and Travelocity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[238],"class_list":["post-29847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-left-behind"],"yoast_head":"\n
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