Left Behind: The Kids: The Discussion: Part One

Ah, premileenial dispensationalism, the eschatological position that boils down to “God sweeping away his chosen few in preparation for ending the world or some garbage.” It’s a divisive theory held by many American Evangelicals and not many other Christians, including many of those affiliated with the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, Episcopalian, Methodist, and Lutheran churches. Despite all of these well-established organizations having different interpretations of the Good Book and generally calling bullshit on this theory, it persists to this day, unsurprisingly perpetuated by the same population that thinks COVID is a hoax and left-leaning politicians drink children’s blood.

But it makes for some damn good reading. Sharknado good.

Enter the Left Behind series, literature’s answer to delicious cringe. Penned by Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHeye, it was beloved (or hated) enough to score not one, but two film adaptations, one of which starred Evangelical darling Kirk Cameron. Not content to just pollute the minds of adults, the series was expanded to kids with the aptly titled series Left Behind: The Kids.

My good friend Luke of the ex-Pentecostal blog Unlearning Together (IG: @unlearning_together) mentioned re-reading the kids’ books as a project for their blog, and the idea seemed genius. Unpacking some deep-rooted religious trauma while shooting the shit about some cringy book from years ago? It sounded like a great time to me. We found some used copies on Amazon and so the games began. In several upcoming posts, we will read and discuss this literary tire fire. Below is our pre-reading discussion. Digressions include terrible fanfiction.

Luke: Hell yeah, I’m hype for this.

Jess: Right? Like I remember there being no likable characters. Or even memorable ones.

Luke: Yeah, they were barely even tropes. It was “the rich one,” the youngest one,” “the black one,” “girl.” Featuring “adult.”

Jess: I vaguely recall looking through the TVTropes page for the original books and thinking that all the characters had really awkwardly porny names.

Luke: Bahaha, yup.

Jess: RAYFORD STEELE. BUCK WILLIAMS.

Luke: RAYFORD STEELE IS 100 PERCENT AN 80s PORNSTAR NAME. Also, Nicolae Carpathia is absolutely a character in bad vampire porn.

Jess: The rule 34 almost writes itself.

Luke: Honestly.

Jess: Has Rayford Steele/Buck Williams slash been written?

Luke: If it hasn’t…it’s about to be.

Jess: THAT ship hasn’t been written. Buck/Nicolae, however…

Luke: Oooooh, spoicy. I want to look it up but I’m afraid.

Jess: There’s also an *NSYNC crossover fic. I think I found our next project.

Luke: YESS.

Jess: Oh god, the first chapter has a very explicit JC Chasez/Lance Bass love scene. I’ve seen too much.

Luke: NOOOOOOOO. Someone sat down to make this a reality.

Jess: IMAGINE BEING ONE OF THE MEMBERS OF *NSYNC AND FINDING THIS.

Luke: I wonder if Lance knows. He’s pretty active on TikTok. Hmmm…

Jess: I mean, I’d read slash of myself. Just because morbid curiosity.

Luke: Fair. Probably same. The weirder the pairing, the better to be honest.

Jess: You should see some of the Queen fanfics I’ve seen. Again, morbid curiosity. I declare myself cleared of all charges.

Luke: Bahaha. But have you been on the Property Brothers side of fanfiction?

Jess: I…don’t think I want to know.

Luke: It’s amazing.

Jess: I shall take your word for that. Anyways, any final words before we dive into this trash fire of a book? It’s not too late to turn back.

Luke: No turning back. “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

To be continued…

An Open Letter to the Church

Hi Church! Yup, the “big C” Church. Whether you’re a pastor or part of the congregation or even just an Easter-and-Christmas Christian, this letter is for you! Yay!

So here’s the thing. I really want to go to church with you. I really do. I want to have Bible studies and deep theological discussions with you. I want to break communion bread with you. I want to lift my hands in worship and bawl like a baby to “How He Loves” with you (the “sloppy wet kiss” version, of course). But I can’t. And all because I’ve committed the heinous sin of wanting to marry and start a family with someone else who pees sitting down.

Consumer favorites rely on hot dog casings and netting | 2020-06-13 | The National Provisioner — This is crucial for a Godly marriage, apparently.

It’s not for lack of acceptance — roughly 80 percent of unaffiliated Christians support gay marriage. And trust me, we want in too — about 50 percent of queer folks consider themselves religious, many of them Christians. So what’s the deal? Are we too afraid to let the gates fling open, as Christ would have wanted? Are we so stuck in our old ideals that we can’t possibly change the way we do things?

