Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins

I’ve heard that Tim LaHaye has written sex manuals for Christians.

I find that odd because Left Behind gave me the impression that LaHaye had never met a human being.

Here’s the scene: all the babies and young children on earth have disappeared. Planes are crashing because pilots disappeared. Driverless cars are crashing (for reasons their bumper stickers probably explain). And in the midst of all of this… There are people working at the information desk at the airport? There are people working at the airport ticket counters? There are people driving busses?

Seriously?

Come on! I rode inner-city busses every day for years. I know that a lot of those drivers didn’t believe in the Savior. But I also know that if their kids had suddenly disappeared, they wouldn’t be driving the damned bus.

But so many people loved it… and some of those people I care about very much… and some of those people bought the whole set, and kept asking me to give it another chance…

Which makes me wonder even more about that rumored sex manual.

In book 2 of the series, Tribulation Force, we find that the protagonist, Buck (I’m pretty sure that’s his name. All of the good guys have names like cowboy verbs, so it’s hard to keep straight.), who is a late-twenties, award-winning investigative journalist and television reporter, and who had no serious religious convictions until the previous book… this super-stud of the international jetset… well, he’s a virgin.

And not only that, but his beautiful, feminist, Stanford, co-ed dorm, non-religious girlfriend is also a virgin.

Huh?

Do LaHaye and Jenkins think that people just don’t get around to it?

The characters were so poorly drawn that it made me wonder if LaHaye could be wrong about other things as well.

I’d been raised in the same apocalyptic view LaHaye holds. I got all of his allusions, and knew his Bible references. But after reading his books, I went back to the Bible to see what it really said, without key-verse lists and commentaries to direct me.

A year later, I was convinced that the Bible doesn’t back him up.

I was on his side, and reading his books convinced me I was wrong. That’s bad.

But it’s not the worst.

He doesn’t make God look good.

That’s about the worst thing to say about an author who takes the Name.

Peter Horrobin

Healing Through Deliverance, volumes I and II set forth two basic theses: 1) every problem may have a demonic cause, and 2) demons only leave through direct confrontation.

It’s a tough sell, and Peter Horrobin is obviously committed to his cause, but he can’t write, can’t interpret scripture, and can’t convince me.

For anyone who’s had an exciting life, the ultimate result of applying his principles would be devoting every day to non-stop, self-absorbed exorcisms.

I can’t think of anything good that came from reading it, aside from keeping my word to a friend who recommended it.

James P. Giles

The best thing about Love: fulfilling the ultimate quest is that it contains true information. The second best thing is that it’s short.

William F. Harley, Jr.

So, marriage works on the basis of “love accounts”. These are like bank accounts. If you give out a lot and don’t get any back, your love account will diminish, and you’ll be unhappy. Couples should try to keep each other’s love accounts full.

He expands for a hundred and fifty pages or so in His Needs, Her Needs. Cute examples are included.

James Dobson

The last time I was in Colorado Springs, I saw a bumper sticker that said, “Focus on your own damn family.” I laughed. Then I felt a little bad about laughing. Then I didn’t.

Hopefully, that information will give enough insight into possible bias in my review of Preparing for Adolescence and Bringing Up Boys.

Preparing for Adolescence had some good stuff. I read it when I was, what, 12? 13? Maybe a little too late to “prepare”. But I remember leaving it a little more afraid of what would happen to my body and my faith during the next few years, which I think was one of Dobson’s goals. I also remember thinking that the single paragraph describing sexual intercourse used the word “friction” far too often to explain the prevalence and import of this activity.

I was given Bringing Up Boys just after the birth of my first son, and I can say with absolutely no hesitancy that it is an absolutely terrible book, and my life would be far richer if I had spent six or seven hours looking at my son instead of reading the book.

It’s a dishonor to Jesus that writers who claim his name exhibit such intense fear. Well over half of the book is devoted to clarifying the dangers 20^th-century American culture poses to the development of godly men. It raised in me a fully rational fear of potentially-godly men wasting their lives reading paranoid ravings.

I’ll hope that a single example will suffice. In an attempt to prove that modern society is biased against men (not just godly men, but men), Dobson spends several hundred words analyzing the film, The Runaway Bride. I found this interesting because I had never seen the film. Neither had anyone I knew. I sent out a couple hundred emails, and couldn’t find anyone who had seen it. I checked a couple film-review websites, and they all pronounced Runaway a flop. So the obvious question is whether The Runaway Bride really represents American cultural values.

Assuming that terrible films no one watches should not be taken to represent the viewpoint of 300,000,000 people, I would question the wisdom of devoting several pages of a book to The Runaway Bride. Since Dobson obviously chose to do so, the questions arise of whether he is really in touch with American society, and whether his analysis should be taken seriously.

Robert E. Kofahl

The Handy Dandy Evolution Refuter. It’s a great title, isn’t it? And when you can’t think of anything else good to say, end the review.