nixsight

Warren Ellis directs his readers to this new twist in the story of the “Jesus Don’t Love You, You Sinning Motherfuckers” game (aka Left Behind: Eternal Forces) that I talked about way back in June:

Convert Or Die Game Divides Christians
Liberal and progressive Christian groups say a new computer game in which players must either convert or kill non-Christians is the wrong gift to give this holiday season and that Wal-Mart, a major video game retailer, should yank it off its shelves.

If it’s irony you want, this story just keeps getting better and better.

As you may remember, I was getting all excited about the possibility of a game which allowed the player to kill heathens, perverts and foreigners. It meant that finally, I got to behave in a way that allowed me to give way to my basest urges, AND be a good, god-fearing fella into the bargain… I finally get to sit on the side of the angels!

But as it turns out, other Christians… sappy, watery lily-white liberal Christians, don’t like the idea of the game.

They say, among other things, this hyperbolic:

So, under the Christmas tree this year for little Johnny is this allegedly Christian video game teaching Johnny to hate and kill?

Well, duh. I don’t see why satan’s children get to have all the fun. Why shouldn’t Rod and Todd get to experience the joys of virtually, righteously taking life and causing carnage?

But apparently I’m on the wrong track here. Both the ‘Campaign to Defend the Constitution’ and the ‘Christian Alliance for Progress’ are criticising the game. They dislike it’s “message of religious intolerance”, and complain that it isn’t “peaceful or diplomatic.”

(So just like every other computer game, then, huh?)

The real irony isn’t in the story but in the details, though. For example, I love that Jeffrey Frichner, president of ‘Left Behind Games’, says:

You are fighting a defensive battle in the game, you are a sort of freedom fighter.

He’s clearly forgotten that one person’s freedom fighter is another person’s terrorist. But more ironic than that, and that one group of Christians who want to tell you what you should be able to do are criticising another group of Christians for being intolerant.

I don’t understand American politics, or many other sorts of politics, so I may be a bit slow about this, but when I read that one of the busybody groups is called the Campaign to Defend the Constitution. I thought one of the things in the constitution was about freedom of expression as long as it didn’t harm another person, but I’m probably mangling something somewhere.

There may be a gag here that I’m not getting. As lampooned in the second episode of Studio 60, the current US Administration has a tendency to name bills and other schemes with names that are hilariously contrary to the plans that those items contain. When one bears in mind that the CDC (my acronym, not theirs… I am becoming one of those people, I know…) was apparently formed “… to protest what their … members feel is the growing political influence and hypocrisy of the religious right.”, maybe their name was a kind of play on current political naming conventions?

(Now that I think about it… maybe their plan is to counter the growing political influence of the religious right by leveraging the government further towards the Christian left with their own hypocrisy…)

Anyway, it doesn’t matter, because what none of us have realised is that Christians, behind closed doors, are scary, raw-red-meat eating sociopaths, intent on rearing their young into demented murderous versions of themselves:

Plugged In, a publication of the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family, gave the game a “thumbs-up.” The reviewer called it “the kind of game that Mom and Dad can actually play with Junior — and use to raise some interesting questions along the way.”

I like the guys who made this game. They aren’t as po-faced as their adversaries, and even find time for schoolyard sarcasm, at least the way I read them. In response to the suggestion that many in-game characters that work for the antichrist have Arab and Muslim-sounding names, Frichner is quoted/paraphrased as saying:

“Muslims are not believers in Jesus Christ” — and thus can’t be on Christ’s side in the game.
“That is so obvious…”

I’m so utterly conflicted as to who to side with in this argument that I’m finding myself coming down against both groups!

And that hardly ever happens!