Sunday, June 26, 2011

Zod as Ron Lafferty

So Loretta decides to tell Verna her story about how she missed out. Loretta, as you would recall from the adult books, lost her entire family, parents, children, and grandchildren when Zod slaughtered them all in the Rapture. Fred calls Loretta "God's battered wife" and for good reason. There's nothing in there about the love of God in her conversation with Verna, just "he beats me but I know I deserve it anyway and I'm real sorry Mr. Lord that I made you so angry with me in the first place." What makes it even sadder is hearing it firsthand in Loretta's own words as opposed to in the adult book where it was told secondhand. I want to rescue Loretta and all the characters in these books.

"A couple of weeks before it happened, one of my daughters was over here with her children. I was reading one of those picture Bibles for little kids to my grandbaby. The child was no more than three years old, and she looked at me with these huge, brown eyes and said, 'Grandma, do you have Jesus living in your heart?' I was so pleased. I was glad my grandkids were growing up in a good home. And if I'd listened closer to what that little child was saying, I wouldn't be here today."


Let's play a game called Imagination. Imagine that cute little toddler as Loretta describes. You may add whatever features you like to said description, golden curls, heart-shaped face, whatever; I just want you to imagine a toddler. Now imagine that toddler with her throat slit from ear to ear. Why? Because that's what Zod did to her. Zod slaughtered Loretta's family. It doesn't matter if they were wisked to heaven, or had another car smash into them, the point is that they are dead, just as if Ron Lafferty had stopped for a visit.

I know I reiterate that point a lot but it needs to be said.

Meanwhile aboard the Stahley jet with Judd and Ryan, we get discussion of some new Carpathia policies. Apparently, he's striving for a cashless society. Given that it's currently 2011 and most of our transactions are made with credit/debit cards, I fail to see the threat. Oh and the whole ten regions with ten leaders is mentioned.

Now back to Verna and Loretta. We get to see that some of the RTC brainwashing is starting to take effect when Verna mentions that she's :gasp: jealous of Our Buck.

Verna stood and leaned against the wall. "It'll tell you the truth," she said. "I've been a little bit jealous of Buck's assignments. Buck is everything I wanted to be, and the more I look at his copy, the more it steams me. Compared to him, I feel like a college kid trying to put sentences together."


The few times we've seen Buck actually turn into a story, here's what we get.

To say the Israelis were caught off guard, was like saying the Great Wall of China is long.


:eyeroll: That sound you hear is Woodward and Bernstein, weeping over Buck's deathless prose.

Anyway so our brave heroes bravely watch Nicky Pamir's press conference and get back to discussing what's really important: Our Buck's career. Apparently Verna is currently in the position to make or break his career. So naturally the YTF are pleading with her to protect him. Oh and Verna expresses the radical idea that one guy controlling the presses is wrong.

"As much as I admire Carpathia and what he's been able to do for America and the world, I hate the way he controls the news. We journalists are supposed to be fair. Unbiased."


I have to admit: Verna is still a step above most RTCs. Again, RTCs don't object to a one-world press, just to who's running it. Nicky Sayan is evil; therefore a one-world press under his jurisdiction is wrong.

Okay, to wrap up the last part of this chapter, Judd and Ryan land in Tel Aviv, and the social worker wants to talk with Vicki.

Next chapter, the social worker has lived her life daring to think she will be judged by her works, but we all know it depends on whether or not you've said the magic words in the exact phrasing Ellanjay approve. Never mind if you're over the too-tall to be raptured age and are profoundly retarded and therefore incapable of understanding the magic words, let alone say them. Also never mind if you're one of many uncontacted tribes living in the Amazonian rainforest who have never heard of Christ.

But back to the manly men. Judd and Ryan are searching the ruins of Token Jew's house trying to find his children while a new character appears on the scene, someone named Samuel. Samuel then shows a videotape of Token Jew's children being killed and that's the end of that chapter.

Oh and I forgot to mention, the social worker opted to kneel to Zod. Still no word on Verna so maybe she'll escape.

12 comments:

Firedrake said...

The RTC approach makes a great deal out of the distinction between being raptured and being killed. Now, to you and me there isn't one: one moment the victim is alive, next he's in whatever afterlife he gets. So why is it so important to the RTC? My supposition is that it's a barely-concealed fear of death, or perhaps fear of the fear of death: rather than have months in a hospital, or even seconds on a road, there's no warning at all and no time to worry about what's going to happen next.

Which for someone claiming to be the Best Possible Christian makes sense: if you truly believe in the primary doctrine, you should have no reason to fear death, and therefore you should go stoically to your end, whatever form it takes. So anyone who does show fear of death is a Bad Christian, who doesn't absolutely 100% believe. But that's a pretty common fear, practically universal, so this secondary doctrine grows up such that you can avoid even that: if you're fortunate enough to be alive in the Last Days, you can simply be scooped up wholesale with no warning at all. No need to worry about looking doubtful to your friends!

Once there's no more cash, They can track everything you do, man! You can't get away with buying the fertiliser in one store and the diesel in a different one!

I should like to see the version of this story with the courage of its convictions: the social worker kneels to Zod, but just like all the other converts here she keeps on being exactly the same person afterwards, and still sends Vicki off to a Young Pioneers labour camp (or whatever the Brave New Regime calls them).

