Halloween and Jack Chick comics

Jack Chick scares me more than Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King combined.

My favorite has always been the school science teacher being flummoxed in her evolutionary knowledge by a mere teenage creationist.

When my wife and I had been married for 3 years, we received an unsigned Christmas card from a close relative of hers containing a Chick tract. It was all about hell and how we were on our way there. My wife is Jewish, and I grew up a fundamentalist Protestant with lots of Biblical training, so we both easily laughed it off as just another stunt by her crazy relative. But I can see those really getting to a young kid.

I'm partial to a Chick Tract called, "The Death Cookie." Brutal! Shameful!

It's so important not to be better than everyone else, you know Or at least not to think yourself better than everyone else?

I think it was Mark Noll who says that these tracts reach a huge, huge audience...much vaster than any theological works on the market.

Yes, Yes. Jack Chick is crazy and so are most of his comics. The Holocaust being caused by the Jesuits was a new one to me.

However, I remember reading "This Was Your Life" as a boy in 3rd or 4th grade. It was the first time in my life I'd ever heard that the civil religion of mainline, small-town Christianity--that trying to be a good person, and living a good, decent, middle-class life made you acceptable to God--might not be true, and might even be contrary to the Bible's witness about God and men.

I saw myself in that poor man in the tract, so respectable and even religious on the outside, and so eaten up with greed, lust, and pride on the inside, and realizing the truth too late. It was one, small thing that helped me begin to see myself as a sinner in need of a Savior, and that God's grace was the only thing that could save me.

Since then I've studied theology at Oxford and Yale, and can certainly see the limitations in and laugh at much of Jack Chick's work. But that too literal and too crude tract presented an indisputable truth about me and everyone else in the world: we are not what we seem to be, and there is a whole other world beyond this one, an eternal one, to which we are accountable and which we can attain only by God's grace. Yes, that is a Halloween Horror that will provide nightmares to those who reject it But it is also an All Saint's Day miracle of beauty and sweetness to those who accept it and are saved, by grace alone through faith alone.

If God is sovereign, He can even use Jack Chick's comics to His ends, and I'm sure has done so for many besides me.

Lancelot, that was really thoughtful. Thanks for posting it.

Lancelot -- that summed up what i was trying to think of how to say. "This Was Your Life" has stuck with me, and i don't quite regret that, even if i've never handed out a tract, let alone a Chick tract.

A house in my neighborhood was handing out "The Devil's Night" two years ago for Halloween treats. At the time my kids were pre-literate so I took the tract and read it. I was amazed since I had never seen one before. I then found out there was a whole web site of these tracts as well as a number parody sites.

Needless to say a number of people in my neighborhood were pretty annoyed.

Aaron - that one was one of my favorites, too - it was called "Big Daddy" with the ape eating a banana on the front...

I am not kidding when I say that Chick tracts have done more to damage religious life in this country than the worst fundamentalist-nighmare Leather Queen could do in his wildest dreams.

I don't know if they were directly inspired by Satan, but I'm pretty sure he loves 'em.

While I don't wish to denigrate anyone who has discovered a call to Christ through a Chick tract, the tracts as a whole would be enough to give any person a disgust of Christianity if they never encountered any other expression of it. I don't know what Mr. Chick is like, of course, but I've always wondered whether he resembles Emily Bronte's pithy summation of the servant Joseph's character in "Wuthering Heights," whom she describes this way:

"He was, and is yet most likely, the wearisomest self-righteous Pharisee that ever ransacked a Bible to rake the promises to himself and fling the curses to his neighbors."

I got a kick a while back reading Jimmy Akin's account of meeting Jack Chick at the screening of Chick's movie: http://members.cox.net/jimmyakin/x-meet-jack-chick.htm

How long had Chick been working on it [the movie]? Ten years? Fifteen? I tried to recall. “I understand you’ve been working on it for ten years?”

“Fifteen,” he corrected. “I think it will help a lot of pastors. It should get a lot of people sold—uh, saved.”

lol

I love the Halloween themed Chick Tracts. I like “Boo!” a lot, but also “The Devil’s Night” and “The Little Princess.” Someone made a short film of “The Little Princess” - you can see it (and like 10 others) over at http://www.316now.com. It’s a hoot.

I pray for the soul of this poor man ... and anyone who goes along with this twisted view of the world. Generalizations, untruths, lies, and yes even hate masquerade in the nightmarish world of Chick Publications as evangelization. He does this work in the name of Jesus Christ and claims to have a personal relationship with the Creator, and out of the other side spews what I can only attribute to evil.
This “Inspired work” may be truly inspired – however the inspiration, is certainly not that of God. For the God I always learned about in the Catholic Christian Faith (by the way Catholic simply means Universal), is one that is incapable of deceit, abhorrence to His creation, and spreading falsehood, for he is ENTIRELY GOOD. There is only one other source for deception, fabrication and loathing … maybe you have heard of him in many of his guises.

I imagine it would take all of 5 minutes to dismantle the repugnant arguments made against the Catholic Church. And I invite anyone who believes this drivel to contact the office of their local Catholic Bishop and ask for an appointment to discuss, in person, the charges that you blindly believe to be true. Or perhaps investigate the writings of the early Church Fathers. Perhaps go to a local Catholic Parish and speak to a priest or even the Parish Pastor. Or maybe you could sneak into a Catholic Mass - and you know what you would find the Gospel Itself every part of the mass is derived out of the Bible every Prayer and Reading, The Creed (Proclamation of what Catholics Believe to be True) and even The Consecration of The Blessed Sacrament (the Holy Eucharist) Itself Directly out of THE BIBLE!! Will you have the Truth in mind or will you simply believe it to be true because you read it in a Jack Chick cartoon tract?

Being a True Christian is a challenge and the war is waging between good and evil -- I hope and Pray everyone will answer their calling to be a true Child of The Light.