Talk to Action – May 29, 2006:
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.
The game, slated for release by October 2006 in advance of the Christmas shopping rush, has been previewed at video game exhibitions, and reviewed by major newspapers and magazines. But until now, no fan or critic has pointed out the controversial game’s connection to Mr. Warren or his dominionist agenda.
This isn’t a Christian game, Geez.
“The game also offers players the opportunity to switch sides and fight for the army of the AntiChrist, releasing cloven-hoofed demons who feast on conservative Christians and their panicked proselytes (who taste a lot like Christian).”
Hey — I like that part. Where’s the old testament sex?
As Christianity is at its core a religion of Peace, which like another relgion of Peace, Islam, it saddens me greatly when people distort these religions by using the name to promote hatred, violance, and war.
As catholics make up 1/2 of Christianity, it even saddens me more that one would attack those who you say you share a common faith with.
Granted, at times we have had secular leaders who have “led” the sectarian in violance, and thus caused the sectarian to be tarnished by the secular as the acts were done under the sectarian names rather than the secular governments who truly were behind these acts. With Islam this happens a lot today, with Chrisitinaity a little less, though the greatest distorters of Christianity would like to become the secular leaders and do even more harm and distortion of a religion that in true implimintation and at its core is a religion of peace, like so many religions of the world.
How do we take back the term Christianity? How do we take back the term Islam, from those who have done horrible things under these titles which has lead to great distortion of the core of these faiths?
Excellent!
i shall be praying tonight. praying that jesus can save us all. for when this game is released, the lord shall not forgive us.
Amen!
Excuse me while I go vomit.
Just in time for Christmas? Jesus would approve!
John (in comment #3), look at history. Religion is the cause of a such a majority of wars, it’s not even worth mentioning those which aren’t religion-based. So to say Christianity is about peace is not only naive but illusionary. Look at all religions for what they are, power, greed, control. They had their purpose when trying to tame the barbarians through fear, sadly we should have evolved more than that by now, but we still hold on to ancient, unproven myths.
I would not consider myself a member of any religion whatsoever. But speaking as a 19 year-old college guy, I cannot wait for this game! Oh man, this is going to be SWEET! It’ll be like GTA on crack AND Jesus. Hopefully we get some cool fire and brimstone powers to go along with the high tech military gear.
Religion is just another form of politics.
That said, I don’t favor this game. We don’t need to foment hatred and violence against other groups like this.
@ comment #8. Question about this idea that evolution gave us religion, and we should have evolved past it by now… If evolution convinced us of such ‘irrational crap’ in the past, why then should we trust the new crap that it’s throwing at us today?
Here’s another statistic for you regarding the horrors of religious wars – More people have died at the hands or due to the aggressions of irreligious and atheistic despots than in all other religious wars combined.
I can’t wait to have a pirate copy of that game!
The best games are the nasty ones, I’m sick of playing Medal of honor and watch a bomb land on the enemies and all they do is faint; there’s no fun in violent games if you can’t tear them to pieces.
@ #2
That’s ood. Liberals aren’t cloven-hoofed!
Time has dubbed Mr. Warren “America’s minister.” But Mr. Warren says that his agenda stretches far beyond America, and far beyond traditional ministry. He sees himself as the CEO of a global marketing enterprise, and as the Commander in Chief of a stealth army of one billion Christian foot soldiers.
Isnt that the antichrist ?
#13
Only neocons have cloven-hoofed James – you should know that just looking at your own foot ware!
This game makes the Nazi party look mainstream.
What ever happened to the “WWJD?” trendy items? Seems the right conservative dropped that as they no longer care what Jesus would do, or think.
Will they have secret codes to unlock hidden “celibacy” scenes…?
Check the source of this story – “Talk to Action” – they have no agenda (insert sarcasm here). Take a look at the game developer’s website and the articles in numerous newspapers across the country- no one mentions “killing gays and catholics”? I think this article was written to grab your attention and appears to be fiction.