I urge you to question everything. Don’t take it from me, take it from the Good Book itself.

“Test everything that is said. Hold on to what is good.”
1 Thessalonians 5:21

What if everything we were taught about gender and sexuality as it relates to Christianity is wrong? I could deconstruct the infamous clobber verses, but scholars much more well-versed in the Scriptures already have. I want to take a different approach. In Matthew 7, it is said that we are to distinguish God’s truth from lies of false prophets by examining their fruits. What are the fruits of exclusion theology? In addition to alienating the aforementioned 50 percent and denying them the church experience, we have to think about the next generation and the messages we’re sending them by holding to these toxic ideas. According to The Trevor Project, queer youth are 8.4 times more likely to attempt suicide when in an non-supportive environment. Kids freaking dying isn’t a fruit of the Spirit, right? Because that’s a pretty rotten fruit.

But Jess, you say, my church welcomes everybody! Well…

“Let your yes be yes, and your no be no. Anything else comes from a non-denominational pastor asked whether his church affirms gay people.”
Ken Wilson, the wisest pastor I know

Seriously, ask your pastor if they officiate gay marriages. Ask if they let queer folks have leadership roles. I guarantee you’ll get some convoluted “love the sinner, hate the sin” spiel. You’d be hard-pressed to find a “come as you are” hip megachurch with its own coffeeshop that would let me, a bisexual woman, even just play guitar for the worship team, much less be a worship leader. Not unless I denounced part of my sexuality and ended up with a dude, which, uh, didn’t happen.

Pastors, please rethink your stances on LGBTQ issues, and congregants, speak up. Let your church leadership know that you won’t support anti-LGBTQ rhetoric any longer. I remember standing onstage at my old church while a thinly veiled conversion therapy course for young girls was revealed. I should have walked off the stage right then. I still regret it to this day. Friends, don’t be like me. Christ has gifted us with bravery and strength to stand up to oppression. Now’s the time to be brave.

Peace be with you and all that,

Jess

So You Want a Lobotomy

Amazon.com: Browne 7-1/2" Ice Pick: Industrial & Scientific

I used to wonder why somebody would consent to something as barbaric as a lobotomy. The older I get, though, the more I understand why someone would want to stab an ice pick through their brain.

There are days I wish I could do it to myself, perhaps with the nearest writing implement. Anything to numb my brain for just a moment. As you’ve seen in my previous posts, I can’t do much weed without literally going crazy, and alcohol tends to become a problem if I use it too often. And what would numbing myself to my own thoughts do? You can only get so high before the inevitable fall. And even if I lived an entirely straight-edge lifestyle from here on out, which is a real possibility considering every legal substance short of caffeine has been problematic for me, and had all my symptoms under control via my psych meds, there’s always that worry that the intrusive thoughts and anxieties are going to come back, probably worse than ever. That’s how it’s always been. Out of one storm, directly into another.

I’ve been getting back in touch with my faith, though several roadblocks have tried to stop me. One of the biggest has been my mental health. It’s hard to imagine a loving Father letting his child go through this when He has the power to stop it. I’d readily stab myself in the brain with a pencil if it meant my future children didn’t have to grow up with depression and OCD like I did. Maybe life is like a game of the Sims, and just like I give my Sims unfavorable traits to spice things up sometimes, God’s like, “hmm, let me sprinkle a little bit of mental illness into this one and see what happens.”

What Is Simulation Theory? Do We Live in a Simulation? | Built In — (And then I get paranoid that all of existence is a simulation and then it’s back to being hella frustrated I can’t have a freaking brain that doesn’t suck.)

But a part of me is convinced that my mental illnesses aren’t just a design flaw or an accident of evolution or even the work of a capricious deity. Perhaps there is a deeper purpose behind it all. When I was younger, I had no frame of reference for what OCD or depression even was, aside from the cartoonish portrayals in the media. I knew something was wrong with me, but no one talked about mental health. It was this taboo subject. Maybe, just maybe, I was given my particular brain, as well as the capability to write, because the world needs more voices from mentally ill folks. Thankfully, mental health is well on its way to becoming a normal and acceptable topic, but it’s still hard to be young (or even older) and feel like you’re alone in this fight.

I love the New Living Translation of Psalm 139:14 — “Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.” We are complex, and no place is that more evident than in our brains. We’re human and flawed, so like the rest of our bodies, it’ll malfunction from time to time, but that doesn’t stop it from being beautiful. Like the rest of God’s creation, we need to care for that brain and our bodies. You have only one — treat it like the treasure it is. And if you’re struggling with mental health, rest easy knowing you’re in good company.