text: To cover all the problems with continuity, logic, theology, geography and plain common sense in _Left Behind_ would take a whole book.  One hardly knows where to start.
  
  Perhaps it is too early to assess the damage that will be done to Christian religion by this trashy novel.  As such, it isn't even a decent trashy novel; instead of steamy sex scenes, we get sanctimonious sermonizing.  Worse than that, what the authors have done is to turn the powerful imagery of the Bible into a cheap comic book, ignoring its spiritual messages in favor of promoting a self-centered preoccupation with getting a ticket to heaven before it's too late.
  
  The comic book aspect can not be overemphasized.  Even if you suspend disbelief enough to accept the rapture scenario (an idea with virtually no scriptural support), little in the characters' actions, thought processes or dialog rings true.  One gets the impression that the book was hastily thrown together by a junior high school student.  God ends up looking like the ultimate villain, demanding that you hurry up and get yourself and your friends on his side Or Else.
  
  Whatever happened to the inspiring Christian writers of yesteryear?  Who is the present-day equivalent of C. S. Lewis, or Catherine Marshall, and why aren't they getting more attention?  These were writers who actually made you THINK.  LaHaye and Jenkins seem to believe that thinking is the last thing God wants us to be doing; they hardly miss a chance to put down anyone with any hint of intelligence or independent thought.  They show no interest in answering the sort of hard questions that surviving non-believers in such a world might ask.  One wonders if they have ever met a non-believer at all, or witnessed the aftermath of a disaster for that matter.
  
  These days, it seems as if all the media attention is on the likes of Ann Coulter or Pat Robertson, whose mission seems to be to turn Christianity into a twisted, bigoted caricature of what it once was.  Perhaps all the great religious thinkers really have been raptured.  If _Left Behind_ is an example of the sort of writing that we can expect from Christian writers, then it is the church itself that is in danger of being left behind
  