Does it matter whether Jesus was a stoner?
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Jesus and Jihad
July 17, 2004
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
If the latest in the "Left Behind" series of evangelical
thrillers is to be believed, Jesus will return to Earth,
gather non-Christians to his left and toss them into
everlasting fire:
"Jesus merely raised one hand a few inches and a yawning
chasm opened in the earth, stretching far and wide enough
to swallow all of them. They tumbled in, howling and
screeching, but their wailing was soon quashed and all was
silent when the earth closed itself again."
These are the best-selling novels for adults in the United
States, and they have sold more than 60 million copies
worldwide. The latest is "Glorious Appearing," which has
Jesus returning to Earth to wipe all non-Christians from
the planet. It's disconcerting to find ethnic cleansing
celebrated as the height of piety.
If a Muslim were to write an Islamic version of "Glorious
Appearing" and publish it in Saudi Arabia, jubilantly
describing a massacre of millions of non-Muslims by God, we
would have a fit. We have quite properly linked the
fundamentalist religious tracts of Islam with the
intolerance they nurture, and it's time to remove the motes
from our own eyes.
In "Glorious Appearing," Jesus merely speaks and the bodies
of the enemy are ripped open. Christians have to drive
carefully to avoid "hitting splayed and filleted bodies of
men and women and horses."
"The riders not thrown," the novel continues, "leaped from
their horses and tried to control them with the reins, but
even as they struggled, their own flesh dissolved, their
eyes melted and their tongues disintegrated. . . . Seconds
later the same plague afflicted the horses, their flesh and
eyes and tongues melting away, leaving grotesque skeletons
standing, before they, too, rattled to the pavement."
One might have thought that Jesus would be more of an
animal lover.
These scenes also raise an eschatological problem: Could
devout fundamentalists really enjoy paradise as their
friends, relatives and neighbors were heaved into hell?
As my Times colleague David Kirkpatrick noted in an
article, this portrayal of a bloody Second Coming reflects
a shift in American portrayals of Jesus, from a gentle
Mister Rogers figure to a martial messiah presiding over a
sea of blood. Militant Christianity rises to confront
Militant Islam.
This matters in the real world, in the same way that
fundamentalist Islamic tracts in Saudi Arabia do. Each form
of fundamentalism creates a stark moral division between
decent, pious types like oneself - and infidels headed for
hell.
No, I don't think the readers of "Glorious Appearing" will
ram planes into buildings. But we did imprison thousands of
Muslims here and abroad after 9/11, and ordinary Americans
joined in the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in part
because of a lack of empathy for the prisoners. It's harder
to feel empathy for such people if we regard them as
infidels and expect Jesus to dissolve their tongues and
eyes any day now.
I had reservations about writing this column because I
don't want to mock anyone's religious beliefs, and millions
of Americans think "Glorious Appearing" describes God's
will. Yet ultimately I think it's a mistake to treat
religion as a taboo, either in this country or in Saudi
Arabia.
I often write about religion precisely because faith has a
vast impact on society. Since I've praised the work that
evangelicals do in the third world (Christian aid groups
are being particularly helpful in Sudan, at a time when
most of the world has done nothing about the genocide
there), I also feel a responsibility to protest intolerance
at home.
Should we really give intolerance a pass if it is rooted in
religious faith?
Many American Christians once read the Bible to mean that
African-Americans were cursed as descendants of Noah's son
Ham, and were intended by God to be enslaved. In the 19th
century, millions of Americans sincerely accepted this
Biblical justification for slavery as God's word - but
surely it would have been wrong to defer to such racist
nonsense simply because speaking out could have been
perceived as denigrating some people's religious faith.
People have the right to believe in a racist God, or a God
who throws millions of nonevangelicals into hell. I don't
think we should ban books that say that. But we should be
embarrassed when our best-selling books gleefully celebrate
religious intolerance and violence against infidels.
That's not what America stands for, and I doubt that it's
what God stands for.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/17/opinion/17KRIS.html?ex=1091066168&ei=1&en=91e2548c51d76f32
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
