---

Left Your Brain Behind

The "Left Behind" novels about Jesus' second coming have sold 60 million copies worldwide. All the more alarming, then, says Gareth Higgins, that they're full of fundamentalist paranoia.

I BECAME A CHRISTIAN because of the rapture. When a youth leader told my 12-year-old self that he would "stake his faith on it" that Jesus would soon return preceded by cars and planes crashing as the holy inhabitants were taken to heaven in a flash of light, it was only sensible to agree and take the red pill. It would have been rude to turn down the offer of eternal life for those who agreed, burning flesh for those who didn't.

After this seminal experience, I lived in fear of the future moment when all of us would meet our good Christian friends in the sky (and never asked who would be controlling the air traffic).

Thank God I found a way out. I began to doubt the end-times theories that flood so much of the institutional church because the people who seemed most concerned about them also appeared to be the most neurotic. Then I spent three years in doctoral research, examining people's end-times obsessions (which, of course, may reflect my own neuroses, but then, I have yet to meet a PhD candidate who isn't a little unhinged)....