Psalm 23

The first and most important thing to know about this Evangelical Tract Distributors offering, titled Psalm 23 (A Friend That Goes With Me), is that it does not mention Psalm 23 at all. The cover, with a nice photo of a church in front of a field, is the only place that title appears.

There are other Psalms on the inside - this is a Scripture-quote tract, with six quotations and a brief write-up on what they are supposed to mean. We have Psalm 84:11. We have 68:19. We even have Psalm 145:1 - 10. But Psalm 23? Nope.

With a gaffe like that, you'd think the author would want to remain anonymous. Nope again. His name is David Buttram (no, I am not making the obvious joke here, I have some standards), and it is printed right there on the cover under the titular Psalm that this tract is not about.

So the title is off. What about the lines of Scripture (and David's write-ups of them) on pages 2 & 3? Nothing terribly interesting or new. "Even though the world surrounds me with temptation, danger and death," he writes, "I feel safe and secure because of His watchful care over me." Apparently that's what Psalm 32:7 and 34:4 mean.

"I know the evil one is trying to follow me," he says, "but God is following even closer." And as awesome as God is, "I know this is only a taste of the future He is preparing for me." So God will keep you secure and safe from the evil one, and will make your life fantastic. Sounds nice, but we have to take David's word for it. And since the guy can't even title his tracts properly, well...

"Would you like to have this Shepherd living in your life?" David asks, before presenting the Sinner's Prayer on the back page. This is the first time he's mentioned a Shepherd, apart from quoting "The Lord is my shepherd" right at the beginning. One assumes the animal wrangler he's referring to is God, then. Odd, though.

Heck, the whole thing is odd. Too odd to convert anyone, I would say. Scripture-quote tracts assume that Bible verses are relevant to your life. If they aren't, they sound nice but have little power. Certainly not persuasive power.

You're getting very low marks on this one, David Buttram (still not making the joke, I'm above that!). Nice cover image, but that's the nicest thing I can say for it. A trip back to tract-writing school would seem to be in order, Mr. Buttram, because if this is your best effort, you can crumple it up and ram it in your butt.

...couldn't resist.

Psalm 23
Likely to Convert - 1
Artwork - 4
Ability to Hold Interest - 1
Unintentional Hilarity - 1
Level of Disturbing or Offensive Content - 1

Is There Something Missing In Your Life?

This one would have gone perfectly with this collection of tracts I reviewed back in April of 2012. It's a popular theme, the notion that there is "a vital part of your existence that isn't there" that is "crying out to be filled" that can only be filled with Christ.

The tract asks three questions: What is missing? How did it happen? What has been done about it? The answers are the story of Adam and Eve sinning, after which "every one of us has been born into sin" and doomed to "eternal separation from God in hell fire." Then the tract tells us "Jesus Christ, the God-man" went and "offered Himself the perfect, sinless sacrifice unto God" in order to "give life back unto men."

So, because of something two alleged people did thousands of years ago, you're missing something and are going to go to Hell because of it. Fortunately God killed himself so that we could not only fill up that empty void we all have, but we can go to Heaven instead. A two-for-one deal! Sounds great, but the tract author doesn't bother trying to prove it.

It's a dodge, is what it really is. 'Hey, buddy! You look sad. That's cuz you don't have the one thing that'll make you happy - Jesus! Act now, and He won't burn you for eternity!'

"My friend, are you dead or alive?" the tract begins, then attempts to convince you of the former. It didn't convince me. Evidence and a compelling argument are the somethings missing from this tract.

Is There Something Missing in Your Life?
Likely to Convert - 1
Artwork - 3
Ability to Hold Interest - 2
Unintentional Hilarity - 2
Level of Disturbing or Offensive Content - 2

Common Sense

You know you're in for a bullshit storm when a religious tract makes an appeal to common sense. Like When The World Is On Fire, a tract I reviewed back in 2008 that urged readers to "face the facts", this Evangelical Tract Distributors offering makes promises it has no intention of keeping.

Pastor C. Leslie Miller, the tract's author, uses half the space to ask questions and provide Bible verses as answers. Is it common sense "to live for sin, pleasure and money," and to "believe it makes no difference what you believe," or will it pay "if your life is replete with thrills, and hilarious with fun and pleasure" if you die and end up "in eternal darkness and unending torture?" Pastor Miller assumes you are already a believer - why else would these questions be relevant? But if they aren't relevant to non-believers, why is Miller asking them?

The next half-page makes statements that must be true, based on the questions and Scripture we have just read. "It is common sense... to prepare to meet your God," and "to realize the reality of eternity and prepare for it." Miller also hits us with some whoppers: "It is sensible to believe that death is not the end of everything, but the beginning of an unending existence in another conscious destiny." What?!? No it isn't! "The most intelligent thing you could do is to receive the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Saviour" so He doesn't "pronounce your sentence of doom." No! That's only intelligent if it is demonstrably true, and Miller can't prove that and doesn't try.

"It will pay... to be sure I am safe, and ready to meet God." I'm sure it will - if you can in fact be sure. And you can't. I for one am not about to jump into a religion because of a bunch of unfounded claims.

That's just common sense.

Common Sense
Likely to Convert - 1
Artwork - 2
Ability to Hold Interest - 2
Unintentional Hilarity - 4
Level of Disturbing or Offensive Content - 2

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed!

This one’s a little off the beaten track for this blog. It isn’t a religious movie per se, but it does have a very religious-supporting agenda. Basically, it’s Creationist propaganda, and that’s close enough for this blog.

Brace yourselves, it’s going to be another long one.

There’s an old comedy article I read long ago about how to win arguments. If you are losing, and our opponent has the stronger point of view backed up by irrefutable evidence, the only way to win is to compare your opponent to Hitler.

“You know who also talked about Global Warming? Hitler.”

“Increase the minimum wage? Sounds like something Hitler would do.”

You get the idea.

And it’s exactly the argument made by Ben Stein (Win Ben Stein’s Money) and is crew in this ‘documentary’ about Intelligent Design theory. The fact that Expelled resorts to that argument should tell you everything you need to know about the solidity of the case it puts forth.

What is that case? “Intelligent was being suppressed in a systematic and ruthless fashion” by the scientific establishment. Ben and co. try to take that case even further, suggesting that freedom itself is under attack.

“If we allow freedom to be expelled in science, where will it end?” Ben ponders in a voice-over. Expelled is peppered with bon mots like that one, with Ben inserting himself into the starring role a la Michael Moore.

“Why is the scientific establishment so afraid of free speech?”

“Evil can sometimes be rationalized as science.”

I’m going to pause here to point out that this film has been reviewed, dissected and discredited by people a lot smarter and more knowledgeable than me. You can find out Expelled’s dirty secrets here and here, for starters. I wanted to limit my review to my own observations, and take the film at face value. That would provide a more honest review, and no doubt a much shorter one, too.

But I did not. I did what I so often do when writing these reviews and throw discipline and brevity to the wind in favour of attacking every little thing that annoys me.

The opening credits are played over footage of the construction of the Berlin Wall. Next, our ‘hero’ Ben Stein takes the stage to give a talk on his views; his journey from his dressing room is accompanied by uplifting music and clips of scientists poo-pooing I.D., and the waiting audience greets him with thunderous applause. Ben speaks somberly about how great freedom is, and asks what America would look like “if those freedoms were taken away. Well, unfortunately I no longer need to imagine it,” he goes on, telling us that freedom is being lost “in one of the most important sectors of our society - science.”

So, what have we been told? Freedom is awesome. Freedom is under attack. Those trying to take freedom away from you are scientists!

Freedom good! Science bad!

Up next we have what, to Expelled, passes for proof. Ben interviews some people whom the guardians of all things sciencey have punished for uttering the forbidden words. One is a scientist who was ‘fired’ from the Smithsonian over a paper he published that mentioned I.D.; the second is a professor ‘fired’ for simply mentioning I.D. to her class; third, a neurosurgeon who said that one doesn’t need to study Darwinism to understand the human brain, who came under fire for that statement. Clips of random violence are intercut with these interviews.

Now, I could do the research necessary to debunk and/or provide revealing context to these stories, but I won’t. Like I said, smarter people have already done so here. When I first saw this film, I gave the producers the benefit of the doubt and assumed the stories were true. I thought it sad that people were being persecuted for suggesting an alternate theory to evolution. Poor silly, naive me! That’s exactly how those producers wanted me to feel. To younger me’s credit, I didn’t believe everything the film told me - some of the stuff that followed gave me plenty of reason to suspect Expelled’s motives.

The next segment features clips of scientists who don’t support I.D.. Those clips are edited together with very little context, presenting a unified front of I.D. bad, say bad people!

