Open_Minded Posted April 22, 2006 Share Posted April 22, 2006 Hello Everyone: One minister, I know, collects books for soldiers in Iraq. This minister served in Vietnam as a chaplain. He's retired now. At one point he and I had a discussion about end times theology. He told me the most popular book request he gets from soldiers in Iraq is the Left Behind Series. When we talked he was having a real quandry about this, because he feels this type of theology contributes to the violence in the world. On the other hand he had never turned down the request for a book. In all the years he's collected books for troops, he has sent anything and everything over, even if he disagreed personally with the content. By the end of the conversation he told me that he was going to tell the folks he knew in Iraq that if they wanted the Left Behind Series they were going to have to find it elsewhere. So.... I've been wondering..... how does this type of theology impact the concrete actions of people in our world? How did it impact your life? I mean ... if (at one point) you believed we are in the "End Times", and for all practical purposes there is no tomorrow, what did you do differently? And for any Iraq Veterans out there - how did this type of thinking impact the soldiers on the ground? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vixentrox Posted April 22, 2006 Share Posted April 22, 2006 I used to be scared of messing up, not being good enough and being "left behind". Like if i would come home from school and no one was home I would have a panic attack from time to time that my family was raptured up without me. Truely negative experiences.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quicksand Posted April 22, 2006 Share Posted April 22, 2006 So.... I've been wondering..... how does this type of theology impact the concrete actions of people in our world? How did it impact your life? Funny you should ask. Yesterday, while I was making one of my fantastic breakfests I was thinking about the 80 made-for-tv-mc, Testament, the end of civilazation by nuclear war between Soviets and us - the good guys. That effected me a lot. I remember crying to my folks about it. But end times theology? No, has never been an influence in my life. If we do end in flames, it will be by our own self-fullfilling prophieces and no Jesus will be floating back down from his cloud. However, thanks for sharing. The religous right of this country has for long wanted a confrontation in the middle east to bring back jesus and I can see the soldiers in Iraq probably believing that they are God's hands in the matter. Bush certianly believes that he is Iran's messiah (according to Cy Hersh). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thackerie Posted April 22, 2006 Share Posted April 22, 2006 One minister, I know, collects books for soldiers in Iraq. This minister served in Vietnam as a chaplain. He's retired now. ... ... By the end of the conversation he told me that he was going to tell the folks he knew in Iraq that if they wanted the Left Behind Series they were going to have to find it elsewhere. Maybe instead of telling them to find the books elsewhere, he should continue to send them but include a book, pamphlet, or a long letter written by himself or another thinking person to supply an opposing viewpoint. Might not do a lot of good (apologies to any veterans here, but I suspect a lot of people who voluntarily join the military are not the type to question the "ideas" that have been imposed upon them by their religious upbringing). On the other hand, if the minister could get just one person to actually stop and think about the falsehood of the crap in the best-left-behind books, that would be a worthy accomplishment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Poonis Posted April 23, 2006 Share Posted April 23, 2006 So.... I've been wondering..... how does this type of theology impact the concrete actions of people in our world? How did it impact your life? I mean ... if (at one point) you believed we are in the "End Times", and for all practical purposes there is no tomorrow, what did you do differently? Since Jesus was coming back "real soon", I gave up living my life. Besides, what was the point? Jesus was just around the corner. I stopped paying bills and went into unmanageable debt. I quit caring about my health. I stopped enjoying life. Since there was obviously no point in living, aside from waiting for Jesus to come back, I became depressed. Skip ahead 6-7 years: I gave up on the ghost and quit waiting for something that will never happen. I have taken back my finances, my health, and my life. Every god is now relegated to the trashbin for me. Well, except one god... Preparation-H. P-H always delivers in my time of need. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeffXL Posted April 23, 2006 Share Posted April 23, 2006 It was never brought while I wasting time in the Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod). I was fascinated by end of the world scenarios, both "spiritual" and catastrophic. Never thought it would happen in my lifetime during my pre-apostate days. Then again, shit like the Licked Behind series wouldn't have been taken seriously in the 1970s and 1980s! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Open_Minded Posted April 23, 2006 Author Share Posted April 23, 2006 Maybe instead of telling them to find the books elsewhere, he should continue to send them but include a book, pamphlet, or a long letter written by himself or another thinking person to supply an opposing viewpoint. Might not do a lot of good (apologies to any veterans here, but I suspect a lot of people who voluntarily join the military are not the type to question the "ideas" that have been imposed upon them by their religious upbringing). On the other hand, if the minister could get just one person to actually stop and think about the falsehood of the crap in the best-left-behind books, that would be a worthy accomplishment. Thackerie... your idea is a good one. And I will pass it along to my friend. There is one problem though, the person who receives the books in Iraq and distributes them is a fundamentalist chaplain. So... the chances of any note, or pamphlet, landing in the hands of the actual reader is slim to none. But, I will pass your idea along. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
