Scarier than clowns: Chick tracts

[galateus]

And now, a holiday classic, showing the true face of that eeevil heathen holiday called Halloween, or as Chick tracts call it...

Satan's birthday!

Comments

[silverzeo]

.... WHAT ARE TALKING ABOUT!?!?!?! Not one thing makes sense. Is he saying there are actual sacrifices happen around on Halloween? And in fact in believe "witchcraft" as an actual WORKING medium agianist God to you too, Chick?

[pyrotwilight]

...But Jesus couldn't cast the Devil out of Heaven, he didn't exist until well, Jesus was born, well after creation. And the Devil was cast out at essentially the beginning on time.

And I'm now arguing the historical correctness of Jesus and the Devil. Yahoo!

[galateus]

Yeah, Trinitiarianism had retcons before retcons were cool.

[sistermagpie]

This kind of blows my mind.

[arilou_skiff]

Jesus is the Word and the Word was with God....

[icon_uk]

Catholocism views the birth of Jesus as a human being as but a part of the continuum of his eternal nature.

[thanekos]

" May the saints preserve 'em. "

well, that guy's going to hell too.

[galateus]

He's probably Catholic too, which is Satanism in disguise.

[merseybeatler]

And the Druids, secretly Egyptians....

[feyandstrange]

THOSE GUYS WERE REALLY SPOOKY

[roguefankc]

I actually didn't catch that until you pointed it out, thank you.

[freezer]

That is a high degree of Did Not Do The Research, even for a Chick Tract.

[merseybeatler]

What is WRONG with that Pastor? What kind of sedatives is he on?

[sinisterlink]

Accept Jesus as your Savior and you too can be insanely mellow.

[dr_zeus]

Pretty scary. I bet it's not very fun to be Jack Chick.

[stig]

I constantly comfort myself with that when I feel I'm not achieving anything. "Ah well...my life's not that bad...I could be Robert Mugabe...or Tim Buckley...or Jack Chick."

[proteus_lives]

Such glorious nonsense.

It still amazes that churchs still hand this shit out like it's serious.

[dorksidefiker]

There's a client where I work who used to leave them scattered around the sitting area and would stick them on the beds every chance she got. Then I printed out Lisa and gave it to her, and that was the end of that.

Still, it always amazed me that this woman, who for the most part comes off as sane, rational, and reasonable, would buy in to this kind of thing.

[psychopathicus_rex]

I'm curious now - what is 'Lisa'? Some Chick antidote?

[nordgren]

It's a Chick tract, and I guess it's sort of an antidote. It's vile enough I'm literally nauseous just thinking about the foul thing.

[psychopathicus_rex]

Ah - so it's something in the nature of snake venom being used to cure snake bites, then. Actually, I may have read it - is that the one about the abusive parents who stop being abusive once they've blah blah blah, and just blithely reassure their daughter that everything will be all right now?

[nordgren]

That's the one. Though I'd phrase it as "the one where raping your five year old daughter is OK as long as you find Jesus afterwards".

[psychopathicus_rex]

That's a nasty one, all right. What's nastier is that there are probably plenty of people who believe it.

[neuhallidae]

I don't get them as often now that I'm on evening shift, but when I was on night shift, I'd end up with entire handfuls courtesy of the early Sunday morning crowd. And at both of my old apartments when I was in college, whenever I went away to visit family for the weekend, I tended to come back to several shoved through the mail slot in my door. I miss the apartments, but not that.

[kingrockwell]

Back when I was still at the grocery store I once found a stack left on one of my shelves. It was bizarre.

[sailorlibra]

Yeah, I really don't understand it. I found one tacked up to the hallway wall of my dorm a few weeks ago. I was so surprised that I actually read through the whole thing to make sure it wasn't really something making fun of Chick and his ridiculous attitude. Sadly, it was not. But it's okay, I took it down and recycled it.

