Pessimistic Politics: Chick Tract Trashing

When you compare Chick tracts to most anything else in the world, they win the weirdness contest much more often than not. It’s a real feat when one single Chick tract wins the weirdness tract above all the others. Using some reckless armchair tallying, I think we can declare the winner of the Chick Tract Weirdness Award with What’s Wrong with This?

What makes this an odd tract is that it turns the usual Chick conventions upside-down. Instead of the usual Ignorant Guy and Perfect Christian Guy, we have a character that seems to already have a knee on the ground and loudly and angrily slams other religions, just like a Chickian, except for the loud and angry parts. Another oddity about this tract is it almost demonizes the symbol of the cross, which is something I never expected. This tract also seems to trip on its own feet in regards to its message, which you better believe I’ll be mentioning later.

The tract starts out in an art museum where a middle-aged well-to-do woman is ranting about a painting (which serves as the tract’s cover) depicting a stereotypical African tribesman (complete with spear and a bone through the nose) praying to a bird statue. She finds this “disgusting” and “blasphemy” because “He’s worshipping a THING!” We’re almost tricked into believing that she’s this tract’s Perfect Christian Guy, if it weren’t for the fact that she was yelling and screaming. This accurately reflects real psycho Christians, and you can bet Chick won’t be having any of THAT in his tracts.

The museum curator steps in and explains “that’s his god and he prays to it,” to which the woman remarks “That’s stupid!” The curator defends the practice by explaining “He talks to his god and tells it all about his troubles… and asks for help. What’s wrong with that?” Okay, this guy is definitely the heathen of the story. No self-respecting Chickian would condone another religion! Yep, Bob Williams will show up any minute now and put these two on the goodly path. Either that or the angry woman will serve as this tract’s Christian in an uncharacteristic display of flaws. Oh, the suspense!

The woman questions his sanity and claims that the “dumb idol” can’t help him because “he made it” and “No one does that in the civilized world.” Looks like someone’s never read a Chick tract before in her life… wait a second! She can’t be the Christian! Bob’s sure to show up now!

The curator questions her belief and asks her if she knows when idol worship started. Ever snippy, the woman replies, “No. But I suppose you do, smarty pants!” Whoa, with language like that, there’s no way she can be a Christian. Bob, your cue! Meanwhile, an evil heathen kid decides to play a prank on an innocent old man by… pulling a single hair off of his balding head. Damn kids these days.

Also, if you look in the background, you'll see a portrait of a dog. This is none other than Fang, a critter that frequently makes appearances in Chick tracks, but doesn't contribute anything besides comical relief in the background. If you keep reading this tract, you'll notice that this section of the art museum seems to be devoted to religious paintings. Why Fang is there, I have no idea, unless he's supposed to be the head of another heathen religion. Frankly, I don't think I'd mind a religion headed by Fang, since he's kind of cute.

The curator explains that back in Noah’s times, the people turned away from God and worshiped idols. Except Noah, of course, who, with his family, survived the Great Flood that everyone in the world knows about, taking with it all of the idols, but not all of “the sin in their hearts.” Idols with hearts? Those heathens really had an eye for detail!

In all seriousness, what bothers me here is God wipes out almost everyone in the world because of sin he knew would happen, and then acts annoyed when Noah’s family produces another batch of sinners, which he knew was going to happen, too. Let’s face it: God likes to start trouble.

So humanity wrings its clothes out and starts sinning again, the flood completely forgotten. They built a city dubbed Babylon, which gives rise to an evil queen (damn those women and their feminist rights!) named Semiramis, who, with her son, whose name was, seriously, I’m not kidding, “Nimrod,” created a powerful religion (on a side note, the guy does look like an idiot, with his horn and vacant expression and everything). Despite being the founders, Semiramis desperately wanted to be a goddess, but couldn’t simply declare it so, for some reason.

