{"id":1234,"date":"2007-08-22T10:37:35","date_gmt":"2007-08-22T10:37:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godspolitics\/2007\/08\/taking-the-bible-seriously-by.html"},"modified":"2007-08-22T10:37:35","modified_gmt":"2007-08-22T10:37:35","slug":"taking-the-bible-seriously-by","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2007\/08\/taking-the-bible-seriously-by.html","title":{"rendered":"Taking the Bible Seriously \/by Elizabeth Palmberg\/"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the close of the 16th and final Left Behind<\/I> book, which was perched on the best-seller list a couple months ago, Tim LaHaye yet again emphasizes his claim to “tak[e] the Bible literally wherever possible.” I don’t get how anyone who’d ever paid attention to the Psalms could imply that the Bible speaks less powerfully when it chooses to speak in symbolic images. <\/P>
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But what I really object to, having plowed through the first five and the last one of the Left Behind<\/I> books, are the number of Bible passages that the series doesn’t take seriously – passages that give clear instructions about how people should act.<\/P>
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For example, consider the third Left Behind<\/I> book’s take on Matthew 10:27-28’s call to proclaim God’s word openly. Protagonist Buck, realizing that his late pastor Bruce had hooked up the church’s small tribulation-fallout shelter to the Internet via a satellite dish on the steeple, quotes the “proclaim from the housetops”<\/A> passage verbatim, then enthuses, “Wasn’t it just like Bruce to take the Bible literally?”<\/P>
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I do not think that word means what they think it means. At this very moment, our hero Buck is hiding his faith in order to work for the Antichrist<\/A>. (Yes, he’s doing it to spy on the Antichrist. No, it’s not clear how anyone familiar with Revelation could think anything excused working for the Antichrist).<\/P>
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Nor does Buck’s father-in-law, Rayford (also employed by the Antichrist), seem very serious or literal about scripture when counseling a new convert (employed by \u2026 you guessed it) to hide his faith:<\/P>
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“…if I were you, I wouldn’t be quick to declare myself a new believer. …”
“Yeah, but what about that verse about confessing with your mouth?”
“I have no idea. Do the rules still stand at a time like this?”<\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE>
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Yes<\/I>. Yes, they do.<\/P>
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Nor does the series take literally 1 Peter 3<\/A>‘s encouragement to always be ready to tell others about our hope “with gentleness and reverence.” In the Left Behind<\/I> novels, Rayford and Buck sometimes stop playing with spy gadgets long enough to join secondary characters in telling others about God. They get this half right: they repeatedly describe their own faith journeys – but they often have an ungentle, even arrogant refusal to speak in terms relevant to others.<\/P>
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In the most spectacular example, Rayford opens by telling one potential convert, “You understand I don’t care what you think of me, don’t you?” But really, not having to care what others think is, from the Left Behind<\/I> novels’ point of view, the main payoff of global cataclysms:<\/P>
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Rayford leaned close and spoke louder. “What you think of me would have been hugely important a few weeks ago [before “the rapture”] \u2026”<\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE>
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Where Revelation was written to reassure genuinely oppressed believers<\/A> that God was more powerful than the state and culture that persecuted them, Left Behind<\/I> appears to be written to relieve its audience, which enjoys immense wealth and civil liberties by world standards, of the burden of having faith in things unseen<\/A>, or of connecting to others<\/A> who have a different worldview<\/A>. Forget all that stuff about people knowing you are Christians by your love<\/A> \u2013 about which, more in the second installment of this review.<\/P>
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Elizabeth Palmberg <\/B>is assistant editor of Sojourners<\/I>, and a big fan of Sojourners’ discussion guide on apocalypse<\/A>.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the close of the 16th and final Left Behind book, which was perched on the best-seller list a couple months ago, Tim LaHaye yet again emphasizes his claim to “tak[e] the Bible literally wherever possible.” I don’t get how anyone who’d ever paid attention to the Psalms could imply that the Bible speaks less…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-culture"],"yoast_head":"\nTaking the Bible Seriously \/by Elizabeth Palmberg\/ - God's Politics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2007\/08\/taking-the-bible-seriously-by.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Taking the Bible Seriously \/by Elizabeth Palmberg\/ - 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