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Apocalypse (Almost) Now
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: November 24, 2004

If America's secular liberals think they have it rough now, just wait till the Second Coming.

The "Left Behind" series, the best-selling novels for adults in the U.S., enthusiastically depict Jesus returning to slaughter everyone who is not a born-again Christian. The world's Hindus, Muslims, Jews and agnostics, along with many Catholics and Unitarians, are heaved into everlasting fire: "Jesus merely raised one hand a few inches and . . . they tumbled in, howling and screeching."

Gosh, what an uplifting scene!

If Saudi Arabians wrote an Islamic version of this series, we would furiously demand that sensible Muslims repudiate such hatemongering. We should hold ourselves to the same standard.

Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, the co-authors of the series, have both e-mailed me (after I wrote about the "Left Behind" series in July) to protest that their books do not "celebrate" the slaughter of non-Christians but simply present the painful reality of Scripture.

"We can't read it some other way just because it sounds exclusivistic and not currently politically correct," Mr. Jenkins said in an e-mail. "That's our crucible, an offensive and divisive message in an age of plurality and tolerance."

Silly me. I'd forgotten the passage in the Bible about how Jesus intends to roast everyone from the good Samaritan to Gandhi in everlasting fire, simply because they weren't born-again Christians.

I accept that Mr. Jenkins and Mr. LaHaye are sincere. (They base their conclusions on John 3.) But I've sat down in Pakistani and Iraqi mosques with Muslim fundamentalists, and they offered the same defense: they're just applying God's word.

Now, I've often written that blue staters should be less snooty toward fundamentalist Christians, and I realize that this column will seem pretty snooty. But if I praise the good work of evangelicals - like their superb relief efforts in Darfur - I'll also condemn what I perceive as bigotry. A dialogue about faith must move past taboos and discuss differences bluntly. That's what blue staters and red staters need to do about religion and the "Left Behind" books.

For starters, it's worth pointing out that those predicting an apocalypse have a long and lousy record. In America, tens of thousands of followers of William Miller waited eagerly for Jesus to reappear on Oct. 22, 1844. Some of these Millerites had given away all their belongings, and the no-show was called the Great Disappointment.

In more recent times, the best-selling nonfiction book of the 1970's was Hal Lindsey's "The Late Great Planet Earth," selling 18 million copies worldwide with its predictions of a Second Coming. Then, one of the hottest best sellers in 1988 was a booklet called "88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988." Oops.

Being wrong has rarely been so lucrative.

Now we have the hugely profitable "Left Behind" financial empire, whose Web site flatly says that the authors "think this generation will witness the end of history." The site sells every "Left Behind" spinoff imaginable, including screen savers, regular prophecies sent to your mobile phone, children's versions of the books, audiobooks, graphic novels, videos, calendars, music and a $6.50-a-month prophesy club. This isn't religion, this is brand management.

If Mr. LaHaye and Mr. Jenkins honestly believe that the end of the world may be imminent, why not waive royalties? Why don't they use the millions of dollars in profits to help the poor - and increase their own chances of getting into heaven?

Mr. Jenkins told me that he gives 20 to 40 percent of his income to charity, and that's commendable. But there are millions more where that came from. Mr. LaHaye and Mr. Jenkins might spend less time puzzling over obscure passages in the Book of Revelation and more time with the straightforward language of Matthew 6:19, "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth." Or Matthew 19:21, where Jesus advises a rich man: "Sell your possessions and give the money to the poor. . . . It will be hard for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven."

So I challenge the authors to a bet: if the events of the Apocalypse arrive in the next 10 years, then I'll donate $500 to the battle against the Antichrist; if it doesn't, you donate $500 to a charity of my choosing that fights poverty - and bigotry.

Gentlemen, do we have a deal?

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Op vrijdag 27 mei 2005 21:20 schreef -DailaLama- het volgende:
Ik heb ee boek uit die serie nog wel op mn moeders verjaardag gegeven.

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DVD ON SALE JUNE 6, 2005

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Op vrijdag 27 mei 2005 22:02 schreef Alicey het volgende:
Voorzichtig schopje naar TV.

WFL >>> TV

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Op vrijdag 27 mei 2005 22:18 schreef -DailaLama- het volgende:
De docu lijkt me wel een beetje té Michael Moore achtig .... Veel gemanipuleer met beelden ... dat zie je al aan die trailer. Een rustige observatie van wat er gaande is, waaruit je zelf je conclusies kan trekken, geeft volgens mij veel meer effect. Alhoewel .... dat wordt weer overschreeuwt door de rest van de media.

