the blink times

Last week, a couple in my country was jailed for handing out seditious tracts to Muslim civil servants. These graphic materials are pencilled and written by a fundamentalist recluse named Jack Chick, who has created some of the most bizarre ‘conspiracy’ theories:

1. The Vatican is the #1 PR firm of the devil.
2. Pope John Paul II was a communist.
3. You are destined for hell if you are homosexual, enjoy rock music or play Dungeons and Dragons.
4. C.S Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien are Satanists (he should be stoned for that).
5. Raping your children is fine as you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour—10 minutes is all you need!

As if those top four heresies aren’t enough, the tracts are overlaid with potent anti-cultural imagery such as this:

I’m not surprised with the fate of the stoic-looking couple who gave out these things. It’s even more interesting that months after the tumultuous AWARE saga, another blunder involving evangelical Christians is brought to light. These people who run into conflict with the law are far from your average dowdy heartlander; they hold respectable jobs, stay in well-embellished apartments and drive cars that people like me can have if I buy the latest AUTO weekly magazine for ten dollars. Yet we’re faced with the cold, hard fact that religious extremism does exist, even within Christendom.

I remember reading the tracts and the ‘critically acclaimed’ Crusaders comics when I was little. The art for the latter was so stunning that even now as I write this at the eleventh hour, I do get shivers down my spine. There’s no doubt that Mr. Chick’s brand of evangelism is specifically designed to scare the daylights out of the heathen, since some of my friends and my own mother have commented on its creepy effectiveness. If it was so dark and senseless, why then do people still hand those tracts out like some precious truth? Are we indeed spreading a gospel of fear? At this point, I’m refraining from giving a theoretical breakdown on the flaws of his work, because I think it’s just a sheer waste of synapses to do so.

There is a prophecy lying somewhere, which says that in the future all Christians will face persecution and be either burned or tortured to death by the anti-Christ. Now martyrdom for all believers should be a glorious thing, after all the early Church had its greatest triumph through such tribulation. But if cartoons like those in the Chick tracts were to cause secular governments to regard us as seditious fools, I’ll gladly declare that I’m an atheist or a Zen Buddhist when the boys in blue knock on my door.

Before the new week commences, here’s a final note from a couple of lonely demons doing some hot publicity…