He reads Left Behind so you don't have to

I've been reading slactivist lately. It's written by a liberal Christian, in what I think is much more the intent of the whole Christian-religion-thing. The whole "help others and don't be judgmental part" that modern religious fundamentalists forget. That's a religion I could really get into if it didn't have all that belief in the supernatural baggage.

The best part about this blog is that he's going through and reading the atrocious Left Behind, and commenting on it on every page. It's a brilliant idea. He's pointing out how terrible the theology is, how unrealistic the characters are, and just how terribly written the book is. The problem is that this is a terribly long way to respond to a book. He's been doing it since 2002, and has only just gotten up to page 156. The good news is that leaves the rest of us with entertaining reading for a while.

This, I think, the post that made it pretty clear I was going to like this blog.

This approach -- judgement for Thee but not for Me -- also helps to account for the current antigay mania of American evangelicalism. In a couple of Paul's other rants, he includes "sodomites" in his bestiaries of badness. Even if we accept, for the sake of argument, the dubious assumption that Paul misunderstood the story of Sodom, and therefore used this as a synonym for "homosexuals," it doesn't follow that "homosexuals are bad" is the main lesson that heterosexuals should be gleaning from such passages. But if you read such passages looking for any excuse to exempt yourself from the apostle's condemnation, this offers an ideal escape hatch. Preaching against self-love, ingratitude, love of money or love of pleasure can be a two-edged sword. But if you're heterosexual, and you're preaching against homosexuality, then you're safe. You've found the ideal target for self-exempting, self-justifying self-righteousness.

Judgment is for Other People.

Does that remind you of anyone?