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All right. Sorry this took so long, but it's taken me a while to sort out my feelings on this book. The more I dwell on the story, the more I've had to re-evaluate my relationship to Christianity as a religion.
We All Fall Down is fairly short, coming in at 253 pages. It covers a lot of time in that space - the 7 years of the Biblical Tribulation, the same period covered with much less panache in the Left Behind books. The main difference being, Fall Down features a protagonist who refuses to sign up with either God (and become a Christ freak, in the book's terminology) or take the Mark of the Beast, effectively becoming a minion of the anti-Christ. He knows exactly what's going on, but intends to handle it all himself.
The protagonist, Jimmy, seems to have been created with Revelation 3:16 in mind - "So, because you are lukewarm – neither hot nor cold – I am about to spit you out of my mouth." In one of many references to Biblical texts, the opening paragraph describes the current weather:
"A few degrees warmer and the rain could have been refreshing; a bit colder and the resulting snow would have covered the town in a beautiful blanket of purity. As it was, the weather refused to commit itself to either extreme, and a thick layer of cold wet slush seeped through my sneakers..."
So with this conflict of commitment vs. non-commitment firmly established, the book goes on to create a series of characters that fall on one side or the other of the fence. The post-rapture world is a grim one; nuclear weapons have been used sporadically, and the anti-Christ uses a thin veneer of democracy to bring the entire western world under his control. In the wake of supernaturally powerful earthquakes, Jimmy travels to Boston to find his parents and convince them to accept Christ, so they can all travel to the God-protected Israel in the short term and avoid hell in the long term.
Arriving in the ravaged Boston, Jimmy is attacked by several teenagers and then rescued by an armed band of Christians. This group of 12 men (the men insist the number is a coincidence) take Jimmy in and feed him, offering to take him to his parents in South Boston once he is rested. The rescuing Christians (who, like Jimmy, were left behind but unlike Jimmy committed themselves to God post-rapture) discuss questions of God's will with Jimmy. Jimmy notices that while the head Christian's language is typically pretty salty, his tone changes entirely when speaking of God.
"When you talk about this stuff, you sound as if you grew up with Moses. That's obviously not you.... Why can't you just talk about God normally.... It's like you're surrendering a piece of yourself every time you want to talk about God."
"That's exactly it, Jimmy. Only I'm not just surrendering a piece of myself, I'm surrendering everything. Jesus, Heaven, God; these are holy subjects which demand a language of their own.... Have you ever heard a priest trying to talk with kids about God using their own language? Christ is the most radical dude you'll ever know.... Which sounds more ridiculous?"
"Yeah, but you're making it sound stupid on purpose. There's an in-between."
"No, there isn't. Not with God. God only wants the hot or the cold; he spits out the warm. That was my mistake, that was all of our mistakes. We all knew God, but we shuffled Him off into the corner of our lives."
Jimmy eventually leaves these Christians behind and finds his childhood home. His mother was apparently a Christian, and was taken in the rapture. She left behind a bitter, angry husband that has little time for Jimmy's warnings. He in fact comes to believe Jimmy; it doesn't take much convincing once Jimmy pulls out a Bible. His father refuses to have anything to do with God, and explains to Jimmy why. In the late 1960's his father was a beat cop in South Boston. Heroin was just hitting the streets, but it was a controlled inflow - the Italians ran the drug trade, and they did so with a mild respect for the neighbourhood. They didn't sell to kids, etc. No one else - not even the numerically superior - was allowed to sell drugs in the Italian controlled neighbourhood. They were brutal enough to intimidate any would-be dealers.
One day, a black guy named Lionel (nicknamed the "Coloured Kike") moves into the neighbourhood and starts selling drugs openly, both undercutting the Italian market and selling to anyone who would buy. A brutal gang war develops between the Blacks and the Italians. Eventually, Lionel himself finds Jimmy's father, and offers him a considerable bribe to crack down on the Italians and protect the Blacks. As an aside, Lionel threatens to kill the father's family if he doesn't comply. Jimmy's father stood up and broken Lionel's arm in four places. One week later, the Italians managed to torture and kill Lionel (his balls were "crushed so badly that they were almost liquid") and end the gang war (without help from Jimmy's father).
Jimmy is rather pissed off that his father would risk the lives of his family rather than take a bribe. His father explains:
"I would've died for any of your. I'd have taken the torture that the Guineas handed to Lionel if it would've meant saving any of your lives. The one thing I couldn't do, though, was compromise who I was by taking that nigger's money. If I had done that, I'd be just as bad as the rest of ‘em, just another bastard doing the wrong thing and making excuses. I wouldn't and I won't bend over for anyone, because that's the only thing in this whole rotten fucking universe that any of us have control over.... Jimmy... if I didn't bend over for the Coloured Kike, and I won't bend over for [the anti-Christ], then what the hell makes you think that I'd ever let Jesus push me down onto my knees?"
Jimmy's travels bring him into contact with various versions of these stories, some even more violent and wretched. Once captured by the anti-Christ's forces, Jimmy's cell mate is also not a Christian, but also refuses the Mark. He says that he's protecting his "Inch," the one part of him that no one can take away from him without his permission. He refuses to hand his Inch over to the anti-Christ, and he refuses to hand it over to God. "Just remember one thing; God can fuck ya in the ass as much as He wants to and there ain't a damn thing ya can do about it. But as long as ya don't turn around and suck Him off, ya still own yer Inch, and as long as ya own yer Inch, you win. That'll get'cha through the beatings. That'll get'cha through Hell."
And that, I believe, has a nugget of truth in it. Christianity is about handing your Inch over to Jesus. Not Allah, not Buddha, not even Grant Morrison. I suppose that's why it's so unpopular. |
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