Zip, read my comment. Christianity is a religion of Peace. Islam is also. But people who clam to be members of these religions have done horrible things saying it was done as part of that faith tradtion. When they did these things they were not following the core values and tenats of the tradtions, rather they were greatly distorting a religion. Just becuase many people have done evil and claimed to do it as part of a religious tradtion does not make their cllaim true. Christianty has never been the cause of war, people using the term and distorting the faith have been. Thus making it appear as if Christianity was. Anyone who wages war and promotes violance and claim to do so in the name of Islam or Christianity are lying They may even be lyingto themselves, but it is a lie non the less.
While Christianity may not forbid people for participating in war, it never promotes or encurages war, but rather encurages peace, acceptance, equality, and reconciliation. It is a faith that promotes the worth of all persons. Those claims that promote hatred, war, violance, inequality are not Christian claims, no matter how loud the person claiming them shouts “I am a Christian!” Maybe their are, but some of their actions, some of their beliefs are not.
Christianity – as in, the following of Christ’s teachings – is a peaceful way of life. When the apostles attempted to assault the guards that were taking Jesus, he bid them lay down their swords (Ever heard “He who lives by the sword dies by the sword”? Care to wager on who said that?) He even heals the guard that they wounded. In reaction to violence, Jesus teaches to “turn the other cheek.” He teaches to “love your enemy,” not to fight him.
Now. People. Well. That’s another matter entirely.
People are loud, stupid, panicky animals. (That, also a quote, though from a far lesser story.) The majority of Christian violence has been commited, sadly, against the Jews. The Crusades? Antisemitic. The Spanish Inquisition? Antisemitic. Nazis? Antisemitic.
That’s not Christian, however. That’s, as you said, politics, power, greed. But it’s not Christ’s teachings. And they were all, in fact, initiated by heads of state – a purely political action, with the guise of religion.
This game, if it does what is purported to do, is dangerous. It’s the first step towards making Christians act the way extremist Islamists act. (And at least Mohammad DID preach the waging of war upon the infidels.)
@John and Alex
Right on, if more people realized that the world would probably be a better place.
What happened to
BE NICE to each other?
Dont Judge each other?
and the 10 commandments…
Whatever, who exactly wrote the game. Are they a Christian? Does anybody know? Mormons claim to be Christians, but don’t believe in Christ as the son of God rather they believe him to be one of many of the children of God sent to different planets to be the Gods of those planets. Nothing to do with the Trinity, Holy Spirit, yet they continually call themselves Christians. Black Muslims are waiting for a space ship to save them and don’t really have a belief in Muhammand as prophet.
As least it’s nice to know everybody is quick to attack the Christians over a video game, Islamic Muslims behead people in real life everyday and I’ve yet to see any discussion of this.
This game is for all the goym and mishigana people!
How soon until we read in Snopes.com that this is another internet hoax? This is too off the wall to be true.
The really sad thing about this is, they will probably make a mint off this game due to the shock factor. In doing so, it could create a whole new market of hate media. What’s next? See how many Jews you can gas in the name of god? Oh, sorry; a short Austrian guy with a mustache already had that idea. They might have trouble with licensing. I cant believe anyone would think this is a good idea for any religion. There is no fun in fundamentalism.
Have any of the superstition-apologists/whiners learned how to Google, yet? After noting the last couple of Comments, it took almost a minute to wend my way from the link at the top of this Post > original article > links there to the Christian loonybin that’s producing this crap > their Board of Advisors.
Frankly, that’s the interesting part. I realize hustlers like this often snooze folks onto an advisory board who don’t know what they’re actually getting into; but, this group includes folks from the gaming industry [understandable] — including the marketing manager for XBox from Microsoft!
The sort of fundamentalist hustlers I would expect to find are there, as well — including types who switched from investment banking to managing their individual Christian Crusade [tax free!].
http://www.leftbehindgames.com/pages/advisory_board.htm
Wander through the site. They’ll sell you whatever it takes to get your soul saved and their pockets filled. Check out their “non-fiction”: The Rapture, The Antichrist, God Always Keeps His Promises.
I have to go and change my shoes, now, after wading through all this crap.
Its funny, that those that follow Christ are sounding ALOT like those that follow Middle east religions…DUH.
Ok
Guys… get a life..it is a game nuthing more or less.It is Fantasy .as everithing else out there on the market…what about SAW….U get my point.
Have a great one ….Dont worie God has more impotant things to do .
Cheers