More like the ‘other’ make believe place…blowing Jerry Foulball.
As expected, Slacktivist covered the issue from the point of view of someone on the inside:
Chick was certainly a crank, but he was anything but harmless. He hurt people. His tracts did and still do real harm to the many people in all the groups he attacked as literally demonic. And his life’s work did real and ongoing harm to all the Christians who read them and believed them. They swallowed Chick’s flattery — you are special, righteous and blessed, everyone else is a servant of Satan deserving of torment — and developed a taste for it. And that stuff is soul-killing poison. There’s a reason pride is considered the cardinal sin, as the gravest threat to the cardinal virtue. Chick’s tracts helped turn his Christian followers into creatures of pride, incapable of love.
And also as expected, ended with a vision of Jack Chick in heaven (along with EVERYONE ELSE) having the scales pried from his eyes, to truly understand the evil he inflicted on others.
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True regret is a horrible punishment. Not like self-centered regret, like “oh, i wish i had been more careful and caused this punishment as a result”, but true regret based on empathy for the suffering one caused and cannot take back.
Makes me suddenly wonder if heaven and hell might not be the same place.
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That’s why you can’t understand the strong feelings people have. You didn’t grow up steeped in this stuff. You’re not still dealing with it now. For you, it’s just a cultural touchpoint. For us it’s a source of fear as children, and guilt as adults. This man’s life work made our lives worse.
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Truth. A friend of mine once wrote a song with the line “please remember to forget/ the only hell I see is regret.”
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Sure I do. I just never took it seriously and left it all behind as soon as it was humanly possible. It’s like a “this is bullshit” switch flipped in my head all of a sudden, and I walked away from all of it.
Jack Chick is separate from the Jerry Falwells and Donald Wildmons of the world because he had no public persona whatsoever. As a result I can only judge the actions and not the person.
Well, you’re a stronger person than a lot of us if you can just flip that switch off. Even though I know it’s crap, spending my formative years hearing it, it still nags at me.
That aside your argument still seems to me like if I took it to it’s extreme extreme, someone might be arguing “yeah, what Hitler did was bad, but we don’t really know what he was like in private.” I think it’s just fine to judge Jack Chick based on his life’s work.
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Good for you.
However, some of us have spent years or decades under the thought oppression of the kind of theology of Jack Chick.
It’s hard to let go and be neutral when you’re angry about being lied to for your entire childhood.
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Well babies don’t you panic
By the light of the night
It’ll all seem alright
I’ll get you a Satanic mechanic
Sorry… it’s the title of this article… it was too much… I couldn’t get it out of my mind… for days… and days…
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Trust me, I’ve experienced it. I was angry until I realized that my parents were lied to for their entire childhood, and then started a family when they were little more than children themselves. They had no opportunity to break away from it all. So it sucks, but I can’t blame my parents.
Nah, it’s more subconscious than conscious. I know what Hitler looked like. I’ve seen pictures of him. I’ve heard accounts of his life. “There was once a person named Adolf Hitler” is a statement I know immediately is true, and then ascribing the deeds to the person is the automatic next step. Jack Chick is more of a challenge, because I didn’t even know he was a real person until he died. I always assumed he was multiple people using a pseudonym. It’s hard to feel anything toward a person who essentially doesn’t exist.
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I guess I see where you’re coming from, even if I don’t really get it.
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bit of an update on my business model musings: ran across this link via an article on Chick over at Slate (don’t judge me) that speculates that he didn’t make a whole lot of money on them, which feels plausible. i wish we knew details though.
http://www.kleefeldoncomics.com/2016/01/on-business-chick-tracts.html
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"If Chick’s claims of printing 800,000,000 tracts in 50 years is > accurate, that would translate into $2,000,000. Which sounds like a lot as a lump sum, but comes down to $40,000 a year. "
That sounds pretty plausible to me, too. I dunno how that spreads out over the 50 years. $40k a year back then would have been better than a decent living to most people. Average yearly income in 1966 was $4,938.36. So 40k a year is just hitting the average in the last few years.
I can’t speak for 50 years ago, but 30 years ago they were pretty much universal everywhere I lived, and a church I knew shipped them by the case to churches they supported in other countries.
** …and that isn’t to say he kept all the money, he might have donated everything extra back to churches for all I know.
That Demoness in charge of Role-Playing-Games is a hottie.
I’d risk the Lake o Fire for her any day.
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“Help! My illustrations… they are all athiests!”
They can’t all be THE anthiEST.
There can be only one superlative in any given category.
They could all be athiER, I suppose.
Or did you mean “atheists”?
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Satan’s minions have clearly got you in their grasp.
We’ll pray for you – it’s never too late for God’s mercy!
In Jack Chick World, you could murder a million people – but as long as you repent on your deathbed, and give your [remaining 20 seconds of] life to Christ, you still go to Heaven.
Mahatma Gandhi, of course, being an unsaved heathen, will spend eternity burning in the Lake of Fire…
Because God loves him so much.
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well, they weren’t ALWAYS 17¢ each. i’m assuming they must have scaled in price as the years went on.
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Some people can make of heaven of hell and a hell of heaven.
It really is all about perspective. For example look at our place in the universe. We are on a small slightly damp rock orbiting a star that will ultimately fizzle out in a cosmic eyeblink. Our radio presence takes up not even a one percent volume of the milky way. So far as we are aware we are alone. There is no help coming. Ours is the only voice in the dark asking if there is anyone out there.
Some people see this as degrading. Science removing us further and further from the center of existence. However to me that puts us in the grandest place of all. We are a part of this thing so vast and old that the human mind cannot properly fathom it. We are made from the furnices of stars that exploded out to seed not just the cloud that would condense into the solar system, but potentially others. If there are no voices out there because there is nobody else. Then we are the first. We are the Old Ones that have the privilaged place of making all those first mistakes and are obligated to find ways of making sure those that come after know that they were not alone even if we never live to see them. If we are not (and i do not believe we are alone) then it is simply a case of us playing catch up to everyone else much like living in a rural farm house and having to build a wagon to roll on over to the neighbors.
Either event leaves me feeling large at the end of the day. I am part of this thing. Humanity has the potential for so much more than it is, and while the news likes to bombard us with all the bleakness and blackness of the world even that in its own way helps since it motivates people to stand and go ‘this is not right we should do something.’ Ours is one of if not the least violent period in human history. Our standard of living slowly rises, and that worm that burrows out of your leg because you drank tainted water went from being so prevelant it literally is the symbol for medicine (‘snake’ twined around a staff) to there being something on the order of twenty five cases globally in the past year.
And on a personal note even those that are poor and rural to the point of being unable to go in person live in an age where libraries worth of knowledge, discussion with like minded people no matter our faith creed color or mindset is not only possible but at least in the developed world (apologies for the America-Centricness) it’s expected as normal.
That I believe God did this should be immaterial to the fact the Universe is awesome, and by extension we are awesome for being able to understand at least a little of it.
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Still, I think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
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