It seems that the most popular Christian fiction books today (and they are fiction, something that readers don't always seem to keep firmly in mind) are about an apocalypse in the future. This isn't a fad or a fluke: apocalyptic books have been massively popular with Christians for years. They seem to enjoy reading about an apocalypse that never comes.

In Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet, Bart D. Ehrman

Prophecy books that predict the cataclysms of our immediate future, based on readings of the Bible no more or less bizarre than Mr. [Edgar] Whisenant’s, are among the best-selling religious literature today. In fact, probably the single most read author of religion in modern times is a writer who, while somewhat more guarded than Mr. Whisenant, predicted in 1970 that a thermonuclear holocaust would engulf the planet by the late 1980s. The author is Hal Lindsey, and his book, The Late Great Planet Earth was the best-selling work of nonfiction, (using the term loosely) of the 1970s. Today there are over 28 million copies in print.

I may be mistaken, but I don’t seem to remember a thermonuclear holocaust engulfing the planet during the 1980s. Did I miss a memo? No, I don’t think so — I just think that Hal Lindsey’s prediction was complete nonsense. That didn’t stop him from profiting from it, though, any more than the failure of his prediction has stopped him from remaining a major figure with the Christian Right — though recent missteps may impact his viability.

I have to confess that I enjoy “apocalyptic” stories, too, in the form of disaster movies and books. Is this all part of a similar psychological inclination? Perhaps — it may be that we humans generally have a strong taste for stories of disasters and struggles for survival against incredible forces.

At the same time, though, I find it implausible that the theological elements of religious apocalyptic stories don’t play any role in the attraction for religious believers. After all, these aren’t just disaster stories, but final confrontations between good and evil where God and Jesus finally come around to really punishing all the evil people and rewarding all the good ones. This has to be very appealing to religious believers who feel as though they are constantly persecuted for their faith and who feel oppressed by evil forces around them.

Such feelings don’t strike me as very healthy from a psychological perspective, but they are precisely the sorts of feelings with some forms of some religions promote. What kind of negative impact do these feelings have on people’s ability to relate to others and to socialize in a positive manner?

 

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