texmex2003 Posted April 23, 2006 Share Posted April 23, 2006 back in my days of deconversion when I was having great difficulty with the "end times". I came across a book by Gary DeMar called "End Time Fiction." This guy is very anti-Left Behind, but a Christian. He went step by step in debunking the Left Behind. It could be a good counterpoint to the books of fiction. I feel that the soldiers wanting these books in great numbers are very worrisome. They feel they are in a battle ordained by god to bring about his kingdom. THis same crap was happening back in the first Gulf War, I remember all the end time hysteria back then too. Put me in an absolute panic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Open_Minded Posted April 23, 2006 Author Share Posted April 23, 2006 back in my days of deconversion when I was having great difficulty with the "end times". I came across a book by Gary DeMar called "End Time Fiction." This guy is very anti-Left Behind, but a Christian. He went step by step in debunking the Left Behind. It could be a good counterpoint to the books of fiction. I feel that the soldiers wanting these books in great numbers are very worrisome. They feel they are in a battle ordained by god to bring about his kingdom. THis same crap was happening back in the first Gulf War, I remember all the end time hysteria back then too. Put me in an absolute panic. I will definitely recommend your book to my friend. I'm assuming it's only a small minority of soldiers that believe this stuff? (I'm hoping anyway). Skip ahead 6-7 years: I gave up on the ghost and quit waiting for something that will never happen. I have taken back my finances, my health, and my life. Every god is now relegated to the trashbin for me. Poonis, what finally brought you to your senses? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lycorth Posted April 23, 2006 Share Posted April 23, 2006 I bought into the End Times business when I was Xian. Not for most of my Xian life, only when I was around 18/19 and did my little Prottie-for-a-year experiment. That's where I learned all about the End Times tripe and the basic paranoia that fuels the Xian machine. I carried this over into my Catholic-revert days, and only dropped it when I began to study Deism and start to truly deconvert from the cult. When I did buy into it, I did have a measure of fear in me. It was one of my biggest excuses to saturate my life with Xian mythology and base my entire life around it. The last thing any Xian wants is to be caught off guard when Jeezus cums on us like a thief in the night. I was never shaken with paranoia, though, but it was a definite motivator for me. It felt nice to drop the bullshit act, though. It felt nice to just give up the phony-baloney and realize the world isn't going to end anytime soon. The End Times nonsense was my way of explaining the reason behind all the evil in the world (at least "evil" as defined in Xian terms). As a Xian, it was so important to make sense of every single little thing, and that all the bad shit in the world had to be happening for a good reason. It was a way of sticking my head into the sand and not facing up to reality. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kuroikaze Posted April 23, 2006 Share Posted April 23, 2006 I remember back right before I deconverted I picked up a fiction book about the end times, when I started reading it I didn't realize it had been written by a 7th day adventist....they had the "evil" people forcing everyone to worship on sunday even though God had clearly commanded worship on saturday...at the end all the saturday worshipers went to heaven, while those heaten sunday worshipers were all sent to hell.... I thought, what the fuck, this is dumb...then I thought...hmmm is my version any less stupid? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
narcissist Posted April 23, 2006 Share Posted April 23, 2006 Well, for the sake of my religion at the time, I sacrificed career progression, relationships, planning for the future and other things normal people do because I believed, as the end of the world was nigh, investing in such things was worthless. Now that I've realised the folly of end times nonsense, I find myself playing catch-up with the rest of the world. And while I currently feel a little "left behind" myself, it sure feels good to know that I'm on a right track. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amethyst Posted April 23, 2006 Share Posted April 23, 2006 Well, by the time I deconverted, I was a liberal Christian. So I didn't believe in any of that end-times stuff anyway and thought the Left Alone series was very hokey. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JGJ@ReligionisBullshit Posted April 23, 2006 Share Posted April 23, 2006 One minister, I know, collects books for soldiers in Iraq. This minister served in Vietnam as a chaplain. He's retired now. ... ... By the end of the conversation he told me that he was going to tell the folks he knew in Iraq that if they wanted the Left Behind Series they were going to have to find it elsewhere. Maybe instead of telling them to find the books elsewhere, he should continue to send them but include a book, pamphlet, or a long letter written by himself or another thinking person to supply an opposing viewpoint. Might not do a lot of good (apologies to any veterans here, but I suspect a lot of people who voluntarily join the military are not the type to question the "ideas" that have been imposed upon them by their religious upbringing). On the other hand, if the minister could get just one person to actually stop and think about the falsehood of the crap in the best-left-behind books, that would be a worthy accomplishment. Yea, and maybe he should stop thinking about evangelizing through supporting our troops and get back to supporting our troops. Charity with an ulterior motive is not charity, it's just plain lying. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Evelyn Posted April 23, 2006 Share Posted April 23, 2006 I was a rapture xian and could draw timelines (describing what end-time events would take place when) as good as anyone else. I believed that the rapture would happen before the Tribulation, etc etc. I saw the movie, "Thief in the Night", back when it came out, 1972 or 1973, and it scared me. Horrible acting but it was scary. In some ways, it influenced me years later when my husband became an xian and I decided to go back to xianity because I didn't want to be left behind when the rapture happened. There were scary things going on in the world in the mid-1970s when I was in junior and senior high school. I heard several pastors and plenty of other people speculate that the Jeezus would come back before I graduated from high school in 1977. Well, I'm still here. The world is still a scary place. I went ahead with my future and went to college, two junior colleges in fact, two different majors, got out on my own, got a job, got another job, etc, eventually got married at 29, and so on. Along the way, I heard stories about people who had believed Jeezus was coming back in the 1970s and, as a result, didn't do anything with their lives. I never met anyone who was like this, though. My fundy siblings have all lived very different lives but they didn't stop living because they expected the rapture momentarily. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thurisaz Posted April 23, 2006 Share Posted April 23, 2006 So.... I've been wondering..... how does this type of theology impact the concrete actions of people in our world? How did it impact your life? Even back in my christian days I didn't care a shit about the rEVILation and the rest of all that mad end times nonsense. And I don't today either (referring to the Ragnarok myth of my current faith). Obviously, some time it will all be over, that much is sure... but I've got more important things to do than worry right now about what might happen tomorrow or in 500 years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike D Posted April 23, 2006 Share Posted April 23, 2006 My parents bought into the who "rapture" thing and then proceeded to brainwash me and my sister with it when we were kids, although I think I only semi-believed it. I remember reading the book of Revelation and thinking it was kind of like an old black and white low budget horror movie gone bad.... (maybe Night of the Living Dead, lol) you know, the earth ripping open, dead people coming back to life, people walking around like zombies with "666" stamped on their forehead, etc. It seemed pretty silly on the one hand, but on the other hand since people believed this was "God's Word" that gave it a certain creepiness because it just might be true. Now the whole idea of a wrathful god just seems kind of comical. Revelation now makes me think of a scene from Helter Skelter, like where it talks about Jesus going on his apocolyptic killing spree..... I picture Jesus with a sword coming out of his mouth, stabbing as many non-christian men woman and children as he can possibly get his hands on, people are screaming in terror as they see Jesus coming, blood is flying everywhere, the sky is red, the scene is total mayhem and madness. But Jesus shows no mercy, releasing the wrath and fury of his dad on everyone he sees. I mean good gawd, people actually believe this shit? The other thing that's kind of funny is not only are we supposed to believe the kind Jesus of the NT is the same angry god of the OT, but then we're also supposed to believe the psychotic bloodthirsty Jesus of Revelation is the same forgiving compassionate Jesus of the Gospels Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Japedo Posted April 23, 2006 Share Posted April 23, 2006 I was a rapture xian and could draw timelines (describing what end-time events would take place when) as good as anyone else. I believed that the rapture would happen before the Tribulation, etc etc. I saw the movie, "Thief in the Night", back when it came out, 1972 or 1973, and it scared me. Horrible acting but it was scary. In some ways, it influenced me years later when my husband became an xian and I decided to go back to xianity because I didn't want to be left behind when the rapture happened. That name sounds familiar to me. I'm wondering