Christian Leftist

Last week, the Bethel Park H.S. administration decided to expel one of its students after someone reported an airsoft gun in the trunk of his car. That’s right,: not in the school; in the trunk of his CAR.

Airsoft guns shoot plastic BBs. They are painful if you get hit on bare skin, but they rarely cause seriously injury outside of freak accidents and random bouts of idiocy by people whose parents never should have allowed them slingshots, much less air-powered toy weapons.

It’s the height of idiocy to kick out a kid because of an after-school hobby. The details aren’t important as long as he didn’t shoot at anyone in the school.

My brother owns a ton of airsoft guns and plays with them all of the time. He’s also one of the best-behaved, non-violent people you will ever meet. I can only imagine what a stink the local chapter of the ACLU could make of this case if it tried. Doesn’t the board have better things to do than to comb through cars in a parking lot looking for reasons to punish its students?

Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins are
back to make another buck off of their megahit Left Behind series, a collection of eleven (and counting) books that chronicle the events in “Revelations” from the Bible. Left Behind Games, a startup multimedia company devoted solely to the series, will soon releasse the first video game translation of the plot in the first book.

The game is an apocalyptic adventure with black and white portrayals of good and evil. Players must convert neutral groups of non-believers before the Antichrist’s followers do. The violence is supposed to be gore-free, and sexuality is minimal or non-existent. In other words, it’s Grand Theft Auto without the blood, prostitutes, and profanity, instead injected with more ambiguous morality.

Some fundamentalist groups think the game is too much of a compromise and that LaHaye’s company is conforming to the world rather than forcing the world to conform to its views. They want to advocate quitting video games entirely, I suspect. LaHaye’s associates believe they are providing a Christian alternative to the mindless bloodshed of popular entertainment.

Lock and load!

Speaking of games, basketball players from high schools like Lutheran Christian Academy were informed that the National Collegiate Athletic Association will no longer accept their transcripts for consideration towards the fourteen-course requirement necessary to win a scholarship.

I can just hear the religious right drawing in breath to scream! Hold on just a second! What’s that? All the schools offering up courses for credit have to pass a three-part requirement test? Who’da thunk it?

It turns out that the male basketball players at Lutheran Christian, for example, didn’t attend classes at all. They received credit for them anyway, though. Maybe that’s why the College Board removed LCA as an ACT and SAT test site, and why LCA lacked accredation, state oversight, and membership from a state high school athletic association.
Redemption Christian Academy in Troy, NY is facing the same problems and its principal is considering shutting down the basketball program.