The Invisible Library

I don’t get Christian themed entertainment. Every Christian rock group I’ve ever heard sucks, up to and including a fair amount of U2. Every Jesus centered movie or book I’ve ever read or seen is just an insulting bit of jingoism wrapped up with a light glaze of five-year-old pop culture to make it go down with the hip kids (you know the ones with the drool stains on their shirts who wear a helmet when they go the bathroom). How anyone can find this crap entertaining is beyond me and even more baffling is how the creators of such pabulum actually delude themselves into thinking someone is going to read Left Behind or listen to Creed and say,” Oh right, now I get Jesus! Count me among the saved!”

Having said that, I know it’s not just my blind spot to Jesus-flavored pop culture that makes this Evangelical Kill-em-all-and-let-God-sort-them-out video game just creepy as Hell. It’s like it comes from some alternate reality where Jesus was a shotgun wielding bad ass who didn’t take lip from no Roman (Just like Shaft but with a really pimped out yarmulke).

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.

That’s right— it’s a video game based on the premis that you go around shooting non-Christians (and though it’s not stated outright its strongly implied that you also shoot non-whites and homosexuals too). Which is just what Jesus would have done, had he been able to get his hands on a few automatic weapons.

I’ve never bought into the idea that violent video games (or TV shows or movies) inspire violent actions on the part of impressionable youngens but there’s definitely a moral dimension at work here and not one that in any way jives with anything I’ve ever read about Jesus or his teachings.

Pam Spaulding over at Pandagon is as baffled, sickened and wigged as I am about this. (several other bloggers have written at length about it as well). Jonathan Hutson, at Talk To Action, a liberal Christian blog tries to untie some of the knots:

[…] According to Mr. Warren [He of The Purpose Driven Life and the game’s developer], the worst of American culture is reflected in examples of violence, terrorism, shootings, and the coarsening of our society, that turn people away in disgust. And in addition, “some people are more materialistic than ever.”

If violence, coarseness, and materialism are serious social problems, then what purpose is served by exploiting a global pastoral network to mass market a game about mass killing, whether in the name of Christ or the AntiChrist?

On the one hand, this video game is anti-American, because it endorses roving death squads engaged in faith-based violence without any regard for Constitutional law. On the other hand, the video game is anti-Christian, because it argues that the Kingdom of God can be advanced by using the methods and tools of the kingdoms of this world, namely guns and bombs.

If I wrote a story in which the main characters went around murdering Evangelicals (while pontificating on the moral and spiritual goodness to be had by doing it) I’d be called a bigot and a nut and deservedly so. Someone please explain to me how this makes him a better person than little old Godless me, what with my pacifism and multicultural tendencies.

And in Israel, no less:

Discovery of eight previously unknown, ancient animal species within “a new and unique underground ecosystem” in Israel was revealed today by Hebrew University of Jerusalem researchers.

[…] The cave, which has been dubbed the Ayalon Cave, is “unique in the world,” said Prof. Amos Frumkin of the Hebrew University Department of Geography. This is due mainly to its isolation from the outside world, since the cave’s surface is situated under a layer of chalk that is impenetrable to water. The cave, with its branches, extends over some 21⁄2 kilometers, making it Israel’s second largest limestone cave. It is to remain closed to the public to permit further scientific research.

The invertebrate animals found in the cave – four seawater and freshwater crustaceans and four terrestial species – are related to but different from other, similar life forms known to scientists. The species have been sent to biological experts in both Israel and abroad for further analysis and dating. It is estimated that these species are millions of years old. Also found in the cave were bacteria that serve as the basic food source in the ecosystem.

8 new species, all of them related to other species outside th ecave system, but adapted to become eyeless, because they’ve been living in a lightless environment for 5 million years, isolated. It’s a perfect Evolutionary laboratory.

After five years of pretty much ignoring known security flaws with it’s Internet Explorer 6, Microsoft has announced the beta release if IE7. It even has groundbreaking features like an RSS reader and tabbed browsing! Which Firefox had 2 years ago. and Opera had 3 years ago. Except, they don’t really work. And the full version will come bundled with it’s clunky new OS, Vista (which, in the $100+ range, is a pricey little upgrade).

So, to sum up: Microsoft users will be paying through the nose for an OS that is little more than a cheep imitation of Apple’s OS, and the browser that comes with it is a clunky POS that defaults searches form Google to MSN? Way to Go, Bill, you invented the Etzel of software packages. What next, a mail cliant that causes your hard drive to burst into flames?