Maar goed .... als dit een succes wordt, beginnen de Amerikaanse evangelisten vast met een tegenaanval, net als die neo-conservatieven met Fahrenheit 9/11.

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Op dinsdag 4 oktober 2005 00:28 schreef Hallulama het volgende:
God has always been there, and here too.

But, how would you define God?

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Op woensdag 5 oktober 2005 19:52 schreef speknek het volgende:
offtopic: Hey Godslasteraar, ken je deze al? Time to stand up. Ik las hem en moest gelijk aan jou denken .

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The political identification of creationism with conservative politics is recent. Before World War II, rural populism in the Southwest and Midwest, motivated by resentment against politically and socially powerful Northern urban elites, included both creationism and socialism. In the election of 1912, the poorest rural counties of Texas and Oklahoma and Arkansas gave more votes to Eugene Debs than did the urban populations of Chicago and New York. At the same time the best-selling weekly in America was the Appeal to Reason, a socialist periodical published in Girard, Kansas. So, what's the matter with Kansas these days? The shift of American populism from the left to the right is part of the history of the disappearance of the American left as a serious political force.

We see then that Christian fundamentalists have been historically inconstant in their political preferences; and their demand for a public recognition of the literal truth of Genesis has not, at least so far, included agitation against the teachings of physical science. So the campaign against evolutionary biology must be neither an integral part of the politics of the right nor the consequence of a devotion in principle to a literal reading of the Bible. How then are we to explain the continued strength of the campaign against evolution? We can do no better than to listen to the Reverend Ron Carlson, a popular preacher, lecturer, and author. He presents to his audience two stories and asks them repeatedly whether it matters which one is true. In the secular story,

you are the descendant of a tiny cell of primordial protoplasm washed up on an empty beach three and a half billion years ago. You are a mere grab-bag of atomic particles, a conglomeration of genetic substance. You exist on a tiny planet in a minute solar system... in an empty corner of a meaningless universe. You came from nothing and are going nowhere.

By contrast, the Christian view is that

you are the special creation of a good and all-powerful God. You are the climax of His creation.... Not only is your kind unique, but you are unique among your kind.... Your Creator loves you so much and so intensely desires your companionship and affection that...He gave the life of His only Son that you might spend eternity with Him.[6]

What is at issue here is whether the experience of one's family, social, and working life, with its share of angst, pain, fatigue, and failure, can provide meaning in the absence of a belief in an ordained higher purpose. The continued appeal of a story of a divine creation of human life is that it provides, for those for whom the ordinary experience of living does not, a seductive relief from what Eric Fromm called the Anxiety of Meaninglessness. The rest is commentary.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18363
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Olivier Roy further suggests that whereas Salafi jihadists (he calls them neofundamentalists) believe they represent Islamic tradition, what they express in fact is a negative form of Westernization:

The real genesis of Al Qaeda violence has more to do with a Western tradition of individual and pessimistic revolt for an elusive ideal world than with the Koranic conception of martyrdom.

So it is that one of the neofundamentalists' key doctrinal innovations is their discarding of the traditional Muslim view of armed jihad as a collective Muslim responsibility. They assert instead that jihad is a binding individual duty for each Muslim, rewarded by God in fulfillment, and punished in omission.[3]

What such shifts represent, in a subtle sense, is a rejection of the authority of the contemporary father, whether he is identified with the king of Saudi Arabia or simply the head of a dysfunctional Muslim household
Ander artikel in de NYR of Books http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18177

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..........God, the Bible, and religion in general are not mentioned in the doctrine of ID. Rather, it is claimed that an objective examination of the facts of life makes it clear that organisms are too complex to have arisen by a process of the accumulation of naturally selected chance mutations and so must have been purposefully created by an unspecified intelligent designer. An alien from outer space? But the theory of ID is a transparent subterfuge. The problem is that if the living world is too complex to have arisen without an intelligent designer, then where did the intelligent designer come from? After all, she must have been as complex as the things she designed. If not, then we have evolution! Otherwise we must postulate an intelligent designer who designed the intelligent designer who..., back to the original one who must have been around forever. And who might that be? Like the ancient Hebrews the ID designers fear to pronounce Her name lest they be destroyed, but Her initials are clearly YWH....................

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Judaism, Islam and Christianity have much in common. Despite New Testament watering down and other reformist tendencies, all three pay historic allegiance to the same violent and vindictive God of Battles, memorably summed up by Gore Vidal in 1998:

The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism. From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are, literally, patriarchal--God is the Omnipotent Father--hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky-god and his earthly male delegates. The sky-god is a jealous god, of course. He requires total obedience from everyone on earth, as he is not just in place for one tribe, but for all creation. Those who would reject him must be converted or killed for their own good. ...