[leikomgwtfbbq]

There was a Halloween on one of the shelves I was cleaning at work today. Manager told me to toss it. I so wanted to keep it. XD

[leikomgwtfbbq]

*one on one of*

I KIN TIPE GUD HURR HURR

[sinisterlink]

Oh hey, at work today one of the servers met a little girl who is probably a huge Chick fan. My server friend was telling me how she hadn't been saying "Happy Halloween" to anyone, just to avoid any sort of weirdness about it. But she decided to say it to one little girl who looked about ten and she said that after she said "Happy Halloween" the little girl just kind of stared at her and was like, "I DO NOT celebrate Halloween. It is of the Devil." Yep.

As a Christian myself, I love it when other Christians (or those who claim to be Christian) go on and on about how Pagan and horrible Halloween is because of its origins all while ignoring the fact that the majority of holidays (including Christmas and Easter) have Pagan origins. Silly people.

Anyhoo, as for the strip itself, boy, I sure remember all of those times when I went to Halloween parties and we sacrificed things to Satan. Oh wait, that never happened. I kind of love the panels with Satan bothering the kid who is praying. Like how hilarious would that be, everytime you start praying, he just pops up all, "Ooga Booga!" and then you just throw a Bible verse at him and he runs off like, "Curses, foiled again!" On a final note, someone totally needs to icon that, "@!!!**! I forgot my chain saw" line.

[psychopathicus_rex]

Oh, that is SAD. It reminds me of one time at my elementary school where they had a book fair that partially involved students displaying 'books' they'd made and written themselves. Among the entries from kindergarten and first grade was one talking about how Easter was NOT about the Easter Bunny and eggs and having a good time, Easter was about Jesus dying and how we should all feel bad about thinking otherwise. I swear, I almost wept. Just what kind of life is that kid going to have?

[halialkers]

Actually the concept of the holiday as Christians have it is *Jewish* in origin. Sukkot, the High Holy Days, and suchlike were a great influence on proto-Christianity. The way the festivals happened later were indisputably influenced in both timing and the means of celebrating them by the pre-Christian festivals though the very first Christians, as Shabbataens of the 1st Century were hardly the types to rip off Roman festivals. They were more the types to disrupt things with the 1st Century equivalent of protesting funerals.

[chaobell]

Did you notice the snake on a leash in the "forgot my chainsaw" panel?

Snake. ON A LEASH. I lol'd hard.

[karunya]

Snakes don't have necks. But they DO have hips, so I guess it wouldn't fall all the way off. @#$%, here I am dissecting Jack Chick's drawings, when I ought to be telling you (as a Methodist minister) that the vast majority of Christians are NOT like that. When I get as mellow as that pastor, a large amount of chocolate is usually involved.

[sallymustard]

Remember, kids: Evangelism makes you more attractive!

The more you know:

[nefrekeptah]

So you remember kids; sacrificing a kitten may seem like harmless Halloween fun, but the hard truth is that it leads to the Dark Lord Satan barging in while disguised as a pumpkin and killing you with his chainsaw!

...what?!

[psychopathicus_rex]

You know, I can sort of understand Jack Chick getting the druids and so forth wrong - he is, after all, a know-nothing nitwit who believes D&D and Harry Potter to be direct links to Satanism, so one can't really expect him to do the basic research - but I have to raise my eyebrows JUST a little when he starts getting HIS OWN DAMN RELIGION WRONG. No, Jack Chick, the druids did NOT go from house to house seeking human sacrifice, and neither was Satan created by friggin' Jesus. GOD was the guy who did that. I'm quite enthusiastically NOT a Christian, and even I know that.

[nezchan]

As I recall, a lot of the "druids practiced human sacrifice" comes from Roman propaganda when that part of Europe was being invaded. Propaganda from wars being later taken as truth isn't exactly a rare thing.

[psychopathicus_rex]

Oh, I don't doubt it - but there's much more accurate stuff out there on druids these days. Hell, a quick check on Wikipedia would have told him all he needed to know.

