The Journey of Jesus: The Calling

Now you too can “walk in the Messiah’s steps, in an authentic experience of Israel in Christ’s time” with an interactive video game entitled "The Journey of Jesus." (link)

The gameplay is pretty simple. You walk through parts of Jesus's life following the Gospels. The idea is to create a conversation among young consumers about faith, and to have an interactive and engaging (and accurate) Scripture lesson.

The Jesus character in the game is drawn as an animate, big-headed and big-eyed man with a beard. Except for the smile and weird bulgyness, it fits pretty closely to classic European depictions of Christ.

The facebook for the game describes it as follows: "Play the first ever video game about Jesus! A fun adventure quest game where you overcome obstacles, fulfill missions, and participate in miracles. Play the story of Jesus! Journey of Jesus: The Calling is a fun adventure where you play a major part in the Gospel story. Follow Jesus, accomplish missions, be a part of miracles and fulfill your calling!"

Anyway, if you get curious it's a facebook platform game so you can give it a try. I'll post the game trailer below as well. It's worth noting that religious video games are not yet a phenomena, as noted in the major flop of the supremely weird "Zoo Race" game inspired by Noah's Ark. It's hard to tell whether these games will become more popular enough.

Just try to remember that the Messiah actually was killed, so don't feel too bad when you die. It's all a part of the game.

Are you feeling blasphemous?

A catchy title, indeed. Another humorous Jesus-related internet search result for you today, folks. I found this funny article and thought I'd share it with you; it's supposedly the ten funniest Jesus images online. These are my favorites:

The second picture absolutely kills me, good grief.

Catholic Clergy Crackdown

Apparently Pope Francis has decided to take an up-front position against sexual abuse in the church.

"The Holy Father in a special way urged that the Congregation, following the line sought by Benedict XVI, act decisively in sex abuse cases, above all promoting measures to protect minors, assistance for all those who in the past suffered such violence, necessary measures against the guilty," the statement said of Francis' meeting with Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Mueller. (link)

In another twist on tradition, the Pope allegedly wants to take a stance against not only the clergy responsible for these harrowing accounts of abuse, but also against those who support and cover up the crimes. Often, higher-placing officials such as bishops and cardinals play a role in hiding the scandals that seem to be rampant in the Catholic Church.

Some are skeptical about how effective the Pope will truly be about this unconfirmed aspect of the new regime. Many make anecdotes to his slow reactions to Argentinian sexual abuse instances, and believe it's just another official making just another promise. Some, however, heeding the name that Pope Francis chose for himself, believe that he will ring in a new era of modern policy and discipline.

We'll just have to stay tuned to find out.

BioLogos vs. ID

I think I should probably put an anecdote about BioLogos in here, because I don't want readers to confuse BioLogos with ID. BioLogos is closer to the belief that a designer influenced the processes of creation and evolution in the universe, and the support for this lies mostly in statistics. In the book I'm reading for my report, "Language of God," the evidence is presented fairly compellingly. But again. Not to be confused with ID, which believes that the historical science left about evolution, the age of the earth, etc. is just an extended red herring.

More on BioLogos later though, perhaps after my book report. For now, here's a link to a more in-depth description of the differences between BioLogos and ID on the BioLogos domain.

Intelligent Design

You've probably heard the term used before: Intelligent Design, or more simply, ID. It sounds pretty impressive, and the sponsor site of ID lists it as a science. It is written about in a way that seems reasonable and even legitimate:

"Intelligent design refers to a scientific research program as well as a community of scientists, philosophers and other scholars who seek evidence of design in nature. The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. Through the study and analysis of a system's components, a design theorist is able to determine whether various natural structures are the product of chance, natural law, intelligent design, or some combination thereof. Such research is conducted by observing the types of information produced when intelligent agents act. Scientists then seek to find objects which have those same types of informational properties which we commonly know come from intelligence. Intelligent design has applied these scientific methods to detect design in irreducibly complex biological structures, the complex and specified information content in DNA, the life-sustaining physical architecture of the universe, and the geologically rapid origin of biological diversity in the fossil record during the Cambrian explosion approximately 530 million years ago." link

This sounds really fine and dandy, but what are they actually selling?

