Keep Waiting

You knew this was coming. Left Behind Games is introducing a new line of video games to "saved" children and adults alike. It's a real time strategy game, I would assume like Diablo, where you go around and save souls (interestingly you can do "evil" things like kill people but you lose points for this). The game is set immediately following the biblical rapture which evangelicals tell us is coming any day now: the signs are everywhere.

Essentially the rapture is the point in time when God will decide that the game's up; humanity apparently has an expiry date. On that day, millions of true Christians will ascend to heaven, leaving many of us behind to be slowly roasted over a spit. We are told that one morning we will wake up to the disappearance of millions of people. Then there will be an apocalyptic battle on this fateful day when Jesus will return to judge humanity and condemn non-believers and heathens to the eternal fires of hell. Sounds fun!

The arrival of the aforementioned game is the latest in a long line of films such as the Passion of the Christ, The Chronicles of Narnia and numerous books by esteemed authors like Pat Robertson. All these titles are based on a literal reading of the Bible and especially the Book of Revelations. The core problem of this view is that the Bible was never meant to be read literally so there will be no physical apocalypse. The Bible is so full of contradictions, dates and places rarely match the geography on the ground and almost all of the stories are borrowed from earlier sources. For an academic, it would be hard to accept the Bible as a reliable source. I had a prof at university who went on and on about how the creation story in Genesis is borrowed almost word from word from the Babylonian creation story. This never threatened his open Christianity in the least.

I must stress that this doesn't mean that the Bible isn't a meaningful document; I love reading the gospels and the great sayings that Jesus is supposed to have said (given that the gospels were written at least a hundred years after Jesus they might be at least slightly imaginative). But the Sermon on the Mount and the story of the camel through the eye of a needle and all those parables are amazing documents that everyone should think about. Obviously I'm not alone.

Having read a great book called The Pagan Christ the other day I'm really thinking a lot about these issues. I'll write more on the blog soon.

But the whole point is that games like those made by Left Behind and movies like the Passion of the Christ miss the point that these stories are meant to be read figuratively. What is the use of viewing a man who apparently lived 2,000 years ago, tortured and brutalized by the state and religious extremists if you don't relate it to your life and times? Will you just leave the movie theatre and go home and cheer on the troops? Shouldn't it make you think of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay or the hundreds of other state sponsored torture factories? Shouldn't it make you fight to ensure that this torture never ever happens again? Shouldn't we recognize that we are the Romans?

Similarly, what is the use of dreaming of the "pending" rapture? Why not work to save souls now by providing all people with healthy food, a safe place to live and respect? Seems to me that this would be the central theme of the Bible. Not physically ascending to heaven with the rest of the elect, leaving all wordly concerns behind. Salvation here and now for all, not just a select few.

But maybe that's just me.