if that's the movie that traumatized me as a child? Was their a part were the Christians were waiting to be beheaded instead of getting the number and rejoicing about it? I have no idea the name of the movie but it did a major mindfuck on me as a child. In the answer of the original question, I think it created major anxiety, fears of abandonment, fears of death and a host of other fears. I can remember spending many days and nights of my life crying for my father who wasn't considered 'saved' and was away in the Military a lot. I didn't want god to ever take me and leave my dad alone. The thought of him going to hell ate at my emotions more then I can convey. I had the same types of fears as a child that another poster stated. I was afraid the rapture came and took my family if no one was home. I think this indoctrination is some of the most dangerous evil that exists in fundamentalism. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Open_Minded Posted April 23, 2006 Author Share Posted April 23, 2006 Wow, I go to sleep for a night and the thread wakes up. Thanks everyone your contributions have been great, and very interesting to read. I've often wondered how this theology impacted every day living, but was always afraid to ask. I was afraid I'd insult people by asking. Yea, and maybe he should stop thinking about evangelizing through supporting our troops and get back to supporting our troops. Charity with an ulterior motive is not charity, it's just plain lying. JGJ, I can understand why you might think my friend is evangelizing, but he's really not. He's like me, a geek in a corner with a book. He's worse than me, actually. To him charity IS books, and lots of them. And in all the years I've known him he's never criticizied another person's choice of reading. This whole situation had him really befuddled. As far as evangelizing - he's as liberal as they come. I went to a Kerry Rally with him, once. This gentleman is old enough to be my father, in his mid 70s at least. We knew there were going to be a bunch of baffoons from the right wing there protesting about "family values" and such. My friend showed up WITH his clerics on. He's learned over the years that, when he wears his clerics, the fundies will pick him out of a crowd for a debate - and he'll take them on. He slices them up one side and down the other. It's like watching an artist at work. And he doesn't do it with a soft voice either, if he's in a debate with some idiot literalist at a peace rally, he's quite capable of projecting his voice so others get the benefit of the debate. It's quite comical actually. The few times I've been in one of these situations, I've always slowly backed up and left him to his own resources. He doesn't need any help - trust me. But, it is fun to watch. Actually you guys would like him a lot. I met him through my work in interfaith dialog, he has no more interest in "evangelism" than I do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lycorth Posted April 23, 2006 Share Posted April 23, 2006 Even back in my christian days I didn't care a shit about the rEVILation and the rest of all that mad end times nonsense. And I don't today either (referring to the Ragnarok myth of my current faith). Obviously, some time it will all be over, that much is sure... but I've got more important things to do than worry right now about what might happen tomorrow or in 500 years. Precisely. Science indicates our lives will end well before the world will end, so where our focus ought to be is clear. And even if the world were to be ending before our lives were to, getting off this world would be of primary importance, not groveling before the god who makes the biggest promises. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Poonis Posted April 23, 2006 Share Posted April 23, 2006 Poonis, what finally brought you to your senses? My questions went unanswered in the church. I became skeptical aware of my own ignorance when I had to find the answers for myself. Before, I was told to believe. I believed because I trusted. But the lies in my religion and my church began to revealed themselves. Now, instead of believing everything as true, i decide to hold what I think is true to a higher level of scrutiny: everything is bullshit until proven true. I value the truth now more than just to believe something true. Anything that is indeed true will hold true through any onslaught of questioning and investigation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Open_Minded Posted April 24, 2006 Author Share Posted April 24, 2006 back in my days of deconversion when I was having great difficulty with the "end times". I came across a book by Gary DeMar called "End Time Fiction." This guy is very anti-Left Behind, but a Christian. He went step by step in debunking the Left Behind. It could be a good counterpoint to the books of fiction. Texmex.. I looked up "End Times Fiction" at B&N this weekend. You're right - it's a great book. I purchased two and will give them to my minister friend. Thanks for the suggestion. I feel that the soldiers wanting these books in great numbers are very worrisome. They feel they are in a battle ordained by god to bring about his kingdom. THis same crap was happening back in the first Gulf War, I remember all the end time hysteria back then too. Put me in an absolute panic. In your experience - was it a small minority of soldiers interested in this crap? That is my sincere hope. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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