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farlaRather than doing anything I'm supposed to, I've been working on Left Behind fanfic brought on by reading too much Left Behind Friday.
A lot of the discussion is based around how absurd the whole thing is. Some of it is very clearly supernatural (okay, a lot of Christians spontaneously disappear, but hey, God) and therefore acceptable, bit some of it is a stretch (Israel becoming super prosperous because their farming capacity is suddenly ramped up to unbelievable levels) and some of it is based on an active denial of reality (The humble man called himself a botanist, but he was in truth a chemical engineer who had concocted a synthetic fertilizer that caused the desert sands of Israel to bloom like a greenhouse. "Irrigation has not been a problem for decades," the old man said. "But all that did was make the sand wet. My formula, added to the water, fertilizes the sand." WORDS FAIL TO DESCRIBE HOW MUCH IS WRONG WITH THIS.)
Something that struck me was how it's not the rapture that's truly evidence of God, it's the way reality itself is breaking down. If, tomorrow, a super fertilizer for Israel was announced, I would be terrified. It's something impossible. The limiting factor is water. We know this. It's scientifically verified and it can't be changed without altering the fundamental laws that govern the universe. The rapture would be an unexplained blip in this, but the fertilizer would be an ongoing one. It'd be like boiling a stone and getting stew from it.
In this world, people would be running around in fear. There's no certainty - nothing is verifiable, and even if you can manage to find something, for all you know it'll be changed tomorrow. The universe would be an arbitrary, baffling place, and God's actions and those of his chosen are frequently evil by human notions.
So what would it be like not simply to live during the time of the rapture, but the rapture as-told-by-Left-Behind? Where there's evidence of the divine, but it's a confusing and even horrible thing, where people convert and believe out of terror?
Our protagonist is Adalia, meaning god is just.
When the story opens, she's a senior in high school. She lives with her father and stepmother. Her mother died when she was young, making the stepmother the one who raised her. The Israelis have just confirmed that they have this miracle formula and released the first batch of crops, which her educated parents find alternatively amusing and baffling - the formula itself is evidently untrue, but Israel is exporting vast amounts of produce, enough to singlehandled destroy the market, so they're doing something to accomplish it. There's also her brothers Noah (11) and Adrian (5). They're go-to-church-on-Sunday Christians, and Adalia has never paid much attention.
She enters college. Her roommate is a devout Christian and rapture-believer, while Adalia is absently drifting away from the religion in the absence of a parent to tell her to go. Within a few months, there's news of the bizarre missile attack by Russia on Israel, and the equally bizarre failure of every missile.
Then people disappear in the middle of the day, including her roommate and every child in sight. She tries to get home to find out if any of her family is still there, growingly certain that they're not and that this really is the rapture, at which point she realizes her best bet is to track down a church that's lost most of its members. The one she goes to has lost everyone but one of the priests.
From there, the story really revolves around the question of what's right. Are they only required to do what they're told? Are they prohibited from doing anything else? Are actions made out of fear true? Are the saved morally pure or simply lucky? What responsibility do they have to each other, and to the unsaved? Can any action be condemned if it's done by someone marked for heaven?
A lot of the discussion is based around how absurd the whole thing is. Some of it is very clearly supernatural (okay, a lot of Christians spontaneously disappear, but hey, God) and therefore acceptable, bit some of it is a stretch (Israel becoming super prosperous because their farming capacity is suddenly ramped up to unbelievable levels) and some of it is based on an active denial of reality (The humble man called himself a botanist, but he was in truth a chemical engineer who had concocted a synthetic fertilizer that caused the desert sands of Israel to bloom like a greenhouse. "Irrigation has not been a problem for decades," the old man said. "But all that did was make the sand wet. My formula, added to the water, fertilizes the sand." WORDS FAIL TO DESCRIBE HOW MUCH IS WRONG WITH THIS.)
Something that struck me was how it's not the rapture that's truly evidence of God, it's the way reality itself is breaking down. If, tomorrow, a super fertilizer for Israel was announced, I would be terrified. It's something impossible. The limiting factor is water. We know this. It's scientifically verified and it can't be changed without altering the fundamental laws that govern the universe. The rapture would be an unexplained blip in this, but the fertilizer would be an ongoing one. It'd be like boiling a stone and getting stew from it.
In this world, people would be running around in fear. There's no certainty - nothing is verifiable, and even if you can manage to find something, for all you know it'll be changed tomorrow. The universe would be an arbitrary, baffling place, and God's actions and those of his chosen are frequently evil by human notions.
So what would it be like not simply to live during the time of the rapture, but the rapture as-told-by-Left-Behind? Where there's evidence of the divine, but it's a confusing and even horrible thing, where people convert and believe out of terror?
