You sir, are the kind of troll that I appreciate.
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It’s easy to snark, but seriously: fuck this guy. He’s part of the reason I’m so uptight and feel shame about simple things like playing RPGs with my friends. I’m glad he’s not around to bother my kid and her generation. I think he’s going to be very surprised when he gets to his great reward.
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What’s a bummer to me is that he probably ended his final moments all eager to meet what he thought would be a well-earned Just Reward, lost consciousness, and thus entered eternal oblivion with his last thought being happy comfort. Something he devoted his life to denying others.
Ain’t no justice, in the end.
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To keep my sanity I normally try to just think of all these types as opportunists, making money off believers and going home and spending it on booze. Sometimes we just have to create a reality that is bearable to live in.
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I’m disturbed by the people who want Chick condemned to his own Hell. The very idea of Hell is what finally turned me off of religion altogether.
Torture is never, never acceptable. No matter what the person has done, no matter how many people they’ve harmed, no matter if the person has conducted torture themselves. And condemning someone to an eternity of torture as punishment for a finite lifetime’s worth of ills is just disgusting. Even wishing such on someone — even when you believe that said torture is fictional and that your wish will never be granted — is a thoroughly abhorrent concept.
If such a thing as a soul exists, I hope that every soul finds peace, even the souls of those who have done deplorable things like Chick did. If it doesn’t exist, then, well, I guess peace is guaranteed at this point.
Maybe it’s the residual Catholicism in me, but I mourn that he did not repent from the evil he’d done before he died. Not for the sake of what happens after death, but for the sake of those he has and will hurt, for the sake of those who have followed and will follow his example to hurt others, and, not least, for his own sake, as the world he lived in did not seem to be a joyful one.
I think Michelle Obama said it perfectly: “When they go low, we go high.” They may be confident, or even happy, that the people they disagree with are condemned to eternal torture. That’s low, and it causes real harm to people. But we can’t respond by going low: we know better, so we have to be better. We need to “go high”: we need to pity them for the twisted morality imparted upon them by their parents and teachers and preachers and role models; we need to mourn the wasted potential and talent that could have been turned towards helping people instead of hurting; we need to see these people as flawed human beings, trying to make their way through life the only way they know how, even when they don’t see us the same way.
There’s more than enough hate and dehumanization in the world already, and while some nebulous “they” may be responsible for more of the hate than “we” are, adding more hate to the equation helps no one.
So, while I’m glad that he will not be releasing any more harmful tracts, I cannot be glad that this man is dead. And I certainly don’t wish suffering upon whatever remains of his consciousness. As for those that do, who wish that he suffers for his crime of bringing harm to others by nature of being an imperfect human being: I hope that you never suffer for your imperfections either.
And I hope that you, and eventually, that they, learn to go high. It’s the only road to Utopia, and we’ll only ever get there if we all walk it together.
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Were those buff Christian dudes named Ace and Gary, by any chance?
It doesn’t matter, that’s what I’ll call them.
Here’s a Louvin Brothers track in answer to yours. I think Jack Chick would have loved it.
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I actually do have a collection of Chick tracts around somewhere. I thought they were hilarious at the time. Now I’m feeling a little sorry for the people who were legitimately traumatized by his work.
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If loving the BBS is wrong, I don’t want to be right.
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Aye. If the thoughts inside his head were anything like the ones that he published, then he’s already been through 92 years of hell. I can’t imagine living an entire lifetime with a constant fear of love, imagination, and happiness so strong that it manifested as neverending mortal terror.
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My condolences to his widow; my congratulations to everyone else.
# <Jack Chick’s grave>
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Thank you for that slap in the face.
Writing that left me with an unrealistic sense of optimism. Your post showed me that even the “good guys” are unable to distance themselves from the pervasive hated, even when prompted. It’s a signpost showing how far, how very far, we still have left to go.
A sense of optimism isn’t healthy in today’s world. Thank you for excising mine.
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Things are defined by what they are not. Though people can disappoint and anger me, I can be grateful. Being what they are, they help define what I am not.
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Affinity fraud isn’t any less evil.
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And yet the targets of his evil always had it worse.
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Finally he’ll be able to sketch hell from life.
Well, “life”, I guess.
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Oh, you mean the house with all the toilet paper in the trees?
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The Crusaders - now I know what Supernatural is based on.
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i do, too. i’ve collected them for years. i haven’t seen any in ages, though, and to be honest, i thought he stopped making them (or died). i didn’t know he was still alive until this. shrug
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