Friday, August 04, 2006
On Mel, Hagee, and The Left Behind Video Game
I know I am a little late to the “bash Mel” party, but several friends have asked me my thoughts. Sorry this is a long one, and yes, it is important to talk about Left Behind the Video Game
First off, it is always best to admit your biases up front. My wife Tanya and I decided after seeing Mel’s movie Ransom that we would not go to watch another Mel Gibson project ever. The man is just too fascinated by blood (if you have any doubts, watch the end of that movie). Thus, we are two of only 17 evangelical Christians over the age of 17 at the time that did not see the movie (to our knowledge, the other 15 are serving in countries that do not have movie theaters). I heard it all back then: “He’s a good family man. He’s a good Catholic. Yada Yada Yada.” All that may be true, but he is also, based on his recent comments to the California policeman and now to the Jewish community, someone who suffers from anti-Semitism. So, for us, the question of whether Mel should ever work in Hollywood again is mute…we won’t be seeing it anyways.
Mel’s anti-Semitic comments appear to be a family affair. His father has also made some odd statements about the Holocaust and if not anti-Semitic, is at least dangerously close to being so. The interesting thing is that what Mel said is pretty much verbatim to what I have heard from Europeans, even European politicians. I have mentioned before that one of my favourite activities is to sit in pubs and coffee bars in England and just listen into what people say. If the conversation turns to Iraq and the Middle East, the two most common things I hear are, “Bush is a power hungry, oil loving, leader of an Empire” and “the Jews are running everything in the White House and in the world you know.” Of course Mel’s alcohol problem would also get little notice in the U.K. these days.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/08/04/nbinge04.xml
Let me say right now, to my knowledge, the Jews are no more to blame for what is going on in the world than are the oil companies, Sesame Street, and Baywatch. All of which are factors (more specifically, the United Nations decision in 1948 to create the state of Israel, which is quite different from “the Jews”). People look for easy answer to the troubles of the world. Was watching the Simpson’sthe other night when this exchange occurred:
Psychologist Dr. Kaufman: You know, a hole is a good place to hide. Do you feel threatened by anyone?
Bart: My Dad’s always yelling about Whitey keeping him down.
Kaufman: (taking notes) I see.
Homer, like most people, wants to blame “someone” or “some people” for the world’s problems. The Jews have been an easy target, especially for the past five hundred years. As have witches, Gypsies, and other individuals who get lumped together to create “the answer” to all of life’s problems.
Let me be clear, I am pro-Palestinian state, though I think it will have to wait til the people of Palestine stop listening to the worst of their leaders and seek to live in peace with their neighbours. But most certainly, the Jews are not the problem.
In the great, great movie Gettysburg, Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain is talking to Private Kilrain, an old Irish wardog, after just finding a runaway slave.
Chamberlain: “Buster, what do you think of blacks?”
Kilrain: “If you mean the race, I don’t really. This is not something to be ashamed of. Anyone who judges the race is a peewit. You take men one at a time.”
Here I have to agree with Kilrain. Whenever we judge a race, even if it is positive (“all Asians are smart you know”), it denigrates the humanity of each individual who is part of that race. Mel chose an easy answer to the complex problems of the world and became, in Kilrain’s great word, a peewit.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/008/10.72.html
http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/KathleenParker/2006/08/04/the_christians_are_coming,_the_christians_are_coming!
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/BrentBozellIII/2006/08/04/mel_gibson_and_politics_of_bigotry
Evangelicals are increasing the one group (along with most Catholics) which can be treated and disdained en masse. Now personally, while this hurts, I am also ready and willing to accept it, as it just part of what it means to follow Christ in the world (for those longing for the “good old days” of Christendom, it isn’t coming back and it wasn’t so great anyways). What I am simply pointing to is the incredible inconsistency of people – Left or Right – who think it is deplorable for some people to make hateful statement about a group (as opposed to an individual, and there are bad individuals in every racial and religious group), but then do it towards other groups. To some extent, this is the result of having been a nation where Christianity was the dominant religious form, and thus in the postmodern desire to oppress the oppressor, those from the formerly favoured group now should be punished (think of the line from Gene Kelly’s great portrayal of the H.L. Menken character in Inherit the Wind “the job of the press is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable”).