“How can there be a theory about life,” Ben muses, “without a theory about how life began?” This is the second and most important bit of the film, where Ben and his crew score the most points with their intended audience. It is so central to Expelled, they even used it in their trailer (and DVD intro). The scene is a classroom, with an evil-looking mad scientist type teaching evolution. A hand goes up at the back - it’s the dude from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and The Mask, Ben Stein! “How did life begin?” he asks, and the flustered mad scientist isn’t able to answer. In a rage, he sends Ben to the principal’s office, possibly to face Ben Stein’s own character from Ferris Bueller.

How did life begin? That’s a question modern science is still trying to answer. In other words, they don’t know! Those smarty-pants scientists who think they are so smart don’t know how life began!

Not that there aren’t theories. We see clips of scientists describing various ways life might have started: one involves proteins forming on crystals; another suggests extraterrestrial visitors might have seeded the planet with DNA. At this, Ben pulls what is probably the greatest deadpan give-me-a-break expression I’ve ever seen. “Crystals? Aliens?” Ben says in voiceover. “I thought we were talking about science, not science fiction.” Because extraterrestrial life and proteins on crystals is a lot less credible than an invisible being with omnipotent powers creating everything in seven days!

Having made science look dumb, the producers go on to show us some pretty cool animation. We see a video using casino slot machines to demonstrate the extreme odds against the right combination of proteins coming together by accident to create life. The next animated bit shows a close-up of a single cell. What is the point of this bit? They don’t say it outright, but I’d hazard a guess they wanted to show just how complex a single cell really is. The unspoken statement here seems to be, if a single cell is so complex, it must have been designed.

It’s worth noting here that Expelled doesn’t provide any evidence, of any kind, to support Intelligent Design. It’s also worth noting that evolution and the origins of life are two separate schools of study. Ask an evolutionary biologist how life began, and they may very well not have a good answer. They might even admit they don’t know. And why should they? The data isn’t there, and it’s not their field of research. It isn’t a relevant question for them.

Yet Ben Stein asks. And he provides clips of scientists suggesting theories he can easily mock. It’s like he’s trying to get his audience to think, ‘if these scientists don’t know how life began, how can we trust them about evolution?’

Ben doesn’t ask the scientists for any proof of evolution.

“What other societies have used Darwinism to trump all other authorities, including religion?” Ben wonders. “As a Jew, my mind leapt to one regime in particular...”

Yep, here comes the Hitler argument. Expelled makes the link between evolutionary theory and the Nazis, while a somber Ben Stein takes footage of himself at Hanamar, Dockow in Germany, a former concentration camp where Jews were killed. He visits the on-site memorial and lights a candle, very solemn and respectful, as his continuing voiceover hammers the evolution/Nazi point home.

“I know that Darwinism doesn’t automatically equate to Naziism,” he says, once he’s finished implying the exact opposite, “but if Darwinism inspired and justified such horrific events in the past, could it be used to rationalize similar initiatives today?”

WHAT?!? Of course it can! So can a lot of other things, chief among them being religion. It’s a completely pointless question, made after an equally pointless linking of Darwin to Hitler, simply to score more points with his audience.

Whoo. Getting a little emotional here. I’m definitely guilty of similar manipulation in this review - I’m not exactly presenting a fair and balanced look at this film. That’s very hard to do, however, given that Expelled is so completely one-sided.

Throughout the film, Ben talks about “a wall erected to keep ideas out,” comparing “what we are seeing happening in science today” to the erection of the Berlin Wall. He thinks this wall is “just a strategy for protecting a failing ideology from competition,” as if evolution is the theory that’s ultimately going to lose this debate. “I couldn’t take down the wall myself,” Ben goes on, “but I could confront one of its major architects.” At last we come to the final segment in Expelled, a showdown between Ben Stein and this major architect of the anti-I.D. wall, Professor Richard Dawkins.

Noted evolutionary biologist and author of The God Delusion, Professor Dawkins is this movie’s coup - if they can make him look foolish on camera, they’ve WON. And they certainly give it their best shot. The producers have complete control over the footage - they could edit it together however they wanted.

They had all that power, and they still couldn’t make him look dumb.

Ben Stein goes in like a lawyer, trying to catch Dawkins out any which way he can. He asks leading questions, trying to get specific answers, and he tries to twist Dawkins’ responses to imply some other agenda. “Why spoil it for them?” Ben asks Richard regarding people who want to believe in a god. “Why not just let them have their fun and enjoy it?” Ben also turns the discussion from a debate about evolution into one about the existence of God - which isn’t what the movie is about.

“Well then, who did create the heavens and the earth?” Ben tries again.

“Why do you use the word ‘who’?” Richard replies. “You see, you immediately beg the question by using the word ‘who’.”

To imply a win, Ben has to cheat. He asks Richard how life began, and what kind of evidence he would need to see in order to believe in Intelligent Design. Richard suggests the alien theory (taking pains, I thought, to avoid using the word ‘alien’), and Ben makes his give-me-a-break face again. Then, when Richard says that evidence for an alien seeding of the planet might be found in the DNA, Ben edits in a voice-over saying, “Wait a second... Richard Dawkins thought Intelligent Design might be a legitimate pursuit?” No he didn’t. It’s a cheap trick, and it’s all Ben can do to pull the illusion of a stalemate from the jaws of defeat.

Expelled ends with Ben Stein concluding his lecture from the film’s beginning. He speaks of freedom and the need to bring down the wall, and receives thunderous applause once more. That audience may have been impressed, and after my first screening I admit I sort of was, too. Ben makes himself into a humble hero fighting a Goliath-like enemy, and he (and his filmmakers) are masters of manipulation. Maybe there is something to his struggle, I thought. A quick Google search, followed by a second viewing, and I felt very, very stupid. More, I felt angry. And I wondered, if they know the only things going for Intelligent Design are manipulations and bad arguments, why do they believe in it? If they have no case, why waste an entire movie trying to pretend otherwise?

“It wasn’t just scientists who were being expelled,” Ben voices over at the end, “it was freedom itself! The very foundation of the American Dream! The very foundation of America!”

I’m sure I’m not the first to point this out, but I think it’s extremely fitting that Ben Stein’s initials are B.S..

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed!
Likely To Convert - 0
Production Values - 5
Acting/Direction - 4
Likely To Be Sat Through - 2
Unintentional Hilarity - 3
Level of Disturbing or Offensive Content - 6

Spooky

Here's a Jack Chick tract that lives up to its title, though not necessarily the way the author/illustrator intended. Jack has another go at Halloween in this one, and delivers the message that wielding fear is a very bad thing - unless you do it for Jesus

Spooky tells the story of Sam and Mr. Hill, two protagonists who couldn't be more different (even if they are destined to be a lot more similar by the tract's end). Sam is a wide-eyed, innocent little kid visiting his Christian Aunt Sarah. Mr. Hill lives in the house across from Aunt Sarah, and every Halloween he "gets a little spooky" when he "makes his home into a haunted house." He does this to "find out who's brave and who's a sissy," and tells Sam if he doesn't come over on Halloween, he's "a little, yellow-bellied coward."

Naturally, Sam goes. As creative as Jack Chick usually is with this sort of setup, only four panels are used to show the haunted house, and they aren't terribly imaginative. Nevertheless, Sam is "really scared," especially when he sees Mr. Hill dressed up like the Devil. Or maybe he's afraid of Bettlejuice standing beside him. I'm not kidding! Chick drew a really good likeness of Tim Burton's ghost-with-the-most. How about that? "You've got guts, kid!" Hill tells Sam, who has apparently passed the manliness test. But Sam's night of terror isn't over yet! On his way home, Aunt Sarah uses Sam's fright to her advantage. "Is (the Devil) gonna get me, Aunt Sarah?" Sam asks. "Not if you do what the Bible tells us to do, Sam," she replies, and proceeds to tell her nephew all about Jesus and Sin and Getting Saved.

"If we can't get rid of (our sin), God won't let us into heaven," she tells him.

"Ugh! That's scary, Aunt Sarah!" Sam replies, putting himself right where she wants him. She tells Sam of "God's great love gift," and that all those who reject that gift "will end up with the Devil... Down in a lake of fire - forever." Upon hearing that, Sam wastes no time getting down on his knees. "God forgave little Sam and saved Him from the Devil's grasp."

Jesus does ask "one little favor," however. "The Lord wants us to tell others the good news that Jesus saves." "I can do that!" Sam declares, and the very next day he puts the Jesus moves on Mr. Hill. "There's no way you'd ever get me in a church!" Mr. Hill tells the young lad. "Why?" Sam wants to know. "Are you afraid to go?" Sam tells Mr. Hill that he sounds "like a big sissy" who is "not as brave as I thought," and "if you don't go with us tomorrow, I'll know you're just a big phony."

