More Left Behind Nonsense

The Left Behind series, which is very bad theology and not-so-hot fiction, continues to influence ordinary Christians in some rather sad ways. A friend has compared this series to the Ever-Ready battery commercials—these books, and the series of things related to them, just keep going and going. Please do not try to convince me that money is not a major part of this whole development.

Now a video game called Left Behind is being marketed. In it the Christians wipe out the non-Christians proving, I suppose, that there really is no one left behind. I understand that the theme of violence in this game is so great that parents are warned to beware.

I have to tell you I am as offended (I can’t think of a better way to put this) by this stuff as anything produced by the Christian left, in fact more so since the left doesn’t market “Jesus junk” like this. With over sixty million Left Behind books sold one can only ask: “What next?” Probably the answer lies as much in the marketplace as anywhere else. This all sounds like sixteenth-century “indulgence” buying and selling to me. If so, who is Tetzel in this scenario and where is Luther when we need him?

A good dose of St. Augustine would profit the church in our day. The famous theologian noted that the end (eschaton) is ultimately a mystery, thus we should not engage in serious speculation about it. After living through over fifty years of this evangelical junk I can’t come up with a better answer than that even if I tried.