Well, with a name like Nimrod, you know his life can’t turn out too well, so he dies. Then, Semiramis gives birth to another child and claims that the child is Nimrod reborn as the Sun God, making her, as stated in the Official Heathen Theological Handbook, a goddess. And so the people worshiped Nimrod the Sun God, which is actually kind of catchy.

Statues of the mother and son were build abound, and people worshipped them (sometimes they were given different names; don’t want those heathens to seem too consistent). I’m actually very disappointed in Chick here. If you’ve read through some of his Catholic pieces, you’d know that in Chick’s world, the Catholics worship something similar to the Sun God. They also worship Jesus AND Mary, which is almost in the same context as the Semiramis and Nimrod statues. Chick passed up a huge opportunity to put the smack down on the Catholics here, and it was so obvious, I’m surprised he missed it. Shame on you, getting careless in your old age.

Then things get pretty boring after a while. The curator goes on to explain that God hates graven images, and these can include paintings (so worshipping a picture of a statue of an emerald cow isn’t a valid loophole).

He then explains that Jesus is the only way to salvation, acting as the mediator or “defense attorney” to protect us from God’s wrath. This defense attorney analogy makes sense. If you pay an attorney, he’ll pretend you’re innocent no matter how many rotten things we’ve done (“Can you prove that those fifteen witnesses and the surveillance camera actually SAW my client beat that nun with a lead pipe while screaming out ‘When you get to Hell, tell ‘em Charlie sent you?!’ ”). In Jesus’ case, all you have to do is repent, and he’ll get you off the hook (“You have done terrible, terrible things, and you’re going to the fiery pits of… oh, wait! You repented before you killed yourself! Well, then, welcome, Adolph, into the glory of heaven!”). No wonder Chick keeps going on about how this is a sweet deal! Why, if OJ had that kind of defense lawyer, he would have… oh yeah. Never mind, he did all right anyway.

I may as well mention this, but the old guy whose hair was unlawfully and forcibly plucked decides he has needs some self-remedied victim’s compensation and dares to cross the sacred guard rope and get a closer look at the pictures. This guy is definitely going to Hell.

The curator explains that “God’s plan to save us is simple… so easy that people stumble over it.” Other religions (headed by Satan) hate this, “So they demand you do ‘good works’ and set impossible goals, to control you” and “Instead of going to Jesus, they pray to these deaf, dumb, blind statues of all shapes and sizes…” Wow, claiming that disabled statues are evil. Have you no shame, Jack T. Chick?!

We learn that the goal of other religions is simple: “To get [you] to miss God’s precious gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ and billions will miss it.” Of course these other religions don’t really believe what they teach! It’s just one big conspiracy to send billions into eternal torment! Chickians are the only ones who have the right religion, proof be damned! And did the curator ever change his tune about other religions since the start of this tract!

The woman reveals that she’s made a mistake and takes out her cross necklace. The curator tells her “that’s just simply religious junk. You don’t need it.” The symbol of Jesus Christ’s ultimate loving sacrifice and the symbol of hope for millions, and it’s just junk! I know this is supposed to be Catholic rosary prayer beads, but still, I was really shocked by this line. No wonder no one likes Chick; he can’t even give the Christians a symbol to identify themselves with.

So, our flawed Perfect Christian Guy informs the lady how to get saved, and she does, and everyone’s happy. Chick has established that the cross is junk, so now all of you Chickians have to rip the covers off your Bibles and toss those worthless cross trinkets out the window. You may want to black-out all mentions of the word “cross” in your Bibles, too, just to be on the safe side.

In case your wondering about the evil heathen hair-yanking kid, his deed is illustrated during the boring parts of the tract, so for those who are interested, he’s his entire story compiled into one convenient graphic. Better study him well, because you’ll have to keep an eye out for him when you go to Hell, lest he pulls a single hair from YOUR head. Evil child.

All images are from Chick.com and are owned by them, as if anyone else would want to claim responsibility. If you want to check out this tract in its entirety, click here. If the address doesn't work, contact me immediately, since there's an off-chance our friendly Chickians decided to change the URL. What, they don't want MORE hits?