'Left Behind' = 'Jihadists'?

[Annie]

Only to Kristoff and the NYT. Interesting how embattled the left must be feeling. I'm not a 'fundamentalist', but have read most of the 'Left Behind' series, not great literature, but good moral nudge in thinking.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/17/opinion/17KRIS.html

Note at the end of the excerpt, Kristoff tries to tie the prison scandal to fundamentalist Christians, since to the present that argument has gotten as far as the 'whacked out anti-abortionists,' and the overwhelming condemnation of them from Christians in general.

excerpt:

In "Glorious Appearing," Jesus merely speaks and the bodies of the enemy are ripped open. Christians have to drive carefully to avoid "hitting splayed and filleted bodies of men and women and horses."

"The riders not thrown," the novel continues, "leaped from their horses and tried to control them with the reins, but even as they struggled, their own flesh dissolved, their eyes melted and their tongues disintegrated. . . . Seconds later the same plague afflicted the horses, their flesh and eyes and tongues melting away, leaving grotesque skeletons standing, before they, too, rattled to the pavement."

One might have thought that Jesus would be more of an animal lover.

These scenes also raise an eschatological problem: Could devout fundamentalists really enjoy paradise as their friends, relatives and neighbors were heaved into hell?

As my Times colleague David Kirkpatrick noted in an article, this portrayal of a bloody Second Coming reflects a shift in American portrayals of Jesus, from a gentle Mister Rogers figure to a martial messiah presiding over a sea of blood. Militant Christianity rises to confront Militant Islam.

This matters in the real world, in the same way that fundamentalist Islamic tracts in Saudi Arabia do. Each form of fundamentalism creates a stark moral division between decent, pious types like oneself — and infidels headed for hell.

No, I don't think the readers of "Glorious Appearing" will ram planes into buildings. But we did imprison thousands of Muslims here and abroad after 9/11, and ordinary Americans joined in the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in part because of a lack of empathy for the prisoners. It's harder to feel empathy for such people if we regard them as infidels and expect Jesus to dissolve their tongues and eyes any day now.

GopJeff, if you want to move this to politics, ok by me, just seemed like it goes here.

Jihad Watch responds:

http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/002556.php

July 17, 2004
Kristof compares Christians to jihadists in New York Times
A young man from Vanderbilt University asked me what I thought of this ludicrous New York Times op-ed by Nicholas Kristof, in which he compares the popular Left Behind series to the murderous statements and actions of jihadists.

If the latest in the "Left Behind" series of evangelical thrillers is to be believed, Jesus will return to Earth, gather non-Christians to his left and toss them into everlasting fire:
"Jesus merely raised one hand a few inches and a yawning chasm opened in the earth, stretching far and wide enough to swallow all of them. They tumbled in, howling and screeching, but their wailing was soon quashed and all was silent when the earth closed itself again."

These are the best-selling novels for adults in the United States, and they have sold more than 60 million copies worldwide. The latest is "Glorious Appearing," which has Jesus returning to Earth to wipe all non-Christians from the planet. It's disconcerting to find ethnic cleansing celebrated as the height of piety.

If a Muslim were to write an Islamic version of "Glorious Appearing" and publish it in Saudi Arabia, jubilantly describing a massacre of millions of non-Muslims by God, we would have a fit. We have quite properly linked the fundamentalist religious tracts of Islam with the intolerance they nurture, and it's time to remove the motes from our own eyes....

As my Times colleague David Kirkpatrick noted in an article, this portrayal of a bloody Second Coming reflects a shift in American portrayals of Jesus, from a gentle Mister Rogers figure to a martial messiah presiding over a sea of blood. Militant Christianity rises to confront Militant Islam.

This matters in the real world, in the same way that fundamentalist Islamic tracts in Saudi Arabia do. Each form of fundamentalism creates a stark moral division between decent, pious types like oneself — and infidels headed for hell.

No, I don't think the readers of "Glorious Appearing" will ram planes into buildings. But we did imprison thousands of Muslims here and abroad after 9/11, and ordinary Americans joined in the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in part because of a lack of empathy for the prisoners. It's harder to feel empathy for such people if we regard them as infidels and expect Jesus to dissolve their tongues and eyes any day now.


