loosie: words: Clanton's Rant

Clanton's Rant

If you’re so certain the world will end in your lifetime, it’s not religion, it’s egotism.

by Clanton McNeese | 2005.10.24

It’s humiliating to be Left Behind. The most faithful Christians have already raptured on out, and the earth is a treacherous testing ground for the second string believers, who must endure seven years of tribulations before another shot at salvation rolls around. Plus that weird Nicolae Carpathia dude is running the world right into the devil’s hands. It turns out that he’s far worse than your typical Satan’s spawn: he’s a test tube product sporting the DNA of a couple of homos. Poor Nicolae has no mama, so no wonder he’s a sociopath: Oh, yeah, he’s also the Antichrist. With him as head of the Global Community, the world is in unbelievably deep shit. Even more unbelievably, the U.S. has got a black president.

This was “World at War” weekend across the country, with church basements and rec centers doing double duty as Christian Cinemas. Evangelical types are getting off on the fourth or fifth or tenth film treatment of an interminable series of books depicting a miserable global future. But are these churchgoers glum? No way. Faith in the Lord will free them from future fixes as surely as it sprung Daniel from the lion’s den.

Who buys this bunk? The same crowd that clamors for “Intelligent Design” pseudo science in public schools, that rails against gay rights, that aches for Armageddon. Maybe a million of these people caught the free showings this weekend. When the DVD is released Tuesday, sales will skyrocket.

Still, it’s just a movie, no stupider than “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” or “Monster-in-Law.” So you can sit back with some brews and nachos and enjoy the show. The troubled president, long on concern but short on faith, is played by Lou Gossett Jr., the kickass drill sergeant from “An Officer and a Gentleman.” But if you’re watching “Left Behind” without the aid of a Christian conservative, it’s like watching a foreign film missing half the subtitles.

That’s because the whole “World at War” series pushes a message way beyond the acceptance of Christ as savior. It’s all about the villains. Take Nicolae Carpathia. That’s one diabolical Eastern European name he’s saddled with, and his previous gig as Secretary General of the United Nations further stamps him as suspect. His partner in spinning the world Satan’s way is Pope Peter II, a former Catholic cardinal from Cincinnati who has morphed his old church into the Enigma Faith Babylon World Religion.

About world peace, Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye, the authors of the novels, are clear: there’s no brotherhood of man that is going to unite mere mortals until every knee is bent to Jesus. Screw cultural relativism. Forget the one-god-with-many-names chitchat. There’s only one nation capable of taking the lead in wresting control from the pagans, savages, and sodomites. That must be the home of the brave, the home of Jenkins and LaHaye, the U.S. of A.

You’ve got to be a Christian if you want to be saved, of course, but there are degrees of belief and hierarchies of truth, and some sects are way below acceptable on the salvation scale. Take the Catholics. Remember Pope Peter II and the “Babylon” reference in his new religion? Well, it’s not just the Rastafarians who chant down Babylon. Historically, few folks have spoken a kind word about the Whore of Babylon, a prime player in Revelations. To Rastas, the Whore may be the Queen of England, but to the earliest Christians, she symbolized the Roman Empire. To current evangelicals, the Whore is the Catholic Church. It’s not a new concept. Martin Luther and other Protestant reformers laid the label on Catholicism centuries ago. How bad is it to be the Whore? Consider this passage from Revelations: she is “the great whore that sitteth upon many waters: with who the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication.” Like much of Revelations, this description is a bit sketchy on details. I’m not sure how she sits on all those waters, and I don’t even want to think about “the wine of her fornication,” but clearly this whore has no heart of gold.

Unfortunately, neither do America’s true believers. They’re packing stony hearts and closed minds. They’re ever ready to lay damnation on their neighbors. They’re also eager to grab the first celestial flight out of here, leaving the rest of us to eternal flames.

A word to those anticipating the Rapture: If you’re so certain the world will end in your lifetime, it’s not religion, it’s egotism. You simply can’t imagine this wicked world existing without you. What you can imagine is a god who, just for you, will shut it all down.