Yes, Sam turns the tables on his tough-talking neighbour, using the same tactics that Mr. Hill used to get him into his haunted house. In doing so, of course, Sam sinks down to Mr. Hill's level. Isn't someone whose heart is filled with Jesus' love supposed to be above name-calling and manipulation? Sam even stoops to using Mr. Hill's own words against him; he takes Hill's "little, yellow-bellied coward" and raises him a "gutless, yellow-bellied coward."

"Nobody talks to me like that!" Mr. Hill says, and he's off with Sam and Aunt Sarah to church. Sam keeps the pressure on, in spite of Hill's obvious discomfort. Especially when the priest gets to the good stuff! "So choose. It's either Jesus or the lake of fire!" Mr. Hill makes a run for it. "Stop him, Lord!" Sam prays. Jesus delivers, filling Hill's head with "visions of demons and fire." Hill runs the other way and begs the priest to help him, and gets Saved.

"I became scared of what He could do to me!" Mr. Hill tells Sam on the drive home. "I'm too big a coward to face that nightmare, so I turned to Jesus to save me, and He did!"

What's wrong with this tract? Where do I begin? The whole thing is an invitation to reprehensible behaviour, provided it's done for God. Then there's the central issue of fear; both Sam and Mr. Hill are converted because of it. Even after his Salvation, Hill still seems scared, not filled with the spirit the way the post-Saved are in other Chick tracts. Admittedly, Sam "don't look scared anymore, haw haw!" But like I said, the presence of Jesus within him does not make him any better than Mr. Hill. Salvation is reduced to a protection racket - turn or burn. This tract may convert a few on-the-fence types because of that, but mainstream secular readers will see this for exactly what it is.

And let's not forget the "visions of demons and fire," either. It's not just a vision; Mr. Hill "can hear people screaming" too. Hill may say he became scared "when I heard God's words" in the next panel, but that's bullshit - it was the visions and the screaming that convinced him to "go down front and pray." So why doesn't God use those visions on everybody? It would cancel the need for faith, for one thing. Why have faith in the Bible (and a God you can't see) if you can get visions that prove Hell is real? So why does Hill get the vision treatment? Maybe it's a supernatural gift that only Sam has - based on the art in that "Stop him, Lord!" panel, it certainly looks like Sam is zapping Hill, not God. But why would God give anyone that kind of power if he wants people to come to him through faith? Except he's perfectly happy having them come to him in fear...

Ah, forget it. I keep expecting these things to make sense, or at least stick to their own rules.

"Hell is beyond 'spooky'..." Mr. Hill says at the end. "I turned to Jesus to save me, and He did!" So no more haunted houses for Hill? Or will he simply turn them into Hell Houses? I'm sure he'll do whatever God tells him to do, without thinking or questioning. Fear does that to you, and nothing is more terrifying than Jesus. That is the message, right?

It's a Chick tract. What else would it be?

Likely to Convert - 2
Artwork - 7
Ability to Hold Interest - 5
Unintentional Hilarity - 6
Level of Disturbing or Offensive Content - 4

Would You Be Happy In Heaven?

An interesting question, posed by an uncredited writer for Evangelical Tract Distributors. We are treated to a story very much like that of The Fortune Teller, involving a group of people on a train. We are also treated to an unmistakable air of self-righteous smugness.

Our nameless narrator, who identifies himself as "an old man," tells a story of a group of men traveling to a Christian Conference on a train. "As the train steamed out of the station," two women carrying "a novel of the sensational type" entered their car "and took seats opposite each other." The old man and his friends "conversed on the Christian Conference" and "got enthusiastically engaged in the subject of God's Grace, God's truth, and God's Son."

"Presently," the two women found that "the conversation above referred to seemed to break in upon the enjoyment of the readers." It turns out that their novels "of the sensational type" proved "incapable of absorbing the mind as completely as desirable." "Presently" (again) one of the women spoke up about how "abominable" it was to "be bored to death with this religious nonsense." This leads to a heated debate that eventually arrives at the titular question, and the old man manages to ask that six-word question using only 31 words. He just loves going on and on about every little detail.

Heh. Like I should talk!

After he's finished asking "the haughty girl" if she would enjoy en eternity of "blessings and joys" of Jesus "if a few minute's conversation about" them "is so abhorent to" her, the woman apparently turned "ashly pale" and "her tongue seemed chained." She left "without saying a word" with her friend at the next station, offering only "a sad, sad look at the gentleman" before she "was seen no more." This was because his words, which "were calmly and kindly spoken" to her, "seemed to have wondrous power." If he does say so himself. A lot like a similar set of words from Suppose It Is All True After All? What Then?. But where that tract attempted to scare readers with the notion that Hell and Judgment might be real, Would You Be Happy dares to posit that Heaven might not be for everyone. Indeed, "before Heaven could be a Heaven to you, a great change must take place in your desires, your tastes," etc. In other words, you need to get Saved before Heaven will be appealing to you! What a unique predicament.

This raises an interesting point - if a person finds the Word of God "distasteful" and "abhorent," how are Christians supposed to reach them? Or are such people acceptable losses? Perhaps not; this tract is a step in the right direction. Before it can be truly effective, however, it needs a rewrite into plain English from this century. One of the women actually says: "I declare..." Really??

Points for daring, but not much more, E.T.D.

Likely to Convert - 0
Artwork - 2
Ability to Hold Interest - 2
Unintentional Hilarity - 5
Level of Disturbing or Offensive Content - 0

And before anyone nails me for it, the misspelling of "abhorent" and "ashly" are direct quotes from the tract, not me being a bad speller.

It's All About You!

Here's some Chick for a modern audience. While the last Chick Tract I reviewed, The Sissy, made reference to The Bionic Man, this tract is set very much in today's world. Or, at least, within the last ten years.

It's All About You is aimed at young people, or rather the impression Jack has of them. We meet Hannah, a self-absorbed whiner of a college student who isn't named until page 11. "Life is so unfair!" she tells her grandpa, who hangs around her college for some reason. "Nobody understands the 'inner me'." And "I didn't ask to be born, you know!" Based on these statements, Gramps deduces that she's "got it all figured out." Nevertheless, he warns her about two "someones" who have "seen things you'd rather people didn't know about," especially since "one of them has it in for you!" As you can imagine, this causes Hannah some alarm.

"He wants to steal the most valuable thing you've got," Gramps tells her.

"My iPod?" Hannah cries, demonstrating Jack Chick's deft hand at comedy while simultaneously dating this tract to the mid-2000s. If written today, it probably would have been an iPhone 5. Or a Tablet. Or a copy of The Five Demons You Meet In Hell.

Of course, Gramps is really talking about Hannah's soul. He tells her that "forces in the spirit world - angels and devils" are in "a war to see who gets" it. He lays the FEAR on nice and thick; "Satan means business" and will "do anything to destroy your soul," and "absolutely nothing is hidden from the eyes of God" because "everything you do, say or think is being recorded." Apparently God is in charge of the United States' Homeland Security! Our "sins just keep piling up" and "that blocks us from going to heaven."

Think Gramps is finished? Hell, no! He's just warming up. Among Satan's chief weapons are "STDs, drugs or booze," and "his rotten crowd" might even "make you binge and purge your meals." Huh? Where did that come from? Every now and then Jack Chick will throw in something totally random.

What are not so random are the pot-shots Jack takes at other religions. There's a picture of four "phoney 'holy men'" including an excellent caricature of the Dalai Lama and an okay rendering of former pope and pedophile-enabler/protector Ratzinger. "Religion pretends to be holy" while putting "their own followers into bondage." We see an image of a corrupt Catholic priest trying to con a grieving widow, and no bout of Chick religion-bashing would be complete without an image of a Muslim suicide bomber.

Now that Hannah has been sufficiently terrorized, Gramps tells her "the Good News" about Jesus "making the only way for us to get to heaven" by dying and shedding "His holy blood to wash away our sins." "But isn't that religion?" Hannah asks, reasonably enough, but Gramps assures her it is not. Hannah gets Saved, and says that "Jesus loves me and really understands me." And he won't steal her iPod, either!

In my review of The Sissy?, I mentioned that the character Duke was likely a stand-in for a certain type of person, namely big hairy tough guys who drive trucks. In It's All About You, Hannah would seem to be representing the youth of today - sullen, ungrateful, self-absorbed, and in dire need of Saving. As always, Jack Chick's tracts reveal more about himself than they do about God.

The art is up to Jack's usual standard. The only place where I felt his drawings were lacking were the depictions of Hannah's fingers in three 'close-up shots' (including the cover). They look more like the digits of an old crone, not a young lady. Also, from page 17 onward, Jack draws her face with more realistically-defined lips. Not sure what that's all about.

A regular feature in numerous Chick Tracts is the addition of cute, funny animals, almost always the same dog and cat. Jack will draw them into numerous panels, perhaps as a bit of levity or maybe just to fill in some empty space. They appear in 13 panels in It's All About You, while recurring deity Ol' Faceless only cameos in two.