I am not a fundamentalist and do not believe in the theology that the "Left Behind" series expresses, but Kristof has (as usual) missed a fundamental distinction: a depiction of Jesus killing people at the Last Judgment, no matter how glorious a reader may find it, is not even remotely equivalent to an explicit and repeated call for believers to wage war against unbelievers. Calls like that go out from mosques worldwide with numbing regularity. One would be hard pressed to find a church making the same kind of call on the other side. No one who reads "Left Behind" is going to kill you because of it. He might be waiting for Jesus to do it, but that is not a call to action.

Traditional Christianity and traditional Islam both believe in Judgment and Hell. Kristof's analysis suggests that if you believe that those things exist, you must want to kill people. He completely ignores the fact that the two religions actually have quite developed teachings about how to behave in this world that don't depend at all on their eschatologies. Kristof has, I am sure, no clue of the fact that Christianity actually doesn't have and never has had a doctrine mandating warfare against non-Christians; Islam, on the other hand, has now and has always had a doctrine mandating warfare against non-Muslims. (Taqiyya artists and dhimmis please see, just to name a few, Qur'an 9:29 and hundreds of other verses, Sahih Muslim 4294, Umdat al-Salik o.9.8, plus the writings of all the major Islamic jurists. I have quoted them many times and you can find it all in Onward Muslim Soldiers.)

I am not saying that Christians have never behaved in a beastly manner. I am saying that they didn't do it because of their ideas of what was going to happen at the end of the world. Whatever you want to tell me about the Crusades and the Inquisition, you will never find a New Testament verse commanding that Christians go out and kill people. But jihadists who kill today are doing so because of teachings of Islam to which I referred above, and others. Muslims who do not kill don't have different teachings; they just ignore these.

This is, of course, the one thing that people like Nicholas Kristof can never and will never admit, because it would explode the foggy multiculturalism and relativism that passes for a world view in their minds. But it is simply a fact. Prove me wrong.

For Kristof to term this set of novels "militant Christianity," which is somehow equivalent or becoming equivalent to militant Islam, shows that he has not the remotest idea of what the jihadists are really saying, why they are saying it, and how it differs from what Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell are saying. This kind of theological equivalence is the idiot stepchild of the moral equivalence that the learned pundits used to preach regarding the U.S. and the Soviet Union. And just as moral equivalence played into the bloody hands of the Communists, so theological equivalence plays into the hands of the jihadists, attempting as it does to blunt the force of the moral argument against them. Yeah, sure, they preach murder, but hey, look at these novels!

Posted at July 17, 2004 07:36 PM

 

[Hobbit]

These people miss the point of Jesus entirely. The Jesus of the four gospels was a pacifistic, peace-loving man (well, God with a human body) who preached "love thy enemy," "turn the other cheek," and other such things, but Revelation clearly depicts his return as that of a general, leading the armies of heaven into battle against Satan. By the time this happens, nearly every human being on Earth who isn't already "saved" will be beyond hope.

 

[5stringJeff]

The obvious statement here is that secularists have a very hard time reconciling the love of God with the justice of God. It is an age old problem and sticking point for skeptics: If God is a loving God, as the Bible claims He is, then how can He judge the world and/or send people to hell?
The Bible speaks many time about God's love (see the book of 1 John for several examples). Also, both the Old and New Testament declare that God does not want anyone to face death, but would rather that all would repent (turn their lives around into the direction God desires) and be saved. So it's not like God is up there waiting to slaughter people just for fun.
At the same time, God is seen in the Bible to be absolutely good and absolutely holy, without any sin whatsoever. Because God cannot tolerate sin, He must punish it. According to Romans, the wages (the just payment) for sin is death - no matter how big or small the sin. However, God provides the payment for everyone's sin throught the death of Jesus Christ. Because Jesus was sinless, He had no sins of His own to die for; therefore, His death was an acceptable substitution for the death of all humans (the theological term for this is propitiation).
God's judgement, then, is satisfied for everyone who accepts Christ's payment for their sins. But for those who do not accept God's gift, their judgment remains unsatisfied.