(I should point out that I'm lying in the garden watching red kites circling overhead - and an occasional Piper Cub - and am quite unreasonably mellow.)

aunursa said...

we all know it depends on whether or not you've said the magic words in the exact phrasing Ellanjay approve. Never mind if you're over the too-tall to be raptured age and are profoundly retarded and therefore incapable of understanding the magic words, let alone say them. Also never mind if you're one of many uncontacted tribes living in the Amazonian rainforest who have never heard of Christ.

You are misrepresenting LaHaye's opinion.

Tim LaHaye Interview
Can a person be saved if they don't believe in the Rapture?

Sure. There's no verse in the Bible that says you have to believe in the Rapture. You are just better informed. The only requirement is having faith in Jesus Christ, and a child understands that and could have that.

I'll post another link that I have to LaHaye's teaching on the prerequisite for salvation when I get home tonight. I think he addresses some of these scenarios.

aunursa said...

It turns out that the link I have at home is the same link as above.

Ivan said...

Well, that puts LaHaye one point above Harold Camping at least. Sadly, that's not a high bar to clear. And I can bitch about how in these books everyone who converts still mysteriously gains all knowledge of esoteric interpetations of the Bible and how to behave as a good RTC, which seems to suggest that LaHaye thinks almost everything he believes does come naturally from just accepting Jesus. But hey, let's at least give him a point for at the very least realizing that publicly announcing that you need to believe in his theories to be accepted by Zod is bad form.

But aunursa, Mouse didn't say that the book claims that you must believe in the Rapture, but that you have to pray and accept Jesus in a very particular way. Your quote doesn't disprove that.

Oh, and I said it last week, but damn, another Chick-tract-unbeliever for who believing in salvation through good works while giving the diety in charge the finger? And who converts after one RTC saying that that's not good? Ugh. I strongly believe that these evangelicals never do any evangelizing. I doubt the main objection they get from non-RTCs is just 'well of course God exists, but I don't need to believe anything, I just need to do good deeds'.

And yeah, Verna envies Buck. That's why she's such a meany to him. It has nothing to do with him dissing her at every turn. She just wants to be like him. *Groan*. I like to think that what she envies is his ability to be bossy to everyone, act like a prima donna who does what he likes and still have coworkers fawn over him.

Firedrake said...

Ivan, I think this material makes more sense if one thinks of it as evangelism porn. In conventional porn, all that boring "chatting up" stuff is dispensed with and people fall straight into bed: it's (at least in part) a fantasy for the man who isn't terribly good at that sort of thing. This is a fantasy of evangelical conversion.

aunursa said...

And I can bitch about how in these books everyone who converts still mysteriously gains all knowledge of esoteric interpetations of the Bible and how to behave as a good RTC, which seems to suggest that LaHaye thinks almost everything he believes does come naturally from just accepting Jesus.

I strongly agree with this.

As for L&J's salvation prerequisites, your summary -- "you have to pray and accept Jesus in a very particular way" -- appears to be much closer to what they actually teach than what Mouse has written in this and previous posts. You acknowledge that, according to L&J it's not a matter of saying the "magic words" -- you have to believe and accept in order to be saved.

Ivan said...

True, true. But in any of these books, do we ever encounter someone who says the magic words but doesn't mean it? Anyone who just says things along with Rayford because, like Chaim, they're afraid to die from whatever miracle is hitting them on the head at that moment, but turn out not to really mean it?

Or, a very logical step for Nicky who knows Rayford is an RTC and that he will want to roas him at the spit before long, he could send a fake convert to his house now, so he always has a direct line to whatever Rayford is up to.

I think I heard that Rayford's new wife is at some point presented as a red herring traitor, but are there any real traitors that said the magic words on screen?

Ruby said...

Ivan, there is at least one traitor who fakes a Mark of the Believer. But I don't think it hinges on his recitation (or not) of the Magic Words--he just is around some believers enough to know what a Mark looks like, and fakes one. He is, of course, horrifically punished by one of the Judgments...

And (spoiler alert!) another example of someone who prays-to-be-saved-from-a-judgment but whose salvation is never in doubt...is Steve Plank.

aunursa said...

But in any of these books, do we ever encounter someone who says the magic words but doesn't mean it?

Rayford had trouble speaking, but he had to ask. “Mr. Barnes, you were on the staff
here.”
“Right.”
“How did you miss it?”
...
“I thought I had a great life. I even went to Bible college. In church and at school, I said the right things and prayed in public and even encouraged people in their Christian lives. But I was still a sinner. I even said that. I told people I wasn't perfect; I was forgiven.”

aunursa said...

The Wikipedia article has entries on the various characters. This one is listed under Global Community:

Marjorie Amhearst- A loyal Global Community Peacekeeper. Once prayed to receive Jesus in her heart, but she didn't get the mark. It was determined after she said she wanted to go into the Global Community as a 'secret informent' that she wanted to sabotage the Young Tribulation Force.

Ivan said...

Okay, fair enough, it does happen. (Though probably not with someone who was converted by any of our awesome protagonists)

cupcakedoll said...

Not just evangelism porn, but evangelism porn fanfic maybe. This was Fred Clark's idea first-- that maybe some of the conversion scenes had HAPPENED to L or J, but in reality the potential convert had amazingly failed to be persuaded by the message. So in the books they write how they think it should go, if the convert reacts correctly!