Separation and the Lack Thereof

The popular imagination has long been captivated by such convenient designations, and, more than occasionally, succumbs to polemics offered by men who claim special insight into the true nature of duality – prophets and ‘charismatics’ who claim to know how and when the world will end.  In the past decade and change, LaHaye and Jenkins, authors of the Left Behind series, have been premier gurus of apocalyptic thought, profiting immensely on Americans’ fascination with and fear of the long-awaited collective death.  Their books’ incredible success – second in all-time sales only to the Bible upon which they draw, reports have said ­– reveals the depth of our entanglement with the archetypal forces that drive myths of ending.  In Left Behind, radical dualism is on full display, and that which is deemed ‘evil’ in any way is meaningless in the eyes of the elect: Though time is ending, it is not being transcended.  Rather, the reader is left with a cosmos divided, and an implicit agreement with reality in its present, fractured state.