The entire approach of It's All About You seems off-message to me, starting with that title. Jack presents Hannah as obnoxiously self-absorbed, but he does not criticize her for it. Rather, he indulges it. Hannah doesn't have to give up her self-centredness to become Saved (yes, she does say "sorry I sin and am so selfish," but talk is cheap). Like Duke in The Sissy, she is not encouraged to be a better person.

In the end, it's not all about you at all - it's about getting Saved, just like any other tract. And while this tract has only a moderate amount of offensive content (5 panels, including the previously mentioned suicide bomber and a dig at lesbians on Page 3), it should prove to be very insulting to its target audience.

And yet, isn't this true of all tracts? They all tell you that you're a sinner, and that you deserve to burn forever. They have to make you believe this, so they can sell you the Good News of Salvation. The insult, or at least the unfavourable judgment, is essential to the delivery of the Message.

But that's neither here nor there. It's All About You is a standard, unremarkable Chick tract that attempts to make ancient scripture relevant to today. It might have had a chance if another young character had preached to Hannah instead of her grandpa. Instead, we get an old guy trying to tell a young person how to live her life. Get off of Satan's lawn, whippersnapper, and onto Jesus' sidewalk! If it's one thing we know about the youth of today, it's their willingness to respect their elders and hang on their every word.

Good luck with that, Jack. You'll have an easier time stealing their iPods.

It's All About You!
Likely to Convert - 3
Artwork - 8
Ability to Hold Interest - 7
Unintentional Hilarity - 3
Level of Disturbing or Offensive Content - 4

The Sissy?

Here's Jack Chick at his absolute finest! If you are ever asked for an example of Chick's work (not very likely, but go with it),show them this one.

This is the story of Duke, a trucker who's tough as nails... nails that've been pounded through steel! After stopping bullets. Yeah. He rides with his best buddy Billy Joe. You don't learn Billy Joe's name until the very last panel because he's not in any way important. They pull in to a truck stop and see the words "Jesus Saves" on the back of an 18-wheeler. "Only a gutless idiot would have that up there!" says Duke, "...cuz Jesus was a sissy!" No sooner are the words out of his mouth when the driver of that rig turns up. He's a full head taller than Duke (he calls him 'little fella') and built like a tank. If Duke's as tough as bulletproof nails pounded through steel, this guy is the hammer! "How's about you boys joining me for supper?" the hammer asks, his plate-sized hands on their shoulders offering them very little choice in the matter.

Once in the truck stop with food ordered, the Jesus giant (who never gets a name) asks Duke why he thinks "Jesus was a sissy?" This leads to a ridiculous argument over who would win in a fight - a man with God's power, or "some dude." "That wouldn't be a fair fight," Duke points out. "It'd be like fighting the Bionic Man... only worse!" Who remembers The Six Million Dollar Man? Heck, even the remake of The Bionic Woman is old these days!

Jesus Giant gives the full Jesus story, complete with the warning that Duke is going to Hell. As he talks, their waitress (Martha) listens in. She isn't very important to the story either (but more important than Billy Joe), but she gets a name, too! Poor giant dude! Anyway, Duke isn't happy with the giant's assessment of his afterlife allotment. "You mean I should stop boozing, swearing and cheating on my old woman, and start going to church and lead the good life?" he asks. "Nope!" Giant replies, and he goes on to tell Duke that stuff "wouldn't do you any good" because he'd "still be goin' to hell!"

I pause the review here to look at that last interaction. Giant's response is strange, in that it completely divorces the notion of Salvation from doing (or being) good. He might have said, "that ain't enough to Save you, Duke," but he doesn't. Not what Chick intended, perhaps. Or is it? Tracts keep reminding us how our good works won't get us into Heaven, because the Bible says they are as filthy rags or somesuch. Chick seems to take that to its logical conclusion: one's actions and one's character don't matter to God, only whether or not one is Saved.

I'll leave the implications of that notion for another post.

Giant Jesus Truck Dude keeps the pressure on, making sure two important things remain in the forefront of Duke's mind: "He'll send (all sinners including Duke) to the Lake of Fire, and you called him a sissy!" Duke, Billy Joe and even Martha believe everything the Giant says, and all three get Saved. The tract ends with Duke back in his rig, saying "that Jesus had more guts than any man that ever lived." His truck even sports a brand new "Jesus Saves" bumper sticker.

The artwork in The Sissy? is some of Jack's best. The characters are perfectly realized, none more so than Duke. He's the meanest-looking bruiser you could imagine, and Jack's attention to detail is extraordinary when you consider he drew each hair on Duke's arms, knuckles, chest and back by hand. Plus, his visual transition from mean tough guy to worried sinner is flawless and credible. The others are also painstakingly detailed, but they don't stand out the way Duke does. Even the obligatory image of Christ on the cross is tame by comparison!

Duke is, of course, an avatar for the people Chick hopes this tract will reach. It's also a clear image of how he sees them; swarthy, sweaty gorillas who would just as soon punch his lights out as look at him. This could be you, Jack seems to be saying. You're tough, you probably think those Jesus people're a bunch of wimps, but if I was as big and strong as my giant dude here... Ah, nothing like a good ol' revenge fantasy!

The Sissy? is, like I said, some of Jack Chick's finest work. Entertaining, expertly drawn, and not completely implausible, this tract might just make a few people into Believers. The arguments the Jesus Giant puts forth are, on the surface, clever. They don’t actually prove anything, of course; all they do is set Duke up for the next stage in his conversion. Sure do make Jesus Giant look smart, though.

Was Jesus a sissy? Who cares? As long as there are still people out there debating this crucial theological issue, there will be a need for tracts like this one. Keep ‘em coming, Jack!

The Sissy?
Likely to Convert - 4
Artwork - 10
Ability to Hold Interest - 7
Unintentional Hilarity - 4
Level of Disturbing or Offensive Content - 1

7 Last Words

A word before we begin: this one from Evangelical Tract Distributors purports to be about seven words, but it is really about seven full sentences. Each sentence is something Jesus is alleged to have said while on the cross, according to the Gospels of Matthew, Luke and John (but not Mark; maybe he had that day off).

So, seven last sentences, then. For a man suffering a truly horrible death, the Lord was quite chatty. Each sentence has extra meaning for us all, even if the tract author has to stretch things a bit to make the meaning work. "Woman, behold thy son..., behold thy mother." apparently means that Jesus "has His eye on the sparrow" which means he knows about "your smallest needs." Because it shows he cared about his mother. I think. Maybe she liked birds.

"I thirst." John 19:28 proves that he "was human as well as divine" and therefore "the suffering of His body" due to "the intense agony of thirst" was real.

"It is finished." John 19:30 means that it is finished. How about that?

I'd quote the other ones, but they are too long and I really don't care. Look them up yourself. I only care about whether or not this tract is convincing. After reading all seven statements that Jesus allegedly said while hanging on the cross, do I feel compelled to become a Christian? Or "is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?"

In a word, no. The tract does not provide me with enough information. Or (say it with me) proof.

"Millions have since heard these Words," the tract says, "but have passed by in unbelief." Yep, just like I'm doing now. And I imagine I'm in very good company. Or sinful company. Whichever words you are comfortable with.

"Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." Apt words to describe the authors of this tract, I would say!

7 Last Words
Likely to Convert - 1
Artwork - 1
Ability to Hold Interest - 2
Unintentional Hilarity - 2
Level of Disturbing or Offensive Content - 1

The Only Doorway

If you've read any of my other reviews, you can already see exactly where this tract is going. Published by Fellowship Tract League, we are told once again that Jesus Christ is the only thing that can get a person's sinful soul into Heaven.

Boring. But there is a bit in this one I hadn't heard or read before. Apparently, if you try "to enter Heaven some other way than through the way Jesus provided," then "you are a thief and a robber." That's right, a thief AND a robber. There's a difference, apparently. What that difference is, the tract does not elaborate on. Nor does it reveal exactly what it is you are supposed to be stealing. You could be swiping a way into Heaven, I suppose. Which implies there are other ways into Heaven, doesn't it? The tract quotes John 10:1, wherein Jesus says that if you "entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way," then you're a robber/thief. Scriptural proof from the holy horse's mouth that there are other ways into Heaven!

So the title of this tract is wrong. Nevertheless, the author spends the remaining 2 1/2 pages trying to prove it right. "There is no other way to get to Heaven," the author states, listing religion, the preacher, water baptism, church membership, being a moral person and doing good works among the many things that are "not the way." Well, of course they aren't. None of those things involve climbething.

"Don't let the devil deceive you by making you believe there is some other way," the author implores. But Jesus said we could climbeth! Does that mean He's... the Devil?!? Spooky.

Getting back to the title metaphor, we are told "you enter the door by asking Jesus to come into your heart and save you." Standard issue tract message. Nothing new here. Same goes for the Sinner's Prayer on the back. All the good stuff is on the first page, and can be used to annoy any fundamentalist who tries the "one way to Heaven" approach on you.

