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Wal-Mart Asked to Drop Christian Video Game
doug141 writes "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.Players can choose to join the Antichrist's team, but of course they can never win on [his] side. The enemy team includes fictional rock stars and folks with Muslim-sounding names, while the righteous include gospel singers, missionaries, healers and medics."
the gameplay really sucks anyway, so maybe the game will do more harm to the cause they are trying to promote than good....
At any rate, didn't a parody of a game similiar in mechanics to this appear on the Simpsons like 10 years ago?
Monstar L
Incidentally, I saw a lecture on the topic quite recently, and learned that Muslims do believe in Jesus Christ. He is a highly regarded prophet, second only to Mohammed, and he plays a key role in the end-of-times scenario of Islam.
Of all the major religions in the world, Islam is the only non-Christian faith that recognises Jesus.This is from http://www.itl.org.uk/Jesus/. Googling for "jesus islam" gives lots of further reading.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Nice bokk, eh?
I sure wouldn't like to meet any of those "progressive" Christians..
Back to the original topic, I think that Wal-Mart should ignore the censors and leave this game on the shelves.
And so should everyone else.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
So please, YOU check your facts before you spout prejudiced nonsense.
They are quite serious. I went to their web site and grabbed a list of the games features.
Personally I think it is funny. I was hoping they had a demo I could download.
Insert Generic Sig Here:
Where at? Hate the sin, not the sinner.
I can't recommend Slacktivist highly enough. He's a true evangelical associated with a seminary and has been writing "Left Behind Fridays" dissecting the first book for over a year. (He also discusses many other things.)
For those who have only seen screeching TV evangelicals, Fred ("Slacktivist") is an old school one. As he has repeatedly said, he reaches out through hospitality. Here, I see you are tired. Let me offer you a chair. Are you hungry, let me check my kitchen. You're free to ask him how he can be so pleasant and helpful and he'll tell you about Christ. You're equally free to enjoy his hospitality and then move on.
It should go without saying that he's appalled by this game.
P.S., I'm now more Buddhist than anything else, but I wouldn't hesitate to go to a weekly sermon by him. I rarely come away from his blog without fresh insights.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
He already has responded
"Thompson has also criticized a Christian video game based on the Left Behind series. In Left Behind: Eternal Forces, players participate in "battles raging in the streets of New York," according to the game's fact sheet. They engage in "physical and spiritual warfare: using the power of prayer to strengthen your troops in combat and wield modern military weaponry throughout the game world." Thompson claims that the makers of the game are sacrificing their values. He said, "Because of the Christian context, somehow it's OK? It's not OK. The context is irrelevant. It's a mass-killing game." Left Behind author Tim LaHaye disagrees, saying "Rather than forbid young people from viewing their favorite pastime, I prefer to give them something that's positive." The dispute over the game has caused Thompson to sever ties with Tyndale House, which publishes both the Left Behind books and Thompson's book, Out of Harm's Way. Thompson has not seen the game, which he says has "personally broken my heart," but claims, "I don't have to meet Abraham Lincoln to know that he was the 16th president of the United States.""
Technoli
Everyone here is jumping on the misleading article concerning this game. The fact is that killing is strongly discouraged in this game. Now, I am not completely supporting it (there are some pretty hokey aspects in my opinion), but we need to get the facts straight here. This game is not like most RTS games out there. You are actually penalized for killing the opponent's people because the goal is to convert everyone.
Each unit in the game has a "spirit" score that determines which side they are on. If they have a spirit score above 60, they are a Christian and therefore on your side. If their spirit score is below 40, they are the enemy and will try to kill or subvert you. Anyone between 60 and 40 is neutral and can be converted. If any of your units kills another unit, they lose spirit points. Only through prayer and inspirational music (who defines inspirational anyway, but I digress...) and good sermons can you increase the spirit points. The whole system is designed to discourage combat, but it realizes that in any conflict, sometimes you don't have much of a choice. If someone comes at you with a gun, you either die or your fight back to protect yourself. This is where the combat comes in. This is not a game of convert-or-die. Also, the anti-christ team can "win", but this means that all of the units left in the game are going to hell (according to the game's rules) -- so in essence it is a loss.
As far as the Crusades, Inquisition, etc., if you actually look at what transpired there, it had very little to do with true Christianity. None of the acts carried out in the name of Christ were actually in keeping with his teachings. Many causes are subverted by those who take matters into their own hands. Sometimes it is because they are too zealous. Sometimes it is because they can use the system to serve their own purposes. Just because terrible things have been done in the name of Christ does not mean that Christianity is in itself evil. All of the Christians I know (including myself) abhor what happened in the Crusades. The Crusaders didn't just kill non-believers when they sacked Jerusalem. They killed everyone: Muslims, Jews, and Christians. It was an act of barbarous and hideous evil that sickens me every time I think about it.
The problem was not Christianity, but the tightly held monopoly of the Church of Rome that kept its people in the dark about the truths of scripture while allowing corrupt people to wield incredible power. The crusaders were told that they would be "forgiven of all sins" if they went on the crusade, and in their ignorance, they did not know that Jesus gave forgiveness freely for sins confessed (you don't even need a priest). Thus the religion was subverted and misused to the profit of greedy men. As I said, it had very little to do with the religion of Christianity and everything to do with the corruption of man.
I believe in de-evolution. God made the world perfect, man fell, and its been going downhill ever since!
Who is supposed to put them to death? Me? You? The book of Leviticus is a book of directions for the government and the priesthood (which are pretty intertwined in that Israeli government). The problem is that God destroyed that government. There are large sections of the Bible that haven't neccessarily been done away with (I've always hated that wording) but apply to a government that no longer exists. So in the case that you can find a Mushite or Levite priesthood in a God-sanctioned Israeli government, you could have a homosexual executed. In God's opinion, they are an abomination. In the absense of such a scenario, you'd be wise to let God worry about what to do about the homosexual and in the meantime treat them with respect, dignity, and love (not that kind). I wouldn't worry too much about it in either case. Homosexuals don't even get a mention in God's Top 10 List.
