Saturday, February 16, 2013

How to make Jack Chick's head explode.

I have a theory about Jack Chick.  I think he lives in a bunker somewhere deep underground and has been for decades.  I don't think he ever comes out of his hole, he probably just has everything delivered.  Could this be true?  I don't know for a fact, but it certainly would explain a lot about his tracts.  People in his tracts don't act or talk the way that people in the real world do.  It's not even close.  You really have to be completely and utterly isolated from reality to believe his tracts are connected with the real world in any way. 

Then again, a bunker doesn't have to be physical...  As a young, sheltered, small town Christian boy, I lived in the social and mental equivalent of an underground bunker so Mr Chick's tracts seemed totally plausible to me.  I devoured every single one (our church had a tract table) and they provided me a terrifying window into the apparently nightmarish world that existed just outside my walls.  I'm ashamed to admit how much of my worldview came from Chick tracts at one time but in my defense, I was young and impressionable and no authority figure in my life ever gave me the impression that these were anything but factual.  Now I liked to imagine that over time I've purged myself of "Chick facts" and replaced those with actual, true facts but it's a long process.  After all, we're talking about a veritable mountain of bullshit here!  For instance, here are some of the things he taught me about Catholics:

  • Catholicism is a false religion invented by the devil himself in order to enslave the world.
  • Catholics were secretly behind everything from the birth of Islam to the Nazis and the Communists.
  • The Pope is a false Christ and the final pope will actually be the Antichrist.
  • Catholics are at best deluded and hell-bound and at worst actively conspiring with Satan to destroy REAL Christianity.
  • The poor deluded Catholics don't know how lost they are because they never actually read the Bible (they're not allowed) otherwise the truth would just be staring them in the face!
  • Catholics are all about worshiping a false Christ and a pagan, false goddess.
This was all pretty easy to believe since I didn't know any actual Catholics so I ended up believing all of this for quite a long time.  However there is one thing about Catholics so terrible that Mr Chick includes it in every single tract about Catholicism -  Transubstantiation.  For the theologically ignorant, basically that means the bread and wine literally becomes the blood and body of Christ during communion.  Literally.  Yes I'm using that word correctly.  Anyway, Chick spills a lot of ink attacking this practice (there is a whole tract dedicated to nothing but transubstantiation) so I'm just going to give you some of it straight from the source:


From:  Are Roman Catholics Christians?


From: The Death Cookie

Got all that?  Catholics all believe that the wafer is literally Christ because they fear going to hell and also the Pope will have them executed if they dare disagree (remember, the Pope secretly runs the world and has the power to do anything).  According to Jack Chick, these are all real true facts that you should believe because they are totally true.  OK, with that in mind, watch this clip from a recent Colbert Report:

           
        

Ever seen one of those old Science Fiction movies where the protagonists are up against an unbeatable robot/computer foe?  Usually the brave heroes triumph by presenting the robotic mastermind with a simple paradox which causes the otherwise flawless machine to break down spectacularly and explode.  Well, here we have a Catholic going on the nationally televised television program of another Catholic to talk about the book he wrote that disagrees (among other things) with the doctrine of transubstantiation.  It gets really fun when they start debating scripture and quote the Bible which (as Catholics) they have never read because that is not allowed on pain of death.  Just like disagreeing with transubstantiation.  Strangely enough, last I checked neither Gary Wills or Stephen Colbert have been burned at the stake by the Vatican Inquisitors.

How is that head feeling Jack?

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