"Jesus is the door..." the tract states and restates, and quotes John 10:9 to make sure things are clear: "I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture." Ahem. Sounds kinda dirty. Especially since a pasture is a place where you sow your seeds. But who am I to judge? If you can get Saved by entering Jesus, then going in and out until you sow those seeds into that pasture, go for it!

Just close the door behind you.

The Only Doorway
Likely to Convert - 1
Artwork - 3
Ability to Hold Interest - 3
Unintentional Hilarity - 6
Level of Disturbing or Offensive Content - 1

Deliverance For You

Here we have a tract written by none other than Billy Graham, one of a very select few whom Jesus has on speed-dial. He's one of those big-name American pastors, with his own ministry named after him and numerous books that were, not so very long ago, rocking the Christian bestseller lists. He's a bigger Christian household name than Oral Roberts, Ted Haggard, Jimmy Swaggart and Jerry Falwell, and he managed it without resorting to sex scandals, drug abuse, or generally being an asshole.

So, a tract from this guy ought to be pretty powerful and convincing, right? Yes it should. Too bad this one isn't.

"We all know how the world has radically changed since the turn of the century," the tract begins. And no, he isn't talking about the year 2000 onwards - he means the last century. "Twenty years ago we used to go down to the seaport to watch the ships come in," Billy says, "but now it is to the airport to watch the planes come down." "Once it was the telegraph but now it is the television."

Not only is this tract seriously out of date, but Billy makes it seem like he really needs a life.

This reminiscing about the not-so-recent past does actually go somewhere. "But with all our progress," Billy writes, "man has not solved the basic problems of the human race." He narrows those basic problems down to three: Sin, Sorrow and Death. Sounds like the name of a goth band. "These three problems make up man's history," and "it all seems rather hopeless" when a person "begins to think about it." Yes, Heaven forbid we start thinking.

Fortunately, Billy has "a rainbow of hope" to "put in your heart." I don't need to tell you what that rainbow is, but I will anyway: "Jesus Christ can meet and solve these three basic problems of your life." Apparently "it has been proved millions of times over." Like most tract authors, Billy neglects to provide the tiniest hint of that proof. I shouldn't be surprised about that, and I'm not. I am disappointed, though. Should not the famous Billy Graham be held to a higher standard?

Jesus "can meet your every need, lift every burden, solve every problem." That's quite a claim, and kind of a hard sell. Perhaps Jesus "can give you hope" and "deliver you from the fear of the future," "the perils of the present trouble" and "the penalty of past sin." I can make the same claims about my glorious man-parts, but that doesn't make them true. And an atheist isn't likely to believe even a pastor of Billy Graham's stature without some kind of evidence to back such claims up.

Incidentally, the cover image of a guy at his desk, face-palming while looking at on-screen tax forms, has nothing whatsoever to do with the material inside the tract.

Does Billy Graham expect us to believe him simply because he's a famous guy? I hope not. If Tom Cruise can't sell me on Scientology, Bill, then you haven't got a prayer.

Deliverance For You
Likely to Convert - 2
Artwork - 4
Ability to Hold Interest - 3
Unintentional Hilarity - 4
Rainbows of Hope - 1
Level of Disturbing or Offensive Content - 0

Let's Fly Away!

This is a contemporary Chick Tract, delivering the message that the world is horrible and getting worse, but Jesus makes everything better. Half of it seems to be aimed at kids, but the other half deals with very grown up issues. Ultimately, God and Jesus are presented as an escape from the troubles of the current day and age.

The story (as much as there is one) starts with the closing of a broke company. "The new regulations killed our jobs!" the former boss tells former employee Greg. "It's happening all over." Greg returns home to his alcoholic wife Delores, who freaks at the news of his termination. "Factories everywhere are closing!" Greg tells her. "The whole country is in a mess." He tries to console her with the story of their next door neighbour Herb, who lost his job, his house, his wife and his kids, but who "says everything is..." And before we can learn what that is is, a gunshot sounds from the house next door. "Herb blew his brains out!" says a dude who seems way too happy about it. The other neighbours are just as creepy - one wants to see what's left of Herb's face, and others set out to loot his home. Wow, humanity sure does suck.

Having established the state of the world as he sees it, Jack Chick introduces Greg and Delores' daughter Julie. She's got great big staring-at-oncoming-headlights eyes, and an innocence bordering on stupidity. She makes friends with Karen, the daughter of the happy smiley couple who just moved in across the street. Karen wastes no time preaching to Julie, telling her that "in God's eyes you are a lying thief!" Liars and thieves "go to the other place!" Karen adds, and we assume she isn't talking about Disneyland. Having sufficiently terrorized Julie, Karen moves in for the Save. "Jesus is coming to get us," she tells her new convert. "He'll meet us in the clouds." The two happy girls jump up and down on Karen's bed, singing "We'll fly away!" Hence this tract's title.

With that, the kid-friendly portion of the tract ends. Julie tells her parents about Jesus, but finds them less than receptive. "We hate that name!" Greg tells her. "You need a nut doctor!" adds Dolores. It seems that while Julie was getting Saved, her parents were busy turning evil. Greg now sports tattoos of skulls, snakes, and Satan's face, and Dolores has become a drug dealer. The way non-Believers do.

The tract ends with Julie jumping on her own bed and singing at two in the morning. Greg has every right to be pissed at the "rotten brat," but his decision to "give her a beating she'll never forget" seems a little extreme. But when Greg barges into Julie's room to open his can of whup-ass, Julie is gone... leaving only her slippers behind! Lucky for her the Rapture happened just in time to save her, right? Although technically, if she had been Raptured, she'd have left behind her pajamas as well. Maybe she just hid under the bed.

Let's Fly Away! paints a very bleak picture of our world, where everyone is a right bastard and life completely sucks. In fact, the whole world is that angry father, coming to our room to beat us. If only we could escape...

And that's Jesus - a magical escape from all your troubles. And eternal damnation. Can't forget that.

"Those religious jerks have made you go crazy!" Dolores tells her converted daughter. "Never mention Jesus again!" says her dad. Is this really what Jack Chick thinks unBelievers are like? Apparently. The only people in the tract who aren't portrayed as pond scum are Karen, her mom, and Julie. If you're not Saved, you must be evil. If that's how Jack sees humanity, how can we take him seriously?

"The whole country is in a mess," Greg says, and maybe he's right. It will take a lot to fix it, and waiting for a miracle escape isn't going to help anybody.

Let's Fly Away!
Likely to Convert - 2
Artwork - 7
Ability to Hold Interest - 4
Unintentional Hilarity - 4
Level of Disturbing or Offensive Content - ?

In Times of Trouble

This one, from Evangelical Tract Distributors, is short and full of large type. The basic message seems to be that, when you are having problems, God will help you. As tract messages go, this one is very nice.

The tract author delivers this message by instructing the reader on what "God's Trusting Child May Say." First, it is God's Will that "I am in this difficult place," and He will "give me grace in this trial to behave as His child." God "will make the testing a blessing," and "He can bring me out again" all "in His good time" when He's taught us "the lessons He intends for me to learn."

In other words, when a Christian is facing a troubling time, God put them there to teach them a lesson. Therefore, if you become a Christian and "behave as His child," you can take comfort in the fact that any difficulty you face will be put there by God as a test. If you find that sort of thing comforting, then great.

The last page has the usual sinner's prayer, there for readers who want Jesus "to take control of the rest of my life." No mention is made of Hell or damnation, only sin and the desire for eternal life.

This is, as I said, a very nice tract. It places responsibility for one's woes on God, while suggesting that He'll help you out of them. Plus, each woe happens for a reason, rather than simply being random stuff that happens. If that notion helps you deal with life... hey, why not? It proves absolutely nothing, of course, but as these things go, you could do worse.

In Times of Trouble
Likely to Convert - 4
Artwork - 5
Ability to Hold Interest - 4
Unintentional Hilarity - 1
Level of Disturbing or Offensive Content – 1

Changed Lives: Miracles of The Passion

Here’s an interesting find – a documentary about the effect Mel Gibson’s The Passion of The Christ has had on the world since its release in 2004. Changed Lives: The Miracles of The Passion plays like an overly-long making of featurette one might find on The Passion’s DVD, describing it as “an experience like no other” and bragging that it has touched/changed 80, 000, 000 lives.

Two things I’d like to point out before I go on. One, I have not yet seen The Passion of The Christ, so I have very few comments to make about it. Two, Changed Lives is not an official product for The Passion; it is as independent from Mel Gibson’s film as, well... as this review is from Changed Lives. So to speak. Indeed, Mel’s name is mentioned more times in this review than in the entire documentary.