[halialkers]

The ones who really did commit human sacrifice were the Germanics. If Caesar and Tacitus can be trusted both Odin and the Goddess Nerthus regularly received human sacrifices (which in a fine example of Graeco-Roman hypocrisy was deemed as evil even as the Graeco-Romans engaged in them in the Gladiator matches). The Druids were destroyed because as the Celtic analogue to the Brahmins they were probably seen by the Romans as potential revolutionaries.

OTOH people tend to blame the Christians for the destruction of the druids when that happened under the reigns of Emperors Claudius, Nero, and Vespasian, none of whom were remotely Christian.

[nezchan]

I would say the "If Caesar and Tacius can be trusted..." bit is rather critical here, particularly the former.

As I recall, the Christians were pretty nasty in Iceland, and despite my maternal heritage I have no love for the antics of St. Patrick.

[halialkers]

Well, at one point the idea of Carthaginian child-sacrifice was poo-pooed but it turns out that of all the things for the Romans to be right on........yeah.

Personally I think it's worth noting also that Christianity centers on a human sacrifice and its most sacred rite is theologically speaking cannibalism in the first place, so somehow the only difference is that bread and wine is supposed to substitute for it. Where 2,000 years later I end up thinking "LOL NO DO NOT WANT"

Christian conversion was always a nasty and bloody business, yes. Islam tended to convert by merchant trade, but Christianity pretty much always did so at either the tip of the sword or barrel of the gun.

[halialkers]

There's one slight problem with that: the new Testament explicitly identifies Christ/God the Son as Creator of the world and Omniscient. What that says about a seemingly perfect deity who foreknowingly creates Satan knowing the Devil would be foreordained to rebel and destroy 1/3 the angelic host and does this with said full knowledge is a different question. IMHO it makes God perhaps the biggest example of a Dumbass out there.

[psychopathicus_rex]

...Durr? How does that... that doesn't make any SENSE. How can he be God and the son of God at the same time?
Oh well, it's not like I have a personal stake in all this. Chalk up another example of Christian logic feeding on itself like the worm Ouroborous.

I think this is my most suitable icon for this kind of discussion XP

[halialkers]

It hasn't made much sense to too many Christians, either. The idea of the Trinity prompted one of the most serious "heresies" (aka Christians outside the control of the priesthood) in the Church's history in the form of Arianism. Of course Arius also saw Christ as God, he just saw Christ as a created God-Savior whose death brought about the same result that the Athanasians saw in it. Frankly IMHO if Arianism had taken over the resulting theology would have turned into something just as complex.

The Trinity, which is one of two real Christian innovations, and Christology produced the historical schisms prior to the Reformation, as the first schism was actually over the Council of Chalcedon in the Fifth Century, which declared Christ was both fully God and fully Man and the two did not fight but had a single will. The Christians of the Malabar Coast, the Sassanian Empire, and the Kingdom of Axum (where modern Ethiopia is) had none of that and left the Church.

Needless to say Christians have never agreed on who or what Christ is even down to whether or not Christ's divine and human natures did or did not agree.

Re: I think this is my most suitable icon for this kind of discussion XP

[psychopathicus_rex]

Yeegh, I'm gettin' a headache just thinking about it. If I had to pick a resurrected savior-type, I'd go with Osiris. Osiris is awesome.

Re: I think this is my most suitable icon for this kind of discussion XP

[halialkers]

Eh, if I had to pick a deity to serve I'd probably end up choosing Coyote or Loki.

Re: I think this is my most suitable icon for this kind of discussion XP

[psychopathicus_rex]

Coyote or Loki? Dude, Coyote is a trickster - you serve him, you'd end up being stuck with all his restaurant bills, and having to face down endless angry husbands who are convinced that YOU, not him, have just slept with their wives. Anyway, he's more of a folk hero/spirit type - I'm not sure you can exactly worship him. As for Loki, I know that opinions vary as to just how malevolent he actually IS, but even at his most benevolent, he is one unpredictable SOB - he might answer your prayers one moment, and surrender you to a frost giant in the next. He has a certain style, I agree, but I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him, and trust is a certain prerequisite in worshipping someone, yes?

