Picture this: You're walking down the street in New York City and around you people start vanishing out of their clothes in a 'twinkling of an eye.' You find out a little later that the Rapture has occurred. You're pretty freaked out, you know, since this type of thing doesn't happen very often in New York City and really there aren't a lot of fundamentalists there anyway, so you're also quite surprised that so many people did disappear. Months later, things start to happen, bigger things like asteroids, earthquakes, tsunamis, and the UN changes its name to Global Community, such for kicks, you know, since it doesn't have much else to do really than be redundant. After that some David Koresh and Tim McVeigh types start blowing things up in your town and fighting with those former U.N. troops. You really don't know why anymore, since you're basically just trying to cover your ass and not get caught in the crossfire. Then your door gets broken down and a gun is aimed at your head. Would you rather it be a "Christian" or a "Global Peacekeeper" with their finger on the trigger?
While I should say don't have anything against violent video games, movies, books, or any other form of entertainment just because they happen to be violent, it is worth mentioning the newest twist in the decade-long Left Behind marketing orgy.
The Left Behind novels, which have sold around 70 million copies in over the past ten years, now have a new spin off that will be released in October--a video game called Left Behind: Eternal Forces. The game, based on the first four books of the Left Behind series, pits new "Christian believers" against the forces of the Antichrist. The Antichrist just happens to have been the head of the UN in the first couple of books before turning it into something called the Global Community. So, in the books, UN peacekeepers become GC troops. It's little more than a name change. The battles in this game are set in New York City, with all the imagery of 9/11 intact, and all the innuendo associated with the UN headquarters there as well. You can, if you choose, either play as a "believer" (Good) or as the enemy "non-believer," (Evil) meaning you can fantasize about killing Christians on the streets of New York City, or doing the same to former UN troops now under the umbrella of a similarly named Global Community. Supposedly you lose "spirit points" for any unnecessary killing. What a relief.
You can read about how this game promotes "Christian values" over at the World Peace Herald, which is a publication run by the Unification Church, and owned by Rev. Sun Myung Moon's News World Communications.
Here are some remarks by Troy A. Lyndon, founder and chief executive officer of Left Behind Games Inc., to World Peace Herald:
Asked whether the goal of "Eternal Forces" is to lead people to Christianity, Mr. Lyndon said: "Our focus is more on the teachings of Jesus, and his prayers for hope, love and peace, than on proselytizing."
Maybe I didn't hear right the last time I was at church, which is a few years now so things could have changed, but when did a game depicting violent clashes between Christians and vaguely insinuated UN peacekeepers in the middle of New York City have anything at all to do with the "teachings of Jesus, and his prayers for hope, love and peace ..."? Certainly, market your video game any way you want to, but trying to package something like this as promoting Christian values is really flipping the scales. It seems more bent on further dividing people in the 'Culture Wars' through a message of violence than anything. Anything other than the $25 million they hope to gross off sales, of course. While I don't want to give anyone ideas, an enterprising Islamic fundamentalist would surely have to take a cue off this. For wouldn't an extremely anti-American game portraying "true believers" of that faith killing "peacekeeping troops" in a familiar country that's often in the news, wouldn't that sell pretty well in some parts of the world? Maybe those "peacekeepers" could also kill the "insurgents" ... depending on which side you want to play on, good or evil, evil or good.
Yesterday, on 6.6.06, Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins released their final of fifteen books of the Left Behind series, The Rapture. There are rumors that it's not the end yet for the series, as they hope to drag it out to the end of time.
One of the greatest misconceptions about how the story of the Left Behind books is covered in much of the media is that it is labeled as "Christian fiction" or a "Christian thriller" series. They are not Christian in a broad sense, and the theology represented in the books is just one of many in Protestant Christianity. Actually, the "Rapture" theology represented in the books is pretty far out to most mainline Protestant denominations, and even among strict literal fundamentalists there is debate over the eschatology and theology of the books. The generic labeling and branding as "Christian" plays into how LaHaye and others like Falwell, Dobson and Robertson like to portray themselves as representing "Christianity" in the United States. It's how they get away with declaring fanciful things like a "War on Christmas" or even a "War on Christians." It's a problem that has grown largely because this redefining and labeling going on from the right over the past 30 years, where "Christian" often means the same thing for them as "Republican." It has been a conscious effort, built through networks LaHaye helped build such as the Moral Majority, Council of National Policy and Concerned Women for America.
Maybe we should stop calling them the "Christian" right and find a better word instead. Any suggestions?
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