The Great Red Nemesis and the Woman Clothed in the Best-Seller

[womzilla]

sarah_ovenall finishes the Left Below books and sums up their theological message:

Neener, neener.

I might add:

Jesus wept.

I will also add that somewhere very early in my life I deeply internalized that the certainty that one is among the saved is the purest expression of pride and as such a sure sign that one is forsaken. So deeply is this ingrained that I have an almost sub-neural reaction to the hubris of the evangelicals and I can't help but think that there really is a hell, and they're the only people going to it.

Comments

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

But Sarah, it's clear from the Left Behind books that some people do think they're saved and are shocked to be left behind; and people some Protestants might say could never be saved, like the Pope, are raptured. Now, I admit that no major lesson is drawn from this, in a book rife with drawing big lessons. They emphasize the more specific issue of following the church but not Jesus, instead of the overall point that you can't tell and it's hubris to think you can.

And hubris meets nemesis in one of my favorite weirdo spiritual autobiographies, Grace Abounding by John Bunyan (author of A Pilgrim's Progress). The sun shines, and he's sure he's saved. He steps in dog poop, and he's sure he's damned. (Well, not exactly stepping in dog poop--probably everyone stepped ina ll kinds of poop in the 17th century--) Frankly, he comes off as bipolar, which for all I know he might have been. But it also shows the horrible tension that comes from always feeling one is suspended between those two poles.

When you think about it, how could one not worry about eternal salvation, if one really believed in it? I think most Protestants--even a lot of end-times Protestants--feel that anyone who genuinely wants to will be saved, and don't make such an exclusive, tricky thing out of "genuinely wants to." This greatly reduces the neener-neener factor, though there are still those who don't choose Jesus at all.