Re: I think this is my most suitable icon for this kind of discussion XP

[halialkers]

And compared to the likes of Thor or Zeus or Quetzalcoatl?

Re: I think this is my most suitable icon for this kind of discussion XP

[psychopathicus_rex]

Well, Thor is a short-tempered but good-hearted badass warrior god of the people, so no problem there; Zeus may have slept around like crazy and been a bit on the petty side, but he's a decent enough guy is you stay on his good side, and while I don't know much about Quetzalcoatl, I'm led to believe he wasn't too bad compared to some of his bloodthirsty compatriots.

[hurricane-jam.livejournal.com]

How I got it explained to me was that people frickin' loved Jesus to the point of praying to him, but the church considered that idolatry (because it was treating Jesus like God) and tried to get people to stop. Later they were like, fuck it, Jesus, God, same person. In other words, worlds screwist retcon.

[psychopathicus_rex]

Ohh. So, basically, a retcon.

[psychopathicus_rex]

...which you'd already said. Boy, that was clever of me.

[halialkers]

Eh, like always it's rather more complicated there. The very first Christians led by St. James the Just, brother of Christ, saw him as merely a great religious teacher in the Muhammad-Hillel-Shammai vein. The Pauline sect went from Moral Paragon to God in the flesh. The first Christians were all wiped out by the Sicarii in AD 70 where the Paulines went on to win the Battle of the Milvian Bridge and you know the rest of the story.

[sir_mikael]

The moral of the story? Shoot anyone dressed up on Halloween. It's probably the Devil "in disguise".

Also what's with everyone, including the freakin Devil, saying it's his birthday (gonna party like it's his birthday), when they make clear it's not?

[psychopathicus_rex]

Maybe he doesn't HAVE a real birthday, so he figures Halloween is as good a substitute as any, what with all the cat-sacrificin' and such.

[karunya]

That's a rare positive portrayal of a cat in Chick's "art". Usually they are downright ebil. Says the pious reverend whose black cat is named Anya after the vengeance demon on "Buffy". Yet again I repeat: WE ARE NOT ALL LIKE THIS!!!

[psychopathicus_rex]

It's not exactly a 'positive portrayal' - the cat only shows up in two panels, completely panicked. For all we know, it was an eeeeeeeevil kitty.
Don't worry - I'm under no illusions that all Christians are like Jack Chick. I have some issues with Christianity itself, but I've got no beef with Christians, so long as they accept that I, myself, am not one.

[ninjapeps]

Church officials over here in the Philippines obviously read this and agree 100%.

[stig]

There's a very very good 'dissection' of this and many other Tracts at Enter The Jabberwock.

http://www.enterthejabberwock.com/?p=582

[sistermagpie]

Of all the things wrong here it's silly to focus on this, but I love the way that when the Druids go house to house collecting human sacrifices (wtf?) they leave a jack o'lantern in return...and it's a pumpkin.

Pretty sure the pumpkin is an American twist.

[icon_uk]

Indeed, swede or turnip lanterns were what we used to carve when I were a lad in Scotland.

They showed a Poirot set during Halloween last week, and the fact that the upper-middle class lady hosting a party in England during the late 1920's or early 1930's had the kids carving pumpkins screamed out at me as being unlikely. Unless anyone prove me wrong on that one.

[g1andyp]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the original legend around Jack-O-Lanterns about this guy named Jack, cutting up a turnip or something to protect himself from the devil?

Because protecting oneself from the devil is definitely satanic.

In fact, isn't that where the dressing up part came from too?

[halialkers]

This is why I'm always WTF at some of the craziest shit the Protestant side of Christianity comes up with. Proto-Catholico-Orthodoxy created All Saint's Day to remember the dead. It certainly had nothing to do with the remnants of pre-Christian Celtic practices, as the Roman nobles that formed the Christian calendar inherited pre-Christian Rome's denunciations of the pre-Christian celts as trouser-wearing barbarians.

