Another apropos-of-nothing post, but out of the many, many famous and semi-famous people who have died in 2016, Jack Chick died on Sunday October 23.
Chick was famous, or semi-famous, for being the author or at least publisher of a vast number of little cartoon booklets printed very cheap and en masse and laid around at various places so that people would pick them up and maybe learn the Gospel, or at least Chick’s version of it. These tracts varied wildly in artistic quality between fairly realistic comic-book style and childish-attempt-at-velvet-painting style, but the tone was always very consistent: Repent and accept Jesus (the REAL Jesus, not the fake Catholic or Episcopal Jesus) or Burn In Hell. Not only did this tone, along with the childish art, undermine the evangelism, it also demonstrates the main flaw of so many evangelists’ approach: Not that Jesus is a loving God, but that people must be scared into submission by telling them that if they don’t obey orders in this life, they will spend Eternity in a roasting pit filled with thieves, drunkards and prostitutes.
I live in Las Vegas. It’s not THAT bad.
But I figured I should at least share the particular Chick tract that made the strongest impression on me.
A few years ago I’d gone to the South Point hotel to attend an event, only to find that the admission line was so damn long that I couldn’t attend and still get up in time for work the next morning. So I walked back out to my car in the parking lot, and nearby my car, on the ground, I found a Chick tract, “on the ground littering the parking lot” being the place where most of us find Chick tracts.
This particular tract was called “Who Is He?” If you want, you can follow along. It’s one of the free samples on Chick’s website: http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/1049/1049_01.asp But I read it, and here’s the part that got me thinking:
Look at the power Jesus holds… IT’S AWESOME!
“For in him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible or invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: All things were created by him, and for him.” (Colossians 1:16)
What keeps the universe from flying apart? IT’S JESUS!
“And he (Jesus) is before all things, and by him all things consist (are held together).” (Col. 1:17)
Jesus is in complete control.
And this really explained a lot to me.
I realized why the universe works the way it does.
You remember, when you were a kid, and you prayed that you would get a puppy on Christmas? And you didn’t get one? And later, you remember praying to God so that your Daddy wouldn’t lose his job so that you wouldn’t have to leave your nice home and go to a cruddy apartment, only he did lose his job and you did have to move? And you remember years after that, when your Mom was dying of cancer, and you prayed and you prayed and you bargained and pleaded, and finally screamed for God to save her? And she died anyway?
Well, as it turns out, there’s a reason that God didn’t answer your prayers.
It’s because He was busy keeping the universe from flying apart.
And that’s a tough job.
I mean, you know how hard it is to multitask.
Like, you’re working at your cubicle on Monday and you have to catch up on the backlog over the weekend, and you’re trying to concentrate on that, and one of your co-workers comes up to your desk asking you to look into a request he wants you to forward to HR, and you can’t handle both things at once, and you get thrown off.
Now, imagine that you’re up in Heaven, and you’re doing your job, holding the universe together, keeping all physical phenomena in maintenance, and on a stray impulse, you pick up on some frightened Yazidi girl praying over and over again that ISIS won’t capture and enslave her, and all of a sudden- WHOOPS! There goes Alpha Centauri.
So on this somber occasion, I would like to look back at the life of Jack Chick and thank him for giving Christianity some necessary perspective.