Reading Left Behind with brain engaged

Slacktivist is a lefty Christian blogger who, among other things, is reading Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins’s apocoly-porn Left Behind and posting periodical reactions. (Full disclosure: in high school, I worked at a Christian bookstore that did brisk trade in LB and its multifarious sequels, which approached the Second Coming like Achilles chasing the tortoise. I still feel kinda icky about that.) But back on topic, Slacktivist hits the nail on the head w/r/t LaHaye and Jenkins’s theology:

Their Antichrist is an anti-christ, an anti-messiah, in the sense that he is a false liberator who brings slavery. But where Carpathia chooses to pursue power, those who oppose him do the same. L&J’s version of the evil beast will be defeated, ultimately, not by the lamb, but by the good beast. In Left Behind, good triumphs over evil not because it is intrinsically different, but because it is simply more powerful. God has a bigger gun than the devil.

Needless to say, I’m going to have to keep following this one.