As far as I remember, human sacrifice was also a practice of Germanic and not Celtic religion and pretty much was dead (hurr hurr) by the time the Christian Roman Empire was converting the Germanic tribes by the sword. For that matter, the whole concept of the Christian Satan is to me a cheap rip-off of the creature Angra Mainyu of Zoroastrian mythology.

[psychopathicus_rex]

And the imagery came from Pan, and the name, if I recall correctly, comes from a Babylonian demon... Basically, Christianity never had an original idea in its life; virtually everything in it is cobbled together from other religions, and they snitched all the holy days, too.

[halialkers]

The imagery did come from Pan, however Ha-Satan is a Jewish term that does appear in the book of Job. But the Jewish Satan is more a Heavenly Lawyer than he is a Dark Lord clad in ice and fire and with eyes that make angels wet themselves in fear. The Christian version of Satan is essentially an Abrahamicized version of Angra Mainyu, who owes his origins ironically to the pre-Islamic and pre-Christian religion of guess where? Iran. Essentially Iran invented Satan.

[psychopathicus_rex]

That sounds convincing enough, all right. I'm pretty sure, though, that there was some sort of pre-Christian Babylonian demon with a name like that - Shaitan, or something.

[halialkers]

Actually the term really *did* originate with Biblical Judaism. The concept iof evil in cultures prior to the rise of the monotheistic Empires like the Roman Empire and the Caliphate was a bit more complex than the Morgoth v. Illuvatar-type setting a lot of the odder wings of Protestantism turn it into.

Even in the 1,000 year span of the Age of Warlords (300-1300) the take on Satan was a bit more complicated than his being the first evil overlord.

[psychopathicus_rex]

Well, OK, you clearly know more about the subject than I do. (I've never even HEARD of Morgoth and Illuvatar.) Personally, I've always kinda gotten the impression that if Satan DOES exist, he's just a low-level con-man type who is consistently bewildered that everyone thinks he's the Lord of Darkness. I mean, how bad can someone who's based on Pan really be?

LOL:

[halialkers]

Morgoth's the first bad guy in the Tolkien-verse and is essentially a physical Satan. He's also a lot more like the Satan of modern mythology than the original one of the myth does. IMHO any being that would qualify as prince of demons, which in all mythologies are nasty not-nice supernatural beings *would* have to be a jackass for the same reasons that the bigger the regime, usually the nastier the human government. Given that rulers of gods are also nasty not-nice, it's fair to say that anything sufficiently powerful enough to cow demons would have to be evil as the default.

Such a being would probably be a supernatural Genghis Khan in terms of evil more than a supernatural Mao.

Re: LOL:

[psychopathicus_rex]

Ah. No wonder I haven't heard of him - I'm not a big Tolkien fan. 'The Hobbit' is great stuff, but I've yet to make my way through the first 'Rings' book.
I just always got mixed messages from the traditional portrayal of the Devil. On one hand, yeah, logic would seem to dictate that he would have to be this awe-inspiringly evil figure. On the other, he's supposed to be a masterful musician and fiddler, which is not a traditionally evil attribute, there are all sorts of folktales about him being duped fairly easily (my favorite would have to be the one about the farmer who gets him to do something on the condition that his soul will be his 'once this candle burns down', then blows it out and shoves it inside a bible, which the Devil can't touch), he gets 'that old rascal' sorts of nicknames like 'Old Scratch' and the like, and I've read at least one story that actually has him being fairly nice, when he's in a good mood.

[kumu_cyne]

While this whole thing makes me sort of weirded out the panel with "I forgot my chainsaw!" makes me laugh hysterically for no good reason.
Also Chick tracts used to scare the hell out of me when I was a little kid. There was a neighbor who handed those out while projecting a movie on his garage door about how Halloween was evil. And not like a nice "kid-friendly" one. The sounds from it could probably be described as a cat being skinned alive with freaky visuals. Needless to say we skipped that house in later years. :/
But yeah, I've just learned to ignore stuff like this for my own sanity. Learned that lesson when I spent a whole day in middle school arguing the age of earth with a friend who deflected any argument I made with "The bible doesn't say that.".