How is the parent post insightful? As far as I can tell, the superparent does not make reference to anything perpetrated by The DaVinci Code. Furthermore, alluding to the book attempts to negate the fact that the early Catholic Church performed heavy editing, ignoring entire books that were very popular, had great information, and would sway one away from organized religion. Think of it as forced selective reading of the Bible for 1500 years.
This is not The DaVinci Code, this is history, and the superparent is right on the money.
Exactly, that's mean.
Note that some slavery was voluntary in those days, when someone had a massive debt to pay, that kind of thing..
which is totally what she said
And the obligatory reply is, who has been responsible for more mass murder? Christians or Atheists?
Good question. Technically Stalin and Mao are responsible for the most mass murders.
Now technically, Stalin wasn't a true atheist per say according to his contemporaries. He did sort of believe in some type of god and afterlife, but wasn't much on the organized religion thing and promoted forced state atheism. He relaxed some of the rules during World War 2 during the German invasion and focuses everyone's attention on the Great Patriotic War which had religious over tones.
Mao wasn't as much anti-religion as he was anti-intellectual. Most of his victims weren't really religious and the biggest religious victims ended up being Tibetan Buddhists. However, one could really blame the CIA for dropping the ball on that country.
Which leaves us with Hitler and the holocaust. Again, Hitler was not an atheist although not a Christian and his contemporaries noted his often mocking of organized religion in general and his involvment in Pagan type of groups.
His persecution against the Jews was not simply because he didn't like them, but rather a deep hatred of Jewry going back since medevial times. See... The German Crusade in which rather going to Muslim lands to liberate them, they stayed at home and focused on Jewish people.
Not to mention this lasted all the way up until Hitler's time and was actually one of the reasons for the Nazi's party success.
So yeah... Technically religion was responsible indirectly at least for the Holocaust.
I can't find it right now but there is also the instance in the 1800's about the civil war in China that was started by a guy who thought he was Jesus's brother. I can't seem to find it on Wiki right now since the names spelling evades me. But that costed several million lives as well.
I'm not defending either religion or atheism, but in general often times you can't black and white the issue since usually religion and politics are always intertwined.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
This is the very antithesis of history. It was not accepted doctrine; at the time there were literally dozens of Christian sects, all fighting for control of the symbology and dogma of Christianity. The same is true of Judaism, and in fact Jesus himself got the foundation for his beliefs from a splinter sect of Judaism. A pretty far-out one, too.
Not being a professional bible scholar I tend to forget the names for the various views on the nature of Christ and God, but there were four dominant views; one, that Jeshua was fully human. Two, that he was fully divine. Three, that he was partly human, and partly divine. Four, the winner: that he was both fully human, and fully divine. The text of the old testament could be read to support any of these views, which is one reason that there was an ongoing debate over it in the first place. The roman state became involved because various types of christians were killing each other over this debate regularly.
There were also two main camps of christians regarding the old testament; one camp wanted to throw it out and start over, while the other camp wanted to accept it as canon. Naturally, a third group wanted to retain only pieces of it.
Making the assertion that Christians were on the same page prior to the council of nicea is a particularly ridiculous piece of revisionist history. In fact, the truth could not be further from this statement.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Which is why in all the sects of Protestant Christianity I have experience with, a Masters degree in theology is a requirement to be a Reverend. Of the prerequisites of this degree is a decent grounding in Classical Hebrew, Greek and Latin, so that the Reverend is at least conversant with the untranslated texts. To study for a full doctorate may even entail courses in more obscure languages such as Aramaic.
Now, I understand that Christian sects in the U.S. have less stringent requirements, but that does definitely not mean that all Christians have no contact at all with the untranslated texts.
Mart"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
With pleasure.
What you have just done is similar to (say) taking the text out of a proposed bill which would make x, y, and z illegal - all of which most people will find offensive on their own - in exclusion of the context of the rest of the bill - that the bill only applies to those (say) participating in the illicit trade of human babies (or whatever).
In other words, you're not taking it in context of the whole text.
In short, these were commands given to the Israelites at that time, usually for a specific situation - not different than a command from God saying something like, "everyone over 40 doesn't get to see the promised land" (which actually happened). That doesn't mean that everyone today is disbarred from such things, or anything like that. It was a contextual mandate - law - specific to the circumstances and culture of the time.
This is understood within Christianity as a given, particularly as the New Testament and specifically because of the 'golden rule'/'greatest commandment' make it known that the law of the old testament (which doesn't even include the whole old testament - I'm not a bible type, so I couldn't tell you if your cited information is a part of that) is to be taken into account as long as it complies with "love your neighbor as yourself". Did Christ not 'free' the adulteress when a bunch of guys wanted to stone her?
And even if you're right, and these things are applicable outside the context of that particular story in Jewish history: would not the more important thing be how the practicioners of the faith behave as a whole right now, and not what their holy writ may be interpreted to say, completely outside the mainstream or even fringe understanding? How many Christian charities are there compared to secular ones, and how differently do they perform? Quite admirably. How many Christian-on-Muslim genocides have there been in the world (under modern Christendom)? None which I can immediately think of. Let your fruits be your witness and all that, as they say.
Karl Marx and his 'desciple Marxists' (Mao, Lenin, etc.) both did and suggested a lot of vile things in the name of the ideal, but you don't see us, as a society, blasting the snot out of Marxism and suggesting it's a vile belief system - no, we're progressive as a society, and we've largely accepted the ideals of Marx throughout the West. Same basic thing.
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