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My email reply:

Don’t you think Jerry being reincarnated as a cartoonist is punishment enough?

Jeff

Man, if it weren’t for this contract I have with Matt Newton I wouldn’t be posting such an awful comic strip. This is just wrong. What was I thinking hiring him for Freethunk?

Again please refer all complaints to comicblasphemy.com. I believe there’s some fine print in our contract that if there is enough complaints I can cancel the contract and sue Matt for damages, so CC me on any emails.

The article talks about the new trend in Christian Horror or what the editor of Christian-Fandom.org calls “safe horror.” In other words, horror with the bias of Christ. He also states that “safe horror” follows certain guidelines that doesn’t allow for sex, violence and foul language. …Sigh, all the good stuff.

It’s worth picking up a copy for the article because it gives a history of what I would call unrecognized Christian Horror. We’ve been seeing it since The Exorcist and The Omen, which if you think about it are explicitly Christian. These films are not “safe” though in that they aren’t afraid to truly horrify us instead of having demons poof into smoke like Frank Peretti’s comic book like stories of spiritual warfare.

I’m actually for “Christian Horror” but not safe horror. I’ve always said the Bible is X-rated. Feel free to make it into a movie and show it all in detail–see how good people feel about God and Christian love once they come out of the theater.

Unfortunately, Christians don’t have the guts to do just that. “Safe horror” is an excuse not to show what God is really about. Slaughtering people when he feels like it or when they don’t bend to his will. At least the Tim Lahaye novels have blood running in the streets concerning the apocalypse.

I have always wondered about the whole plan of salvation–if it needed to be done, why not get it out of the way as soon as possible?

Otherwise we have wholesale slaughter excused by the need to punish sin, from the Ark to King David’s campaigns to Israel getting its butt kicked by the Romans. For a God who’s perfect, his plan to fix everything seems like a bloody mess.

I would say this is just as good of an explanation as any other for how Jesus got on that cross.

I’m going to start adding The Littlest Atheist to the Freethunk Blog in what I’m calling Series 2. The previous series started out as an experiment which I didn’t know if I was going to continue. I wasn’t sure how freethinkers and specifically atheists would react to a sentimental or what I consider a “family comic strip” about atheism. We tend to think of atheists as people who only read twisted, underground humor with deep meaning or abstract thought. I appreciate all kinds of humor and subversive art, but there are times when I’m simply in the mood for an old-fashioned funny.

Oddly enough I got positive feedback. There appears to be other freethinkers out there who feel the same way. Freethunk! will definitely carry twisted humor on the site (we haven’t kicked Matt Newton off yet) but I think it’s nice to mix in some casual newspaper-style funnies as well.

If you haven’t read what I’m calling Series 1 for The Littlest Atheist there’s plenty to read starting here…