How Can I Leave This Behind?
Start at the beginning by reading Left Behind, the first book in a series of religious techno-thrillers. Co-authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins launched a franchise whose popularity approaches biblical proportions: The New York Times estimates the 12 books have sold 50 million copies, and that doesn't include movie tie-ins, children's spin-offs, etc.
Imagine shuffling pages from Revelations into a mass market, Tom Clancy-style airport paperback, and you'll get a sense of the Left Behind experience. The book begins when the Rapture happens. Millions of good Christians vanish into thin air. The remaining population stands around going "Whaaa ...?" and then sees the first signs of Armageddon: geopolitical strife, weird weather, and the rise of a Romanian Robert Redford look-alike named Nicolae Carpathia who is actually the Antichrist and plans to use the United Nations for global dominion.
On the side of the angels are a band of former atheists, lapsed church-goers and even a priest who lost faith. They renew their faith in God and form a secret resistance cell.
Calling themselves the "Tribulation Force," the good guys oppose the Antichrist and convert people to Christianity before the Second Coming. With its spectacular disasters and globe-trotting story, Left Behind has spectacle to spare, but the prose and characterization hover just below the level of your average "Star Trek" novel.
Like The Da Vinci Code, Left Behind provides a shlocky pop pretext for thinking about churchy issues. Much as their early Christian counterparts overcame Roman oppression, Left Behind's downtrodden heroes unite against evil. It's like getting a Sunday church service and an action movie in a single sitting.
But there's an essential weirdness to it. The avowedly Christian narrative permits no profanity and virtually no displays of sinfulness, beyond the Antichrist executing people. Nothing in Left Behind would disqualify it for a Christian TV adaptation (although the heroes' porn-star names, like Buck Williams and Rayford Steele, suggest the escape of some darker literary impulses).
Artists as disparate as Graham Greene and Martin Scorsese have explored the redemption of deeply sinful characters, but Left Behind presents a fairly tame bunch of folks who start out as "fallen." Airline pilot Rayford was "left behind" because he had lust in his heart for a comely stewardess - but never acted on it. "Not only was he guilty of lusting after a woman to whom he had no right, but he was still such a klutz he hadn't even known how to pursue her."
Leaving behind the notion of what "rights" Rayford would have for a woman, if a character never did anything bad, and if he subsequently resisted temptation with such ease, does his redemption really mean that much?
For a story of Earth on the brink of Judgment Day, the stakes in Left Behind seem surprisingly small. Can the apocalypse really be rated G?
Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth's Last Days. By Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. Tyndale House Publishers. $14.99. 320 pages.
