Gilead Watch
Jason Kuznicki on May 30th 2006
Longtime commenter Jeremy draws our attention to the following:
Imagine: you are a foot soldier in a paramilitary group whose purpose is to remake America as a Christian theocracy, and establish its worldly vision of the dominion of Christ over all aspects of life. You are issued high-tech military weaponry, and instructed to engage the infidel on the streets of New York City. You are on a mission - both a religious mission and a military mission — to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state - especially moderate, mainstream Christians. Your mission is “to conduct physical and spiritual warfare”; all who resist must be taken out with extreme prejudice. You have never felt so powerful, so driven by a purpose: you are 13 years old. You are playing a real-time strategy video game whose creators are linked to the empire of mega-church pastor Rick Warren, best selling author of The Purpose Driven Life…
Could such a violent, dominionist Christian video game really break through to the popular culture? Well, it is based on a series of books that have already set sales records - the blockbuster Left Behind series of 14 novels by writer Jerry B. Jenkins and his visionary collaborator, retired Southern Baptist minister Tim LaHaye. “We hope teenagers like the game,” Mr. LaHaye told the Los Angeles Times.
Now, I know someone is going to ask this in the comments, so I’d better pre-empt it right away: “Jason, aren’t you a libertarian? Doesn’t that mean that people have the right to watch and say and think whatever they please?”
Yes on both counts, and this game should not be suppressed. File it next to Holocaust denial, in that great library called Repulsive Stuff We Tolerate On Principle.
Yet the content of our communication is an important barometer of our cultural values, and nothing about tolerance forbids me from commenting on it as such. See, a violent game where you kill alien invaders, malevolent robots, or the living dead — that’s one thing. It’s quite another when you’re killing your innocent neighbors over whose deity is better.
I seldom compare anything to terrorism, but really, how would we feel about a game where the object was to blow up the World Trade Center? And how is this any different?
Filed in The Belfry, The Bistro
At least some of these people do not believe there will be any innocent during that period. Remember that the Christians have been raptured along with the children and other innocents. Only the newly converted will remain to battle with everyone else who operate under satanic leadership. Everyone who receives the mark of the Beast will be damned, though the authors do make a little wiggle room in that regard.
I think some of the attraction of these works is the absolute nature of their approach. God pours down wrath on a deserving world. Jesus returns not as the suffering servant but as imperial ruler. Arguements over “just war” theory are needless; the world is divided between lambs and goats. Let us just hope that these people continue to believe that the armed insurrection is only necessary after the rapture, but unfortunately many dominionists believe that the world must be ruled by Christians before Jesus returns. These far-right post-millenialists are usually the ones who favor returning to the death penalty for homosexuality.
On a related note, you might want to check out the slacktivist’s commentary on Left Behind, which goes into the illogical leaps of dispensationalism and the teeth-gnashing worthy bad writing found in the book.
At least some of these people do not believe there will be any innocent during that period.
That’s true–and the terrorists who flew into the WTC didn’t think that there were innocents there. My concern is what you allude to–that more and more, pre- and a-mils will make room in their framework for violence in the here and now. It will be put underneath (mostly) the power of a government they hope to bring into existence, but they are slouching towards theocracy, IMHO.
I should point out for honesty’s sake that I have only posted twice. I believe you may have mistaken me for another Jeremy (Jeremy D perhaps). I am a longtime reader, and lurker, however.
[...] Predictably, the game has caused an outcry in the blogosphere, where it’s being described as anti-American, compared to Holocaust denial, and a self-described angry single mom and fighter of “the coming theocracy” promises to “ground my son until he’s 30 if he brings this piece of self-righteous garbage home.” [...]
I like the part of this game where after you kill people you lose morality and are at danger of turning, and so you have to do some praying. Then it’s square. Just pray a little and the weight of murder is lifted from your conscience.
There is precedent there, the Columbine game.
Holocaust deniers qualify automatically as antisemites: if the holocaust is indeed a myth, it is a myth propagated by US and European governments including the German government, and by major Western world class media outlets, and is part of the history taught in Western schools, and so it automatically means that Jews do indeed control the most powerful European governments, the media, the schools etc. This is classic antisemitism. A rational person who doesn’t have leanings towards believing this type of conspiracy theory would reject the possibility of sucha large-scale hoax, and would therefore reject holocaust-denial.
http://jewhatred.blogspot.com
http://pages.nyu.edu/~air1
Many European countries have Holocaust denial laws. To me this is deeply disturbing, and sufficient to eliminate Europe from any list of potential emigration destinations. Not that I plan to deny the Holocaust (or even emigrate to Europe), far from it, but this type of free speech repression makes Europe a good region to be from; a long way from. When there is a victim and the perpetrator, isn’t it the victim that usually demands an investigation? But in this case it’s the victim in the shape of the Jewish lobby that hysterically resists an historical re-examination. Now why do you suppose that is? It could even be that the Holocaust victim number would be revised upward. But in any event, the Holocaust was such a pivotal historical event that a re-assessment after some 60 years would surely help lay a few ghosts.