[chaobell]

Clearly, Satan has no power without a chainsaw.

[leikomgwtfbbq]

I wish I had a picture of Jeremy Clarkson with the chainsaw during the Top Gear Bolivian adventure.

"POWERRRRRRRRRRRRRR!"

[kumu_cyne]

:D

[leikomgwtfbbq]

I'll love you forever now. XD

(Also, lol@ James' expression. that man is adorable)

[kumu_cyne]

After I looked it up I had to make a gif. :D
Honestly if I saw Jeremy Clarkson with a chainsaw I'd have an expression similar to that as well. I agree about him being adorable.

[leikomgwtfbbq]

There should be a whole show dedicated to Jeremy running around with a chainsaw and being hilarious. XD

I kind of wish I had Jeremy as a crazy awesome uncle or something. XD

[daggerpen]

So. Much. Facepalm.

[punishermax]

I thought Satan was just sort of a dickhead who made people do bad, he never really straight up kills people.

[karunya]

Cuz according to the story, he knows that if he kills them before they accept Christ, they go to Hell. And if he kills them AFTER they accept Christ, it just ticks God off soooo much. (I'm actually halfway serious about this one.)

[punishermax]

But that's fucking moronic on a million levels.

I'm Catholic so I know a lil bit, enough that Satan won't illegally take my shit.

So basically, Satan's just a pissed off angel who thought taking heaven over'd be cool, got his ass stomped by an Archangel and is now doomed to be the Lord of Dickheads. He never kills people, he never fucking TOUCHES PEOPLE. He lies, he sneaks, he tries to tempt you. SATAN NEVER ACTUALLY HURTS PEOPLE.

This pisses me off because it's so fucking basic, it's so basic in Christianity in general that you can't fuck it up. The Devil doesn't get his hands dirty,

[karunya]

If he or his ebil minions were to tempt somebody with something that will end up killing them: jackass stunts (does that need a (TM) next to it nowadays?), addiction, etc., it's really the same difference I think. For some reason, I'm a target for road rage. Since I refuse to admit that I'm a stereotypical lousy Pennsylvania German driver wearing trifocals, I just assume that the ol' Devil is influencing the drivers around me!

[punishermax]

The difference is that if the Devil just out and out murdered you then you have no hope. There has to be free will of some kind, you ha ve to be able to say either "I did not fall to temptation" or "I failed to be strong enough" if Satan could just pop up, slice off your head and boom you in hell, then the fuck is the point to anything he does?

Satan is more of a idea really, and should be presented as such. I'm not saying him having a name is bad but if you look at Inferno by Dante you get, in my opinion, the best representation of him. Satan is tortured for all time. He fucked up biiiig time and now suffers worse then ANYONE. His sole sort of happiness in a sense is trying to get people to join him. He can't kill you, he can tempt someone but that person is acting of their own will.

[karunya]

This question really strikes at the heart of the difference between the generic Catholic and Protestant worldviews (needless to say, in the real world people hav ea million different interpretations). To a Protestant, for whom salvation is dependant upon God's grace appropriated through repentence and belief in Christ alone, the Devil can't cause a Christian to go to hell. The question is already settled, and past/future sins have no bearing on one's destination.

If one posits the necessity for good works (as does the Roman Catholic Church and certain Protestant sects, blessedly not including mine because I'm lousy at doing good), then the "I fell/did not fall to temptation" question is critical.

I agree that pop culture's view of "the Devil made me do it" is neither accurately Catholic nor Protestant, but a strange and (IMHO) rather useless amalgamation thereof.

Revelation suggests that Satan isn't in the lake of fire yet (assuming, as many Protestants do and Catholics mostly don't) that Revelation is not an allegory but an artistic depiction of future events. And that he's still the default ruler of the unregenerate members of the human race.

