Nazi Propaganda

When I was little there was a grocery store in town where, in the airlock of the lobby area, a little magazine rack with free publications stood housing stacks of real estate resources and local newspapers...as well as these little booklets; Chick Publication tracts. For anyone who is not familiar, Chick Publications is a fundamentalist Protestant publishing group started by Jack Chick, an artist who allegedly became a fundamentalist crazy after hearing one of those old fashioned revivals. He started these little booklets to try and, the best way I can put it, to be witness to the terror of God's love (insert sounds of me laughing out loud). These little booklets, which are condensed quarter-size comic books of sorts, all preach the God-despair of the confused adult Christian to children - confusing them as well in an effort to scare kids into loving Jesus. (Note: if anyone else remembers these tracts please post a comment about your experiences with them.)

I remember occasionally picking them up on the way out of the store and reading them in the car. They would portray little inked scenes of, for an unquoted example, a little homeless Christian named Tommy gets beat up and dies in the rain in an alley and goes to heaven only to look down (as a white figure of God stands next to him, hand on his shoulder) on the unbeliever kids who beat him up who are now boiling in the lava pits of hell. All of these booklets were little false doomsday lessons for kids: believe in your Lord and Savior Jesus...OR DIE FOREVER IN ETERNAL TORMENT! As a kid I would read these tracts and find them a bit odd, but I was never terribly disturbed.

Then, when I was a pre-teen, an aunt sent over a book for me (and presumably my teen siblings) called The Stairway to Hell: The Well-Planned Destruction of Teens by Rick Jones. Cheery title, huh? I didn't realize until later that this book was also cranked out by the Chick Publications circus. I read this book and marveled at the strange connections they tried to draw about what is destroying teens; the Dungeons and Dragons game. D&D is a very strategy-dorky-fantasy card game that involves rolling a di and using one's imagination to see who gets to carry the magic weapon to slay dragons, yadda, yadda, spells, yadda, fairies, yadda, potions, etc. If a kid who plays this game ends up killing his family...my bet is that he had some psychological / mental issues PRIOR to playing this game. The book references AN incident where teens went crazy and killed someone. And they played D&D. So, the D&D MUST have been the reason, right? Any rational linked causation is not there. At all.

Another chapter covers why teens who listen to rock and roll are at risk for having their flesh seared off for eternity in the swamps of the devil. They focus on a few specific songs whose few cryptic lyrics they read into as being THE OBVIOUS WORK OF SATAN. For example, they cite the song "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin and try and poorly explain that the lyrics are satanic and men singing it already know they have a cozy corner in hell reserved for them. If anything, I would think that the lyrics to this song are rather spiritually positive. But, I guess if you look through dusty glasses you will always see something that appears dirty.

Yet another chapter is one on sex and how it is a HUGE destroyer of souls. Because all teen sex leads to promiscuity, which always leads to drugs, which, of course, leads to death, which obviously leads to hell. Gee, if I didn't know any better, I'd think God had played a prank with all those purposeful teen hormones and natural feelings as a recipe for the planned disaster of all mankind. The book chides those teens with any type of sexual urge, assuming that these urges are planted by satan. Ha!

If you read the reviews to this book on Amazon, you will surely find more jeers than cheers from sensible people who have brains and probably read this filthy propaganda on accident.

The chapters of this book cover games, music, sex, drugs, etc...yeah, most of the facets of teenage life. So, it really is a teens-can't-win book that I would work into the Choose Your Own Adventure book series as possibly a Choose Your Own Destruction book spinoff. (Whispered spoiler alert: all pages lead to HELL...The End)

Oops, did I just give Chick Publications another ridiculous you-are-damned book idea?