Subject: LEFT BEHIND? |
Bible Note: Kalos, this comes from one who has read a great deal of fiction, because I enjoy it for recreation and mental stimulation and, in my university days, because I had to in order to pass my courses in literature. The premier raison d'etre of fiction is entertainment, but that is not to say that some imaginative literature cannot be, at the same time, didactic. I think of Swift, Dickens, Eliot, Melville, Hawthorne, Twain and others whose fictional works are at once both highly entertaining and more or less didactic: they deliver a sometimes powerful moral or social message concomitant with their fine fictional features of plot and characterizaion. The Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock once oberved that the typical American student labors under the mistaken notion that he must be slightly bored by his reading in order to learn anything worthwhile. There is a silly stigma attached to the idea that "required reading" is, by definition, a journey into boredom. I know a bright woman who refuses to read Dickens and Shakespeare simply because she remembers that "David Copperfield" and "Hamlet" were required reading for a course in literature she took while at college. I would observe that she most likely "finished" her education in college and has ceased to grow much intellectually since then! So I would not disparage the reading of the "Left Behind" series as an utter waste of time for those who have a keen interest in the subject that they address. Simply because my literary tastes don't happen to run in this vein gives me no reason to condemn books of this sort. On balance, however, I think it prudent for the Christian to bear in mind that Scripture treats of many subjects, eschatology being but one of them, and thus he should strive for balance in his reading, not only of Scripture, but of extra-scriptural religious literature as well. And lastly, no matter how well-written, how glittering or persuasive books that happen to be the current rage may be, one must always turn to the Book of Books for guidance in his walk with the Author of Authors. --Hank |