My personal opinion: God is way more loving than the Bible suggests, but I'll preach the Gospel to you anyways because faith is a good deal all around, not just in the afterlife but for psychological reasons every day. If God is real, being His friend is a good way to survive the hassles of daily life with imparted strength, wisdom, and tranquility.

As always, just my $0.02. Believe me, as a nursing home chaplain dealing with the elderly and dying, this ain't my first time around the eschatological barnyard, babe. Your mileage may differ. At this point in my own adventures, the Protestant worldview is a lens that makes sense of the world around me.

[halialkers]

And when one factors in Eastern and Oriental Orthodoxy the mess gets higher and deeper. I don't know very much about Oriental Orthodoxy but at least in Eastern Orthodoxy Satan is much less a bugaboo than he is in Western Catholicism and Protestantism, and he only becomes a proto-Morgoth in some of the more radical strands of Protestantism.

[karunya]

Tis true. I thank God for the person who invented the statement "This is something about which good Christians may disagree." I like to include people in, and not exclude them out, to make myself perfectly redundant.

[halialkers]

Yup.

[halialkers]

See the thing is that Biblically, the only time Satan appears as such in the Old Testament is as his Jewish version, the Heavenly version of a Divine Prosecuting attorney and Adversary of the Jewish people in Heaven (in the sense that he is the one responsible for subjecting them to trials). In the New Testament he appears once in the Gospels to tempt Christ in the desert, and once in Revelation to fight and lose a war in Heaven.

The modern take on Satan owes a lot more to John Milton than it does to the actual text, and the original Medieval Satan was a King of Demons who was an outright thuggish buffoon. The idea of Satan the refined man of wealth and taste is very much a more modern take on the Devil. And the mythological Satan is more of a cheap knock-off of Zoroastrianism's Angra Mainyu than an entity that is inherently Abrahamic.

For that matter in Islam Shaitan is actually condemned for following God's commands to the letter and will ultimately enter Paradise same with everyone else in the Muslim cosmology. Christianity has several levels of harshness about it that Judaism and Islam both lack. It's one reason I consider it the outlier of the three.

[halialkers]

Actually in the Bible the only case where Satan is involved in deaths occurs explicitly as the will of God, namely in the Book of Job. And in that book he's very much the Jewish version of a heavenly prosecuting attorney, not a Dark Lord who is in control of all evil. Every single other time the deaths are directly caused by and attributed to God. Needless to say theodicy is one of the most problematic parts of theology for the God-fearing Christian as the Bible really appears to state that Satan's not half as bad as God is.

[combatsoup]

ugh, Jack Chick. We used to have this group that would hang outside my church after certain masses and give out copies of "Are Roman Catholics Christians?"

I had NO idea we weren't considered christians.

[liara_shadowsong]

Take anything and everything Jack Chick says with enough grains of salt to season an entire bucket of fast food fries. In fact, if these sorts say anything at all, assume it is false. At least if it has anything to do with religion; I'm still up in the air whether driving directions from the Jack Chick sorts can be trusted (I'm leaning toward "no", mostly because they make me angry).

Also, hello fellow Roman Catholic! *hugs*

[cypherfdp]

Cough cough, All Saints Day.

[hurricane-jam.livejournal.com]

Ah, the day that Satan recovers from his birthday hangover!

[hamatokameko]

Ha!

[liara_shadowsong]

I have never seen these things at any church I've ever been to, only on the internet. I guess that's one definite good thing that comes of being Catholic? (That the extremist so-called-Christians apparently think we're too beyond saving to inundate us with shit, I mean.) Yay? Also, these sorts of tracts are made primarily of research fail, in addition to art that ranges from blah to eye-searing. May I just say: WTF?!

[blackruzsa]

This is pretty terrible. How stupid can people be, wasting ink on something like this? Halloween was a pagan ritual, simple as that, and it never had anything to do with Satan. You could say exactly the same thing for Christmas.