We are all elswhere

At Slacktivist, Fred continues to take apart Tribulation Force, and this week he hits a key point.

But while such necessary distinctions can be useful, they can also produce confusion if we forget the rather important ways in which the categories they create are different. "Here" is singular and particular while "elsewhere" is vast and diverse. (You're all, plural, reading this elsewhere, but I shouldn't assume that means you're all crowding around a single monitor somewhere.) "X" marks the spot, a single spot, but "Not X" marks everything else. "Not X" is the rest of the universe.

Of course. No duh. Why, you may be wondering, am I wasting our time with such an elementary and obvious discussion? Who could possibly be confused about something so simple?

Who else? Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. And any of their readers and fans who manage to get through this next section of Tribulation Force without laughing hysterically at the crazed absurdity of it.

This weirdly laughable confusion is the premise of this section and of much that follows it. LaHaye seems to believe that "elsewhere" is a single location. He believes that "Not X" marks the spot. He believes, specifically, that all of those left behind -- every believer and non-believer who subscribes to anything other than his very specific variety of real, true Christianity -- believes one thing and the same thing. All of them. All of us. Christopher Hitchens and Muqtada al-Sadr and you and me and the Dalai Lama -- we all believe Not X and so, to LaHaye, we are all the same and must agree wholly on every other point.

This singular uniformity of Not X is essential to the plot of LaHaye's story because it is essential to the fulfillment of his supposed prophecy. If his prophecy is true, then we must all be identical and uniform.

That also means, of course, that if we are not all identical, then LaHaye's prophecies as described in these books cannot be true. That makes this a rather important section of these books, a passage that provides the opportunity to disprove LaHaye's claims without having to wade into the deep weeds of the Bible's apocalyptic imagery. We don't need to become experts on Daniel and Revelation to demonstrate that Tim LaHaye's reading of them is bogus. All we need to do is to show that, for example, Tom Cruise and Richard Dawkins don't share a uniform belief system.

All of these points are fascinating, but this one really hits it. Left Behind is based on a profound misconception of how the world works. Because, as Fred puts it:

This is one of those wonderful sections of the book where your eyes scan the text faster than your brain can articulate its disbelief. If these folks are forming an entirely new religion, why do they need to be "more tolerant of each other"? They're not really "each other" any more are they? And how could this new religion possibly incorporate the tenets of all when so many of those tenets are explicitly constructed in opposition to one another? This new religion must be simultaneously Trinitarian and anti-Trinitarian, must simultaneously hold that the Mahdi has already come, has not yet come, and doesn't even exist -- how does that work?

How, indeed?

And yet people who think it can - nay, will - work are trying to run the country.