Monday, July 29, 2013

How long's this trend been going for?

Ever since a couple years ago, while in Oklahoma City, I've been noticing a tragedy of a trend on amazon.com
1-star reviews on anything just because someone doesn't like something. Books, movies, music, etc. While a 1-star review can be a great sourc ematerial for knowing how bad something is, it's worse when the reviewer readily admits that they did not even bother trying the product all the way before writing the review. The first time I noticed this trend was looking at all the negative reviews for one of my favorite indie Christian movies, To Save A Life. Some people turned off the movie because they hated that it was a Christian flick with "cursing." I could go into semantics about the difference between "cursing" and "swearing," but I won't. I could get into the issues I have with people having issues with that one movie.
I won't.
I will say this, that's not the only product I enjoy that gets a scathing review for even the most trivial stuff. And I mean content that you could miss with a blink of an eye in the entire movie.
What's much worse is when someone doesn't finish something and not only admits that, but intolerantly bashes the product for being "Christian" or "not Christian" or says "it's labeled Christian, but is not!" then their review seems to have an underlying current that they have a checklist of things they expect from a Christian book/movie/etc.
From what I've read through for the past 2 years, here's a glimpse of certain expectations:
*NO F@&*@ SWEARING!
*No sex scenes/women showing cleavage (not even a centimeter, apparently teen boys can get off on that, I never had a problem, wasn't even to catch my eye)
*No violence (wait, what? What about the Bible? It's LOADED with it!)
*No "magic" or "sorcery"
*Must explicitly present itself to be a Christian book (even if it's with a nonChristian publisher)
*Must be on track with some individual's denominational giving (forget the other person, they're a lazy, self-righteous, hypocritical schmoe)

Those are the simplest basics. Whatever happened to being the MOST offensive lifestyle in the world that rebellious children in their cultures that wanted to be Christians that's ended with us trying to look for an example of living Biblically and looking for it everywhere EXCEPT in the Bible?
Yeah, I can see why people point at us and laugh like we're a joke. We've set ourselves up to be like that. So, with that in mind, it's no wonder a couple friends in the religiously-based area of Clarksburg, WV have given up going to church. One's now an atheist, the other's still Christian, just doesn't trust many other churchgoer (wouldn't blame him).
All of this has made me wonder... what if Christianity could be judged on a site like amazon? How many people would rate it 1-star for some reason or another? Major and/or trivial? It's purely legalistic/pharisaic/insanely illogical. And it makes total sense why so many show fangs when a Christian turns out to be a pretty good person and cheers when they have a fake they can point at.

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