On not being left behind

In theaters now, Nicholas Cage is taking us to the beginning of the end of time. A time when passengers vanish mid-flight, cars lose their drivers, and those who aren’t raptured face a violent world and a monumental choice: follow the Antichrist toward destruction or follow the righteous and be saved from the world. It’s the end of the world as we know it, and no one’s feeling fine.

Years ago, when the Left Behind series topped the bestseller lists, a friend and colleague of mine was on fire over the books. What bothered Tim most was that Left Behind's apocalyptic sensibility was grounded in fear—and largely disconnected from the gospel. For Tim, any truly biblical apocalyptic must situate such upheaval within the context of Jesus’ story. The Incarnation means that biblical apocalyptic is about moving deeper into the world, about protesting the ways the here and now fails to reflect the vision of life with God in the time to come. Books like Revelation aim to comfort, not terrify—their harsh judgment is for the evils of this world, evils that will one day be no more.

Tim lives in an Alzheimer's care center now. On a recent visit, I told him I’d been rereading his essay on apocalyptic and not being Left Behind. (“Images of wholeness and totality dominate the picture" of the city of God, "telling us that we cannot fully be ourselves only by ourselves.”)