Our protagonist is Adalia, meaning god is just.
When the story opens, she's a senior in high school. She lives with her father and stepmother. Her mother died when she was young, making the stepmother the one who raised her. The Israelis have just confirmed that they have this miracle formula and released the first batch of crops, which her educated parents find alternatively amusing and baffling - the formula itself is evidently untrue, but Israel is exporting vast amounts of produce, enough to singlehandled destroy the market, so they're doing something to accomplish it. There's also her brothers Noah (11) and Adrian (5). They're go-to-church-on-Sunday Christians, and Adalia has never paid much attention.
She enters college. Her roommate is a devout Christian and rapture-believer, while Adalia is absently drifting away from the religion in the absence of a parent to tell her to go. Within a few months, there's news of the bizarre missile attack by Russia on Israel, and the equally bizarre failure of every missile.
Then people disappear in the middle of the day, including her roommate and every child in sight. She tries to get home to find out if any of her family is still there, growingly certain that they're not and that this really is the rapture, at which point she realizes her best bet is to track down a church that's lost most of its members. The one she goes to has lost everyone but one of the priests.
From there, the story really revolves around the question of what's right. Are they only required to do what they're told? Are they prohibited from doing anything else? Are actions made out of fear true? Are the saved morally pure or simply lucky? What responsibility do they have to each other, and to the unsaved? Can any action be condemned if it's done by someone marked for heaven?
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no subject
Date: 2008-01-21 06:17 am (UTC)And your idea just knocked me over with amazing. Do it!
no subject
Date: 2008-01-21 03:20 pm (UTC)It breaks my commitment to not starting yet another story, and not writing yet another dismal, depressing story...so I will of course do so because I have the self-control of one of those hyperactive yap dogs. Also because I've got like ten pages already and it's a waste not to use them.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-22 02:47 am (UTC)It involves a prologue of these three Jewish young teenagers biking home from Hebrew school when the people disappear. After avoding getting hit by cars, they properly interpret what just happened as the Rapture and decide to get guns. This being Texas they go two blocks to the Army/Navy store, which is empty and raid it.
Then there's a couple years time gap of the story not being entirely worked out and it goes to a group called the Army of Souls. Their philosophy: "Let's not die. No, really, I'm pretty cool on the not dying." The movement has a good bit of popularity, particuarly among people who were never Christian, like Asians. Because of their numbers and despite their neutrality policy in the whole Christians vs. Anti-Christ stuff going on, both sides of constantly trying to convert the Army to their cause.
It's a mixture of gunfights and long philosophical discussions between Sarah, the young Jewish founder/leader of the Army, and various people on the nature of God as good and human morality. "Yes, we don't deny God's existance, that would be stupid seeing the evidence. We just don't agree with Him and so we still choose not to worship Him."
And wow, I didn't even have God is Not Great lying around on the floor to steal off of when I started it.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-22 03:59 am (UTC)Incidentally, you missed some prime grade insanity by quiting when you did. Later the antichrist tells Buck, "So, I killed your friend. And attempted to kill you. Actually, I killed a lot of people. Sometimes I had reasons. Other times it was just really fun. Killing people, I mean. Because I kill people." and he responds with "You are a wonderful person and I'll cover this all up because I'm a reporter and that's what we do, we ignore things that happen. In fact, I didn't even hear a word you just said and you're clearly an honest but inexperienced politician who should have control of all nuclear weapons. Hey, did I mention I'm an awardwinning journalist and a stunning judge of character?" Later we find out he's a virgin at thirty and then he makes a move on a college student. These books are where logic goes to die.
I'm trying to get through the
deadRaptured priest's video-speech right now, and looked up the quote he's using to refer to the Raptured who are taken up bodily to the kingdom of God. The line directly before it? "Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God." Yeah, this is going to be hard.no subject
Date: 2008-01-23 04:24 am (UTC)It's not as though there's any Rapture canon to be based on, loosely or otherwise. A strictly Biblical apocalypse would have no Rapture at all.
The line directly before it? "Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God."
*facepalm* Oh man. You can't make this stuff up.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-24 04:28 am (UTC)Ah, but L&J go the extra mile! They read the bible and found out what it does mention won't happen, and then wrote the Rapture based on that.
*facepalm* Oh man. You can't make this stuff up.
Now you know why they're such big fans of line by line numbering. If, God forbid, you told someone to read the page, or even just the paragraph in question, they couldn't possibly miss the sentence, since it's the first line of the paragraph. It takes a lot of effort to miss it. You have to make sure you're only talking about lines 51-57, preferably as a quotation printed in a pamphlet or something so there's no chance of someone accidentally reading the actual bible.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-24 04:46 am (UTC)Oh, wait.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-24 04:52 am (UTC)