Sunday, September 25, 2011

They're all NPCs

Okay, so I have to give Judd a few common decency points: apparently he waited with the biker for the ambulance to come and didn't just take his bike and run like I thought he would. As said before, it's getting to where I want to throw a parade every time the characters demonstrate common decency.

Anyway, the biker starts talking about the disappearances though you'd think a world-wide earthquake would have jarred that from his memory, giving Judd a chance to chalk up another for Zod.

"That's the key to understanding the vanishings," Judd said. "It wasn't just people who went to church or were religious that got taken; it was people who knew Jesus as their Savior."


So okay what about all the children and babies who disappeared and when I say babies, I do include fetuses and embryos? I doubt all 3 billion of Earth's children knew Jesus as their savior.

Before you respond with that whole "age of innocence" thing, a funny thing about that: it's not mentioned anywhere in the Bible. And it's my humble belief that if you have to resort to that kind of weaseling to try to explain away the cruelty inherent in your beliefs, maybe you should start asking some questions about said beliefs.

Oh and here's Judd's explanation of the Gospels. Note there is nothing in there about love or anything silly like that.

Judd explained the Gospel. "God created people to have a relationship with him, but people sinned. Since God is holy, he can't tolerate sin. When the time was right, Jesus came into the world and lived a perfect life. Then he died in our place and rose from the dead. Now if poeple ask for forgiveness, Jesus comes into their life and God forgives them."


Of course, the question is if Zod can't tolerate sin, then why did he create us to be a sinful people to begin with, isn't asked. Nor is it asked why he had to wait so many centuries to send Jesus and what happened to all those generations born before him. Are Elijah and the rest of the prophets in hell right now?

Judd then of course, leads the biker through the same prayer that all the other characters prayed because it hast to be that specific wording or the spell won't work and promises to go see the Biker's girlfriend and tell her about Zod, so I bet we have another conversion scene set up.

Not much happening on Lionel's end except that Conrad asks about the phone numbers and names in his belongings. Now to Ryan.

Ryan's legs are paralyzed and things aren't looking good for him. So he decides to write a letter to his friends. I can't help but think that if he has the energy to write, he can't be in that bad of a shape but what do I know.

Chaya meanwhile is still trying to convert her father and I have a sinking feeling that it'll work because all the damned are nameless and off-screen. Y'see Ellanjay aren't anti-Semites: they love Jews so long as they renounce Jewish teachings and stop being so inscrutable and Jewish.

Next chapter. Vicki, Shelly, and Darrion are talking about Our Buck driving his range rover near the church so we can cancel that candlelight vigil we had planned. Again, even the kids know to bow before the awesomeness that is Our Buck and St. Rayford.

Judd meanwhile searches the biker's home. He finds the biker's girlfriend dead and once again there's not a flicker of conscience from Judd. She's an NPC what does he care if she's damned for all eternity. So he grabs a few supplies and moves on, concerned more with logistics than his friends and he runs into three guys and that's the end of his section.

Lionel is going through his stuff trying to remember who he is, when his superior comes in and tells him that he's being transfered to a monitor station as soon as transportation is available. Lionel asks for permission to sleep on it, which makes sense: he's suffered a severe head injury. Why would the NWO even want to use him any more given how bad those can be?

Ryan writes his letter and asks the nurse if she knows Zod. Now to Chaya's section. Chaya is probably experiencing a human reaction to these events: given that she knows how much worse things are going to get, she's actually happy to be dying and going to Heaven. You'd think more of the characters would feel the same way and commit suicide by anti-christ but then we wouldn't have much of a story. Anyway, she's still trying to convert her father comparing him to Pharaoh who would not convert even after sign after sign, completely ignoring all the parts where God hardened his heart so he couldn't convert.

Anyway that's this week's offering. I encourage you all to read Rev Apoc's fanfiction for Left Behind: the kids at Right Behind.

4 comments:

hidden_urchin said...

Your spork this week reminds me of this:

http://www.collegehumor.com/video/5977008/rpg-heroes-are-jerks

Firedrake said...

Actually it's that non-biblical age of innocence thing that causes a lot of the problems with this particular conception of the Rapture. I get a very strong feeling that it may have been invented by L&J at the last moment when someone said "hey, what about the children" - because in the context of the story almost everyone, almost all the time, treats the incident as "a bunch of religious people vanished - oh, and the children". In the real world the religious people would barely be noticed (and if they were, they'd probably be assumed to be involved in it somehow; I can certainly see their friends being toasted over a slow fire to find out where they'd gone).

But this is interesting:

"It wasn't just people who went to church or were religious that got taken; it was people who knew Jesus as their Savior."

"Just"? That implies that it was religious people and RTCs who got vaporised.

"[God] can't tolerate sin". But God can do anything! [fundy head asplode]

You're not the first person to think about what used to be called the Virtuous Pagans - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrowing_of_Hell .

aunursa said...

Since God is holy, he can't tolerate sin.

If God can't allow us into His presence because He can't tolerate sin, AND if Jesus was in the presence of sinners, then the logical conclusion is that Jesus isn't God. Right?

Firedrake: "[God] can't tolerate sin". But God can do anything!

That's not quite what theologians mean by omnipotence. It's not that God can do anything that can be done, but that God can do anything that is within His nature and that He wants to accomplish. For instance, Christians and Jews would say that God would never want to commit a sin.

Apparently Evangelical Christians believe that God's nature or character prevents Him from tolerating sin. Alternately -- or in addition -- Christians might say that God would never want to tolerate sin.

These articles discuss the omnipotence question in further detail:

God Can't Do Everything

Question--aren't you sort misusing the term Omnipotence?

Apocalypse Review said...

I really am wrestling with how to develop a version of the Rapture that could be made to make some sense. Otherwise I can't plausibly invent any kind of reason for them to want to oppose Nicolae Candycane Mountain.

:P