And we in the Evangelical wing of Christianity do have our nutters (Hugh Hewitt’s phrase that I have gratefully stolen). Chief among them is John Hagee. I have no doubt Mr. Hagee loves Jesus and wants to see people come to know Jesus as Lord. But when we become so certain that we know the future that we make utterly insane statement urging military action on behalf of Israel, against Iran, and other things to bring about the great and terrible Day of the Lord….well you have crossed over into true nutter territory. Why is it that the earthly pre-transfigured Jesus can admit to not knowing the day and the time of the end of creation, but Mr. Hagee, and the countless others before him, somehow do? Further, when we are proposing actions that will kill other human beings, human beings for whom Jesus died that they might have eternal life, just to bring about the end…well lets be honest, your theology has a deep conflict (again, I am no pacifists, as I believe injustice must always be opposed, but only lastly be military violence, see Darrell Cole’s When God Says War Is Right: The Christian’s Perspective on when and how to Fight).
Jesus warns us that we will be attacked and oppressed for “his name,” but that doesn’t mean that we should say borderline insane things to have the world hate us. As Fred Markert who is with Youth with a Mission once told an audience, “When Daniel was in the lion’s den, he didn’t go kicking the lions.”
Are we in a culture war? A war of civilizations? Sadly, the answer is yes, and its not just “West vs. Radical Islam” but also materialism (both philosophical and spending) vs. faith and the hopeless vs. the hopeful. But for Christian we must always remember that we battle not against flesh and blood (sorry, even San Fran Nan Pelosi is not the real enemy) but against power and principalities, that use our sinful weakness that every human being suffers with (even Christian as the number of pastors with internet porn addictions points out) to draw people away from life, identity and meaning that can never be found in violence, power, or buying stuff.
Which leads me to the last part of this rant. We as Christian do some stupid things sometimes. We say stupid things (I have been especially hard on Pat Robertson, who I must admit has been helpful to me in my faith), and in so doing bring shame to the Church and to the name of Christ and draw people away from the Gospel. But some things cross over from stupid to downright dangerous and are illustrative of the weakness of the human body to the wiles that those power and principalities use to lure us away from life in Christ. Here I am not talking about Hagee or Mel. I am talking about what I think might be the most lurid example of destructive actions taken by perhaps well-meaning Christian who want to make a buck:
http://www.leftbehindgames.com/pages/the_games.htm
Yep, it’s the Left Behind video game. Okay, I am no dispensationalist, have never read the Left Behind series, but understand the theology and greatly respect many of its proponents. But even men like Darrell Bock at Dallas Seminary must be ashamed to see this kind of horrible misuse of a theological notion being used to entertain children and make money. Look at some of the descriptions:
• Conduct physical & spiritual warfare : using the power of prayer to strengthen your troops in combat and wield modern military weaponry throughout the game world.
• Recover ancient scriptures and witness spectacular Angelic and Demonic activity as a direct consequence of your choices.
• Command your forces through intense battles across a breathtaking, authentic depiction of New York City .
• Control more than 30 units types - from Prayer Warrior and Hellraiser to Spies, Special Forces and Battle Tanks!
• Enjoy a robust single player experience across dozens of New York City maps in Story Mode – fighting in China Town , SoHo , Uptown and more!
• Play multiplayer games as Tribulation Force or the AntiChrist’s Global Community Peacekeepers with up to eight players via LAN or over the internet!
This kind of stuff, beyond being just plain nutter, adds to the already bad opinion that non-Christian have of us. Do you have any doubts? Check out this article, which made me lower my head in shame:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2006/06/07/notes060706.DTL
I am against lumping the group in with things like “Left Behind the Video Game,” just as I would never say all Jews are violent just because their Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin was assassinated by a religious Jew back in 1995. I would not say that all Muslims are violence because of 9/11. If we want to overcome the bigotry that comes from lumping the whole with the one, especially for those of us who are called by the name of Jesus our Saviour and Lord, we must encourage more wisdom and discernment on the part of our brothers and sisters.
So, Boo on Mel (though I can forgive him), Boo on Hagee (though he is still my brother in Christ) and double Boo on the folks behind Left Behind the Video Game.
Lets refocus on Christ and living in light of the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. Somehow I think that we will have some “splainen to do” when we meet him face to face.
The Roving Theologian