The film, written and directed by Jody Eldred, is divided into several chapters, each dealing with a specific story. Julie Moran hosts, introducing each story with cheerfulness mixed with awe. The stories themselves are told mostly through interviews with the people in question, and various religious experts toss their two cents in between chapters.

And then there’s the night vision stuff. As each chapter ends, we see footage of people in a cinema watching The Passion. Closeup shots reveal audience members crying and looking away, no doubt overcome by the movie’s power. I suppose these bits are meant to show the exact moment when lives are being changed.

The stories range from charming to nutty: a man who murdered his girlfriend and got away with it, only to turn himself in after seeing The Passion; the two brothers who broke a man’s jaw because he’d fired their mom, only to reconcile, hug and forgive after seeing the film; the atheist who did drugs who was affected “beyond comprehension” after seeing the movie with his girlfriend; a self-described God Hater who screened The Passion for his daughter and wondered “what if this is real?”; and a woman with lung cancer who saw it and became completely cured.

Most wacky is the story of Jan “Lightning Boy” Michelini, a production assistant on The Passion whose story “is an amazing tale of God’s hand of protection.” He was struck by lightning twice while on set, the second time sharing the bolt with star Jim Caviezel. Call me cynical, but I’d only consider it a sign of God’s protection if the lightning had missed him. Doesn’t say much about the safety standards on the set, either. Still, the guy survived unscathed, and was the reason two of the actors decided to convert. That’s something, I guess.

“We can’t get away from the fact that this is not fiction, not made up,” says Author Lee Strobel (The Case For Faith) about The Passion. “It is reflective of what the Gospels tell us actually occurred. I think that’s where a lot of its power comes from.”

“People are seeing depicted truth,” says Pastor Jack Hayford. The Truth “unsheathed, like a sword,” that is “historically reliable, spiritually dynamic.” I suspect the purpose of having these two in the film is to reinforce the idea that The Passion (and the Gospels it is based on) is verifiably true without actually verifying it. One is an author, the other a priest – if they say it is “depicted truth” it must be true!

The strangest and most disturbing of the stories is the one they show first. A Colorado couple named Mike and Krista left their baby in the bath unsupervised for four minutes, and she drowned. Luckily she made a miraculous recovery. That’s the good part.

The strange and disturbing part comes before that. Mike administered CPR, even though he admits he had no training – it was just part of the miracle. “I realized right away that this was an attack of Satan,” he says. So how did Mike defeat the evil Satan and save his baby? Other than performing a first aid technique he didn’t actually know how to do? And just what does this story have to do with The Passion of The Christ, anyway?

It seems Mike and Krista had seen The Passion not too long before this incident, and as they prayed over their daughter they visualized the scene where Jesus is flogged by a Roman soldier. ‘By his stripes are yea healed,’ the Bible says; basically, they figured Jesus would save their kid if they pictured Him having the flesh torn from his back.

And apparently that worked. The doctor who checked the baby afterward was ‘baffled’ that she was so perfect after such a trauma. “It’s the work of God. There’s no doubt about that,” Mike’s dad says. Maybe so. I personally believe they were very lucky. The alternative is to believe that an evil force, not parental negligence, put the baby in danger, and the only way to combat that evil was to bring to mind the most violent scene from a movie about their deity’s death. That, to me, is wrong and sick on so many levels.

“We know for a fact this is historic reality,” Lee Strobel says, “and that what we see played out in front of us is something that actually took place in history.” If you believe that statement, then this film (and, presumably, The Passion) is for you. If you do not, Changing Lives will seem silly. Or crazy. No attempt is made to speak to the unsaved; if you are watching, you are assumed to be the choir to whom they are preaching.

“The stories you’ve just seen are all true,” Host Julie Moran tells us, “but more importantly, they are stories of truth.” Perhaps so, Julie. And I do believe all the interviewees are sincere in the telling of their stories. After all, some of the details do not paint them in the best light. However, I refuse to believe one can resurrect drowned babies or cure lung cancer by watching The Passion of The Christ, even if it is “based on an historic event that can transform a human being’s eternal destiny.” It makes me wonder about the stories we haven’t been told, where The Passion failed to deliver.

A lot of Belief can be a dangerous thing.

Changed Lives: Miracles of The Passion
Likely To Convert - 1
Production Values - 5
Acting/Direction - 4
Likely To Be Sat Through - 3
Unintentional Hilarity - 6
Level of Disturbing or Offensive Content – 5

Meteor Apocalypse

Are you ready for another blockbuster from Faith Films? The guys who brought you 2012 Doomsday and Sunday School Musical? Well, this one, Meteor Apocalypse, makes those other two look good.

Nah, I’m kidding. Nothing could possibly make 2012 Doomsday look good. Meteor Apocalypse is slightly better, but not as good as SSM. Which is like saying taking a dump is better than explosive diarrhea, but not as good as having a wizz.

But enough of that crap. Meteor Apocalypse, billed as an End Times thriller, is about the trouble that ensues when a comet threatening the Earth is blasted to fragments by the US government, only for those fragments to rain down on the planet.

David (Joe Lando, from Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman) is some sort of emergency response person. His wife Kate (Babylon 5’s Claudia Christian, who gets top billing in spite of only being in the film for less than ten minutes) and daughter Alison (Madison McLaughlin) wish he’d spend more time with them. “Why did you bother switching to days when you’re on call seven nights a week?” Kate asks as David is called in to help deal with the meteor crisis. “It’s my Job, Kate,” he replies. “What d’you want me to do?” Having established the required amount of family drama, David rushes off to do his stuff. If only something would happen to make him realize how precious his family really is.

The first meteor poisons the water supply, and people start getting sick. David confers with his sick friend Mark, who dies just after giving him some medicine that will slow down the poisoned water’s effects. Then a random meteor shower destroys the building, but David escapes with the meds just in the nick of time.

Mark’s pal Sam in Las Vegas is working on a cure – he tells David this, and apparently no one else. The government moves in and starts quarantining the sick people, including Dave’s daughter Alison. He arrives home just in time to watch helplessly Alison and Kate are hauled away by army goons. David himself escapes, only to waste time wandering in the wilderness. Why he didn’t simply get back in his car (which was available) or the car of one of the goon-abducted sickies (also available) is a question best left for film critics.

On his way to Las Vegas to help Sam make a cure, David meets a sick woman named Lynn (Cooper Harris). She also has drama (ex boyfriend, ex job, ex dog), but it fails to make her interesting. Lynn’s function in the film is to look sickly, and it uses up the entirety of Cooper’s acting talent.

David and Lynn find a jeep and continue on toward Vegas, until another random meteor shower destroys it. Over the course of the film, David faces five random meteor showers, but emerges from each unscathed. Somebody up there must like him.

Meanwhile, Random Government People are hard at work. There are always two types of RGPs in movies like this: the ones working to solve the current crisis, and the ones who get in their way for no good reason. Both groups provide much-needed exposition.

David and Lynn reach Sam just in time to save him from some guy with a gun. They put their heads together (David and Sam, not Lynn or the gun guy) and quickly concoct an antidote to the poisoned water. And not a moment too soon! More gun guys turn up to make things difficult, but David and Lynn escape with the help of some FBI agents. Things look promising for our heroes until a bunch of bikers turn up and kill the FBI guys, only to be scared away by random meteor shower #3. One of the FBI agents lives long enough to tell them (David & Lynn, not the bikers) that a giant comet is heading for L.A. Which is where the quarantined people are! Including Kate and Alison! David rushes off for L.A., and Lynn comes with him because her character has nothing better to do.

At no point does it occur to either David or Lynn to turn their antidote over to the authorities. David’s mission is surprisingly single-minded for a Christian movie – he’s taking the cure to his daughter, and everyone else can fend for themselves. In this way, Meteor Apocalypse is very similar to Sunday School Musical – no consequences are shown for bad behavior. David does use half his supply of antidote to save a little girl, but that hardly counts; David wasn’t even sure it would work. He basically used the girl as a guinea pig to make sure the cure could help his daughter.

And, like Sunday School Musical, there is very little to suggest that this is in fact a Christian movie. David’s wife Kate asks him early on if he’ll come to church with her that weekend, and David and Lynn take shelter in a church in L.A. In that church, a priest named Pastor King (Celestial) talks to David about faith; she is the only one to mention the name of Jesus in the entire movie. It doesn’t do her any good; she and her church are wiped out by random meteor shower #4.

Back in Washington, the RGPs’ bureaucratic exposition continues. Most are in favour of saving those quarantined in L.A. However, a bearded RGP is of the opinion the sickies should be left to their fate to avoid a jurisdictional misstep. “You’re sentencing them all to death!” a good RGP cries. “If I could wave a magic wand I would!” the bearded one retorts. Clearly he’s a villain – he’s in favour of using magic! The good RGPs do manage to evacuate some of the people in L.A. before the comet arrives, destroying the city in the cheapest and most pathetic CGI I’ve ever seen.