"Intelligent design begins with the observation that intelligent agents produce complex and specified information (CSI). Design theorists hypothesize that if a natural object was designed, it will contain high levels of CSI. Scientists then perform experimental tests upon natural objects to determine if they contain complex and specified information."

So, perhaps this isn't as sound as it appears.

The actual belief of ID (no, I'm not joking here) is that God created the natural world and place red herrings such as evidence for evolution, the ages of the rocks, radiometric dating, etc. to mislead us and test our faith in him. All of the historical science we have come to believe in is a hoax to separate the faithful from the unfaithful, and to see if we'll continue to believe Scripture in light of evidence. While the propaganda put out by the ID campaigners may mislead you to believe it is a more legitimized science, the core value is just that.

But where's the evidence? They often site "irreducibly complex structures" such as flagellum on bacterium that don't appear to have had any path for evolution to have created them. They also like mentioning the complexity of DNA. However, bioscientists have met with a good amount of success in squashing these arguments through circumstantial evidence, so don't think too long about it.

Apocryphal Shape-Shifting

In an Egyptian text recently translated, the time before Jesus's crucifixion is described in great detail with an interesting new twist. Apparently, Jesus was not only a magical man of works, but also a shape-shifter.

The text describes the reasons why Judas had to use a kiss in order to identify Jesus. Jesus did not appear the same to all men: "Then the Jews said to Judas: How shall we arrest him [Jesus], for he does not have a single shape but his appearance changes. Sometimes he is ruddy, sometimes he is white, sometimes he is red, sometimes he is wheat coloured, sometimes he is pallid like ascetics, sometimes he is a youth, sometimes an old man ..." Judas suggested the kiss as a means to signal Jesus's identity to the men wanting to arrest him because a description of his appearance would not have worked.

The idea of a shape-shifting Jesus (also given as an example when he becomes ghost-like and then disappears during a dinner with Pilates, and even later in a tidbit from Origen) suggests a more divine representation of Jesus that classically accepted. Instead of appearing completely human and merely completing divine works, this Egyptian Jesus was manifested with clear supernatural abilities evident in his appearance.

I'll be interested to find out if other works reflect this particular ability.

Jesus Was Way Cool!

This may perhaps be the most intriguing pro-Jesus musical score I have ever heard. Titled simply "Jesus was way cool" by King Missile III, the song has some intriguing and simplistic suggestions of what powers Jesus held.

Lyrics:

Jesus was way cool
Everybody liked Jesus
Everybody wanted to hang out with him
Anything he wanted to do, he did
He turned water into wine
And if he wanted to
He could have turned wheat into marijuana
Or sugar into cocaine
Or vitamin pills into amphetamines

He walked on the water
And swam on the land
He would tell these stories
And people would listen
He was really cool

If you were blind or lame
You just went to Jesus
And he would put his hands on you
And you would be healed
That's so cool

He could've played guitar better than Hendrix
He could've told the future
He could've baked the most delicious cake in the world
He could've scored more goals than Wayne Gretzky
He could've danced better than Barishnikov
Jesus could have been funnier than any comedian you can think of
Jesus was way cool

He told people to eat his body and drink his blood
That's so cool
Jesus was so cool
But then some people got jealous of how cool he was
So they killed him
But then he rose from the dead
He rose from the dead, danced around
Then went up to heaven
I mean, that's so cool
Jesus was way cool

No wonder there are so many Christians

Questionable Artwork

It appears that earlier this month a billboard in Auckland depicting "gay baby Jesus" was put up for sale starting at $300. The billboard was a part of a church campaign for gay acceptance, but many conservatives took it to heart. It featured baby Jesus with a rainbow halo and the words "It's Christmas. Time for Jesus to come out." No word yet on how much it sold for, but some potential buyers requested that it be repainted to represent "straight baby Jesus" before the sale.

The seller seemed generally amused by this request and made no objection.

Jesus: Healer, Carpenter, Messiah... twitter fanatic.

Jesus has taken to the interwebs! Or at least someone masquerading as Jesus had. The popular twitter account @Jesus has over 550,00 followers and less that 500 tweets, but I wouldn't say that most of those followers are Christians looking for inspiration. Instead of biblical treatsies, the @Jesus account offers random and often witty tweets worthy of any teenage blogger's Twitter account. Here are some of the best ones: