Um, what?

[ChickenSoup]

Not sure if this was posted here before, buuuut...

http://objectiveministries.org/zounds/r ... craft.html

I stumbled upon this while searching around the interwebs for other Christian review sites out of curiosity of the general quality of such reviews (I can say, thankfully, that ours are preeeeetty good compared to many) and stumbled upon this little gem.

I'm kind of "eeerrrgghhhhhh" about it. Some of it, like this:

Most interesting are the Endermen. The name is a portmanteau of "end of men", meaning the end of Man's stewardship over Earth, which the player's activity represents, and the beginning of the new Kingdom of God after Jesus returns.

are kind of outright lies, or at least stretching so far to get a point across that they contradict what Notch actually said about the game.

What do you guys think? Is it a harmless thing to do, or is it creating a bad image for us?

[JOJ650s]

Reads quote...
Wait what?!

Well, I read a bit of it,
it looks like the writer was trying to make MineCraft a Christian game by symbolizing everything.
It also seems like the writer thinks Notch is a Christian as well. (He could be, but I don't know for sure.)
But the writer does talk about "fake Notches".
(though I am guessing when he sees a post from Notch he does not like, he thinks it's a fake.)

Sigh,
well, I don't know what was on the reviewer's mind, so I don't really know what to say.

[Nate DaZombie]

Just because a metaphor can be created, doesn't mean it should.
Just because you know big words, doesn't mean you should use them.

We get annoyed when evolutionists try to make everything about evolution, but we do the same thing. Sometimes a game is just that, a game.

[LegoFan560]

I wonder if the writer is joking, or if he actually believes this.

There are clues to the Christian purpose of the game. The most obvious is the name: Minecraft Alpha. This is of course a reference to Jesus' revelation that He is the Alpha and the Omega (Rev. 22:13).

What do you think? Is he serious?

[Syksy]

Is it just me, or do their whole site smell of a mockery site?

http://objectiveministries.org/zounds/

Stuff like:
"How do you bust a praise move on the witness floor? Let Pastor Skeet learn you some moves...",
"1 in 3 Trinity energy drinks the Christian alternative for electrolytic revival!",
"Pastor Fred interviews rap missionaries Jiggy4Jesus" (note, tried googling for this artist but could never find any real references to him except from this Zounds-site...)
"Our Pastor/Rockstar"...


Smells so fishy to me. That, or I am paranoid. There's no proper teaching of Jesus there that I could find, just "cool stuff". All google sites I could find related to this site were atheist-sites laughing at "how foolish Christians are". I could not find references to their Pastor Fred "Skeet" Hoskins from anywhere except their site. IMHO there are just references suggesting that this would be a site in style of Landover Baptists, apparently a hoax Christian site.

I took around 15-20 minutes going through their site - I might've missed much, but as you can see from the Minecraft review (according to my humble opinion), the content is rather exaggerated. Some portions are clearly wrong, for example game reviews claiming historical accuracy etc.

Here is some discussion on their main-site, apparently called Objective Ministries: http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/webl ... ministries

Am I alone with these thoughts?

[epsons]

Pretty sure it's a satire... I remember their review of Tetris being posted on here before, where they claim that it brainwashes the player with Communist ideology or some such.

[JOJ650s]

Yup, looks like it.

[ChickenSoup]

Wow, I just noticed that. I've been trolled. Hard. XD

[Syksy]

Wow, I just noticed that. I've been trolled. Hard. XD

Well, you're not the only one

apparently the satire is successful in the sense, that it is so subtle that it'll leave 95% of people wondering if it was satire or not, especially for people who don't know what to expect from an honest Christian site. Sadly, obviously most of secular people seem to take for granted that Zounds represents Christianity. An another sad fact is, that I'm thinking a lot of Christians are going to briefly shuffle through the site and think it's actually Christian and end up linking to it or maybe purchasing advertisement space or such. Bit like you guys came up with this site through google pretty fast, and I also think I've visited this one before. And the circle goes on...

There's nothing wrong with satire as a form of humor (it's healthy to be able to laugh at self too) and I thought some of the stuff was really clever, but if it goes down to people that could actually find Jesus but instead find this "Rocking with Jesus"-stuff, it's a little bit sketchy imho.

[LegoFan560]

Wow, I just noticed that. I've been trolled. Hard. XD

I was fooled too... XD
Once you realize it's a joke, it can be funny. However, I agree with Syksy.