Before that half-assed apocalypse, however, David and Lynn escape L.A. and track down the evacuated quarantined people in the mountains. Lynn tries to kiss David, but he refuses. This seems a fairly insignificant moment in the film, but according to the Bible Study questions in the disc’s special features, this is the moment when David is faced with Temptation (other questions deal with the film’s supposed Biblical accuracy). That he doesn’t give in to Adultery proves he is an upstanding Christian guy. When Lynn succumbs to her sickness shortly after, and refuses the cure so that David can keep what’s left for his daughter, she is seen to have redeemed herself for her attempted defilement of David’s marriage.

Basically, Lynn is a helpless female in need of rescuing, who becomes a Temptress for five seconds. If her entire purpose was to be a temptation for David, why did they wait for the very end of the movie? If they are trying to teach viewers about the sin of adultery, they have failed miserably.

After Lynn’s death, David is menaced by one last meteor shower before finding Kate, curing his daughter and getting rescued by a chopper. So the hell what? Joe Lando is a serviceable leading man, but the script from Brian Brinkman and director Micho Rutare (who also co-wrote Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus) doesn’t give him much to work with. This is Rutare’s second motion picture as director, and like SSM it was shot in 12 days. Faith Films, it would seem, is too cheap to go over that pitifully short schedule. I’m not sure that an extra few days would have made much difference, though. More love seems to have gone into the making of featurette; it’s the only time that Cooper Harris displays any kind of energy. Honestly, why couldn’t one of those random meteor showers have hit during pre-production and saved the world from this godly mess?

Meteor Apocalypse
Likely To Convert - 0
Production Values - 4
Acting/Direction - 3
Likely To Be Sat Through - 3
Unintentional Hilarity - 4
Level of Disturbing or Offensive Content - 2

Here Comes The Judge!

By now, readers of this blog will have a good idea about what to expect from that banana pudding mixture of Christian fundamentalism and overblown paranoia that is Jack T. Chick. Demons luck everywhere, trying to lead you astray. Your intelligent-sounding best friend might be the Devil in a rubber mask. Reject the Word of God, and death and Hell are only seconds away!

This overly-plotted story, however, is a right turn onto left field. It isn't until halfway through the story that a point begins to emerge.

Chick introduces us to Judge Shelton Barnstead, who "gave to charity and was loved by all," but who apparently "had a dark side that very few knew about." Having introduced his titular character, Chick proceeds to ignore Judge Barnstead for a full eight panels. Those panels tell the story of a mother, Kim Keefer, who returns home with her two kids to see a man killing her husband Kyle. It seems Kyle Keefer was a P.I., who had been investigating the Governor and had gathered photographic evidence against him. The murderer, Lance, escapes with the photos and reports to the Judge. "You messed up big time, stupid!" Judge Barnsy admonishes Lance for being caught in the act, and orders him to "bring me the photos right now!"

Judge Barney gets the photos, but Lance gets himself arrested. In response, the Police Chief plants "a stash of illegal drugs" in Kim's home, then has her arrested for her husband's murder. Kim appears before Judge Barnstead, who gives her 50 years (40 for her crimes, and 10 for calling him a "devil").

All clear so far? The Governor did something bad, Kyle took pictures of him doing it, and the Governor used his extensive list of henchmen and cronies (Judge B, the Police Chief, Lance) to cover his ass. The Governor's next move is to have Judge Barnsy taken care of, and one exploding cafe later the not-so-good judge finds himself in hospital.

And it is here, finally, that the plot... not thickens, exactly, but becomes slightly less runny. Conrad, Judge Barnstead's well-groomed but big-nosed house servant, pays his employer a visit in intensive care. Even though Barnsy treated him "like trash since day one," Conrad feels compelled to tell him "about the awesome Judge you must face after death." Barnsy is unable to speak, having been wrapped up mummy-style, but his fearsome eyebrows make his feelings plain.

Conrad preaches about Jesus, then he goes on to tell his boss about the End Times as well. It's as if Chick stuffed the first half of his tract with his complicated plot, then needed some extra material to fill a few more panels. "So what's your decision, sir?" Conrad asks, and he actually hands the judge a card with Yes and No tic boxes on it! Chick gets in a decent joke here - instead of ticking Yes or No, Judge Barnstead writes "You're fired" on the card. Conrad, and Jesus, take that as a solid No, and anyone who rejects Christ in a Chick tract is doomed to an immediate death. Two panels later a bearded, eyepatch-wearing henchman finishes Barnsy off; his soul "was carried away" and "his muffled screams went unheard." The context suggests the screams took place after his soul's departure; maybe Chick was referring to the judge's agonized cries from Hell. The picture of him burning in flames is small by Chick's usual standard, although his eyebrows aren't nearly so terrifying any more.

Oh, and apparently Judge Barnsy didn't go to Hell for his part in the whole murder/theft/conspiracy deal with the Governor. Chick identifies his sins as that of "stubbornness and pride." Readers are then warned, "Don't make the same mistake!" So it's okay to kill someone and take their stuff, blow up cafes, manipulate the law, plant evidence, send innocent people to jail, and whatever the heck it was the Governor was caught doing in the first place... all that stuff is just fine with the Lord as long as you aren't prideful and stubborn? And how was Judge Barnstead prideful and stubborn, exactly? For rejecting Jesus? How do we know he didn't reject Jesus because he thought his house servant Conrad had gone to the nutty store to buy a pair of crazypants?

Jack T. Chick's tracts are usually obvious to the point of being insulting. Here Comes The Judge is so full of plot that the message is hopelessly lost. You blew this one, Jack. That's my verdict.

Here Comes The Judge
Likely to Convert - 2
Artwork - 7
Ability to Hold Interest - 4
Unintentional Hilarity - 4
Level of Disturbing or Offensive Content - ?

Glorious Appearing: The End of Days

This is it, the final volume in the Left Behind series! Except, of course, for the three prequel novels. And the novelizations of the Gospels. Oh, and the final, final novel set 1,000 years after the events of this one.

Right.

Okay then, how about this - at the time of its publication, Glorious Appearing was meant to be the concluding chapter in the AntiChrist vs. Tribulation Force story. The Seven Year Tribulation - and its accompanying curses, plagues, disasters, soul harvests, improbable human-headed scorpion locusts, and other assorted trumpet and bowl judgments – comes to an end, and we finally witness the Second Coming of the Son of Man of the Hour, Jesus the Christ.

And boy oh boy, does the Prince of Peace ever let them sinners have it! Jesus quotes the Bible at them, and His Voice acts like a death ray:

“And with those very first words, tens of thousands of Unity Army soldiers fell dead, simply dropping where they stood, their bodies ripped open, blood pooling in great masses.”

“With every word, more and more enemies of God dropped dead, torn to pieces.”

“Rayford watched through binocs as men and women soldiers and horses seemed to explode where they stood. It was as if the very words of the Lord had superheated their blood, causing it to burst through their veins and skin.”

“…and writhed as they were invisibly sliced asunder. Their innards and entrails gushed to the desert floor… their blood pooling and rising in the unforgiving brightness of the glory of Christ.”

And it actually gets worse from there. Jesus leads no less than four separate campaigns against the AntiChrist’s army, one after the other, before finally chucking AntiChrist Nicholae Carpathia and his False Prophet sidekick Leon Fortunato into Hell. Why, you might ask, does the King of Kings and Lord of Lords (which is actually written on his robe! For real!) need to go to all that trouble? Couldn’t HE just, I don’t know, blow them all up and be done with it?

No, HE can’t. That’s not what the Bible says. Or, at least, that’s not what authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins say that the Bible says. They say that the Bible says that Jesus fights four battles with the AntiChrist’s army, so HE has to fight all four battles. Wouldn’t want to contradict Biblical prophecy, now would you?

And that is one of the main problems with this book, and indeed the entire series; every Biblical I is dotted, every Gospel T crossed (see what I did there?). If it’s in the Bible it has to be accounted for, no matter how small or silly or detrimental to the plot.

For example, in the middle of Jesus’ slaughter of Nicky’s troops, there is a storm of giant hailstones. As if the poor guys didn’t have enough to worry about, what with the whole getting annihilated by GOD HIMSELF. These great chunks of ice crush several more unbelievers and then melt, and Nicholae’s humvee gets stuck in the ensuing flood. Leon Fortunato has to get out and push, a situation that becomes fraught with comical hijinks.

Comical hijinks? Seriously?!?

Yes, seriously. The AntiChrist and the False Prophet are played largely for laughs in this book, most of it due to Leon’s clumsiness and Nicholae’s cowardice. Are these two really the same guys who kept the world in a state of terror for seven years and eleven previous volumes? For the reader, this is less than satisfying.

