A Curious Girl: A matter of priorities

How is it that Bible.com can come out so vehemently anti-Pokemon and so incredibly moderate when it comes to the death penalty? (See their 'Bible Answers' section. Can't be bothered to give the link to all the articles to which I am about to refer) Personally I think that Pokemon is annoying and a bit twisted, but they're happy to accept governments killing people (albeit murderers) yet think that Pokemon is turning our generation into the next lot of Satanists, by which I mean the devil-worshipping human sacrificing kind, rather than the atheistic type who dabble in New Age and call themselves the Church of Satan so they can annoy as many Christians as possible. When it comes down to it, the death penalty is usually only for those with downmarket lawyers, and I generally place myself with the school of thought who would rather a thousand guilty people went free than one innocent person punished, and punishing an innocent person with death is surely the worst miscarriage of justice. Plus I believe in second chances - as much as anyone deserves death, surely the hallmark of the Christian faith is that those deserving death don't get it?

*sigh* That and I get very annoyed at people saying that any arguments other than their argument are 'the tools the Devil uses'(or something). (They do this specifically on their article on Hell) I do believe in the Devil, but I've already confessed my reservations about the subject of Hell and I resent the implication that my inability to reconcile the fundamentalist view of Hell with my view of a loving God is somehow Satan-inspired. It almost makes me want to turn into an atheist with New Age tendencies :) Not that I'd ever do that, perhaps because my optimism presses me to try for the best possible version of God. Sometimes I get the distinct feeling that I am a heretic. At least I admit it, eh?

And then we have the subtle inclusion argument that children (and teenagers) are violent because of computer games and Marilyn Manson. The thing is, I've known plenty of people who've played Doom and the like, in fact I used to have great fun doing co-op matches, think I had one with Nicky once, and zapping faceless monsters, I do believe, has not turned me into a worse person. The most violent thing I've done soon after a Doom match is probably have a playfight with my brother, during which, as I know but optimistically ignore, he inevitably would have won by tickling me into surrender. Has it ever occurred to these people that whilst zapping faceless monsters and playing games where cuddly toys attack each other and turn into other cuddly toys, whilst perhaps not the greatest influence on our children, is not the main problem. Maybe teenage murderers play Doom because they are violent, not the other way around? I cannot think of a case where a child murderer did not come from an atmosphere of neglect, abuse, or extreme hardship. Obviously it's not good practice to show the lobby scene from The Matrix to a small child whilst wowing about how cool it is, and the WWF is not going to teach children how to negotiate their way around a bully, but I don't think that these things are the main problem. It sometimes seems to me as if some people think that they can yell, "Pokemon, Doom and Harry Potter are all evil! Lock them away from your children!" and consider that they have done their bit in making the world safer for the kids. Rubbish. What about actually getting in there and helping out the kids, and their families? Rachel Scott, who died in the Columbine High School massacre, wrote an essay in which she said she counted compassion highest among her values and encouraged her readers to start a 'chain reaction' of compassion. I have a lovely book about her called Rachel's Tears in which there are plenty of testimonies from people she touched with her compassion. Is this not much more effective that ranting about how Pokemon is 'stealing the childhood from our children' (so said an anti-Pokemon book I found in CLC)? Perhaps we'd better start with the Third World employers, the pimps and the child molesters who are stealing the childhood from the world's children, all without resorting to ridiculously improbable names.

Random word for today: invective

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