But that isn't nearly as bad as the hand that’s dealt to our plucky Trib Force heroes. Things start off interestingly enough – we witness the death of Buck Williams, and the scenes involving the search for the wounded Rayford Steele contain genuine tension and pathos. The others wait at Petra for the AntiChrist’s imminent attack…

…but the moment Jesus appears in the sky, all of them become useless. They follow Jesus and the AntiChrist and watch the remaining prophecies unfold, allowing readers to witness those events through their eyes... and that's it. None of the characters that readers have journeyed with up until that point have any kind of important role, any plot-resolving function, any longer.

So, having usurped the role of Main Character for HIMSELF, what does Jesus the Christ do with it? He obliterates his enemies in his infinite mercy – we’ve covered that. Otherwise, he has two roles to play, which I’ll call Nice Jesus and Mean Jesus. Nice Jesus gives comfort to his flock, speaking to and hugging each of them, assuring them they have done well. Mean Jesus divides the entire population of the planet into Saved and UnSaved, and sends all the UnSaved people to Hell. It’s hard to believe they are the same deity.

The Trib Force characters don’t care. They’re delighted when their Lord adds their names to a bit of Scripture-quoting, and all of them have a Wayne’s World-esque “we’re not worthy” moment. They happily (and passively) sit back and watch the Lord do his stuff.

The last quarter of the novel is like an Academy Awards Ceremony for the faithful, with Old and New Testament guys like Moses and Paul getting their pats on the back for jobs well done. We are told that Rayford et al suffer no weariness or boredom during the event. The same cannot be said for this reader!

I’d like to point out here that the book The Paperback Apocalypse: How the Christian Church was Left Behind by Robert M. Price does a far better job of critiquing Glorious Appearing, and the rest of the Left Behind books, than I ever could. If you like my reviews, do pick this book up, you won’t be sorry. I won’t go into detail about most of the points Price raised, because I didn’t think of them before reading his book. I am trying to limit my reviews to my own impressions, and I won’t go and pass his thoughts off as my own.

I will, however, discuss one of his excellent observations: Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins don’t present Jesus as being all that different from Nicholae Carpathia. Both demand worship and loyalty, both make grandiose claims about themselves, both punish those who fail to obey them, and both plan to rule the world - in Jesus’ case, with an iron rod: Revelation 12:5 ‘She bore a male Child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron.’
“That rod of iron sounds like He’s going to take no baloney from anybody, doesn’t it?” says a character too unimportant to be worth naming. I find the similarities between Nicky and J.C. both hilarious and disturbing, and I wouldn’t want either of them to get their hands on my eternal soul.

Neither, I suspect, would any secular reader. Then again, if a non-believer has been willing to read all the way to book 12, I have to concede their conversion is a possibility, if not a very big one.

Glorious Appearing is billed as 'The Final Chapter of Those Left Behind', but it shouldn’t have been. The battle of Armageddon in the previous volume would have made a more exciting climax, with Jesus’ return relegated to the final few chapters. If LaHaye and Jenkins had been willing to condense things a bit and leave one or two details out, they might have achieved a much stronger and more interesting conclusion to their series. Just because you have enough prophetic material to fill an entire 400 pages doesn’t mean you should.

Who would have thought the Second Coming would be so boring?

Glorious Appearing: The End of Days
Likely to Convert - 1
Cover Art - 4
Ability to Hold Interest - 3
Unintentional Hilarity - 5
Level of Disturbing or Offensive Content - 8

The Most Important 2 Minutes of Your Life

This tract actually has a dash of humility. On the cover, the words "Reading this pamplet could be..." immediately precede the title, which is itself followed by, "Try it, and see..."

Do you know what that means? The tract authors at Evangelical Tract Distributors can't spell the word 'pamphlet'! But more importantly, it means the authors are allowing for a certain amount of uncertainty. They haven't said that a reading of their 'pamplet' most definitely WILL be your life's most important couple of minutes. No, they hedge their bets and merely suggest that it "could be." That suggests that readers might read the tract and decide it was a waste of time, and the authors actually accept that possibility! Bravo to them, I say.

Unfortunately, the rest of the tract is not so humble. "You have a vital need!" we are told, and "the proof is in your heart!" These sentences and others like them are accompanied by lines of scripture, presumably to give their ideas some Biblical weight. By now, readers of this blog will know what the rest of the tract says - you're a sinner who will go to Hell unless you get Saved. Need I mention this tract provides no factual evidence to back up the Bible quotes? Didn't think so.

Reading this tract did not occupy the most important two minutes of my life. Reviewing it was a little better, but not by much.

The Most Important 2 Minutes of Your Life
Likely to Convert - 7
Artwork - 5
Ability to Hold Interest - 3
Unintentional Hilarity - 1
Level of Disturbing or Offensive Content - 1

How To Survive on the Inside

This is a rare find. Published by ATS, this tract is written specifically for people in prison. Not sure how a copy ended up on the subway where I found it. Maybe Jesus helped some guy to escape.

The tract, a seven-page thing with photos of miserable-looking young 'criminals' (a white guy on the cover, and a black guy and a Latino girl on the inside),goes to a fair amount of detail while steering well clear of any facts. We are first presented with seven questions, including: "Did you know that God knows how you ended up here and He loves you anyway?" "Did you know that God sees past your cell and straight into your heart?"

The seven questions are followed by eight detailed steps, not including the three steps to getting Saved at the end. All eight steps provide guidance on how to be a good Christian prisoner. The tract assumes readers not only want to be Christians, but that they want "to spread His message" to their fellow inmates, too.

And, the tract assumes its readers repent. It's a safe enough assumption. The kind of criminal who enjoys sinning probably isn't interested in tracts. Which limits the audience even further.

That small audience, however, will likely find How To Survive On the Inside very useful and comforting. I myself am comforted by the absence of Hell and Satan in this tract, and there's nothing worth getting offended about, either. Of course, a little fire and brimstone often makes these things more entertaining to read.

"If you are a Christian," the tract tells us, "God doesn't see your guilt." Too bad everybody else does. Still, it's a nice sentiment to hold on to.

How To Survive On the Inside
Likely to Convert - 7
Artwork - 5
Ability to Hold Interest - 3
Unintentional Hilarity - 1
Level of Disturbing or Offensive Content - 1

The Second Coming: Surely I Come Quickly

Let me begin this tract review by saying that I shall try to deal with the title as maturely as possible. Not easy, given the scripture quote from Revelation 22:20 that makes up the subtitle, "Surely I Come Quickly."

Too bad for Shirley!

As you may have guessed, this Fellowship Tract League offering concerns the End Times. The cover offers some lovely artwork of people on white horses riding through space toward Earth. One of them (Jesus, I'm guessing) wears a crown and wields a sword, and has blood dripping from the hem of his robe. He also has the words King of Kings and Lord of Lords written on his robe at thigh level, just above the blood. There are Bible passages for each of these details, which is a good thing - otherwise, this guy might look a bit silly.

I mean, seriously? King of kings and lord of lords written on his thigh? In case anyone doesn't believe it's HIM and asks for his ID? But it's in the Bible, like I said, so it must be true.

And that's the attitude taken by this tract. No surprise there. I don't think I've encountered a tract that wasn't. I suppose this one stands out for me because it seems even more concerned with the nitty-gritty, fiddly little details.

What's worse is that the tract author puts words into readers' mouths! "You say, 'I just cannot believe it. I have so many questions.'" No, I said nothing of the kind, but that doesn't stop the author from responding with: "Let's allow God's Word to answer them for you." I did not say I had questions, but now this author has the arrogance to pose answers to what it thinks my questions are!

"When will the rapture take place? Soon!"
"Will it affect me? Yes!"
"How can it be true? JESUS SAID SO!"
"What should I do? REPENT, BELIEVE, BE SAVED!"

As is common for this type of tract, the author makes several grandiose claims and backs them up only with scripture quotes. Naturally, this will lose him/her many skeptics and atheists by the wayside. I've been saying it for how many reviews now? Just because you believe that "Jesus Christ wold not lie," doesn't mean the rest of us will take your word for it!

This tract reminds me of the post-Rapture video in Left Behind, the movie and the book. The video explains where all the vanished people have gone, and what the rest of the world has in store for them. This tract could serve the same purpose, and might actually be effective in such a scenario. The author clearly wants to inform people before the fact rather than after, however, so I doubt it will convince the secular crowd pre-Rapture. It might just save a few souls afterward, if the Rapture actually happens.

And that's a pretty big 'if'.

"If you miss the rapture, you will" be stuck on Earth during "the Great Tribulation" and you will "cry out for help and comfort" before you "end up in hell for all eternity." Maybe I will. But it will take something a lot better than this tract to convince me.

The Second Coming: Surely I Come Quickly
Likely to Convert - 1
Artwork - 4
Ability to Hold Interest - 2
Unintentional Hilarity - 3
Level of Disturbing or Offensive Content - 1