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I used to be really good at being God.

At least, that’s how I thought of it when I played Sim City in my younger days. I’d plot out the land with high density forests, flowing streams that poured down mountains, and rolling hills that would fall into the ocean border on one end of my screen. It was beautiful; Pandora beautiful.

Then I would efficiently deface that work of art with my very own Sim City. A baseball stadium here, a few sky-scrapers there – all those engineered works of art. You could be God and a city planner all at once. But if you just wanted to be God, well, here’s your chance.

Just yesterday German based FIAA GmbH released the beta version of The Bible Online: Heroes, the first installment of a series of MMORTS (massively multiplayer online real-time strategy) “games” based on the Bible. And you’re like, whaaaaat?? It’s actually pretty simple. Just think Sim City or The Simms, but for Genesis. You can play the role of Abraham or another tribe leader: build a society, declare war on other society, even manage a budget. But as Rachel Wagner in Religion Dispatches points out, you get to play the role of God and that of Abraham. You’ve got to think that Isaac scene gets intense.

It raises some questions about how playing this game will sway one’s interaction with the Bible. The game will not be replacing old narratives; rather, it allows players to create new narratives in the gaps of stories. What is this kind of modern-day midrash?

I already tried to start my own account, but it doesn’t look like FIAA is allowing use from my “region”. I haven’t quite figured out what that region is, but I’ll look into it. Comment here if you have any success in the sandals of Abraham.

Other Links:

CNBC Story

First, as you mentioned already Preston, anyone who is particularly surprised by this episode is not familiar with either this show or with Larry David’s work in general. Other things that have been used for comic fodder on “Curb” include: the KKK, fantasizing about a friend’s wife while masturbating, scrotal sprains, oral sex while driving, severing a relationship with a therapist after seeing him in a thong on the beach, apparent bestiality… I could go on for a long time, believe me. The point is that Larry David delights in making his viewers incredibly uncomfortable and that he himself is usually the butt of his jokes. Many posters at Fox are claiming that Jews and Muslims would never stand for such abuse. David is Jewish himself and really: if you think Jews ever get off easy on “Curb” then you definitely haven’t ever watched an episode all the way through.

I’m going to set Larry David aside now and focus on what I think is probably a bit more interesting: the meeting of art and religion and the people who cry heresy and blasphemy about it. This entire controversy brings to mind Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ. When Serrano displayed a photograph of a crucifix submerged in a glass of his own urine in 1989, the response was less measured than this. This episode will, ultimately, go down as another tempest-in-a-teapot scandal. Teeth will be gnashed and garments rent, but the cycle will be repeated.

Returning to the first issue I raised, we have a great example in both the Piss Christ controversy and this one of Christians presuming that we represent an unheard minority opinion. I do not think that the facts support this idea when it is impossible to even buy a soda from a vending machine without seeing the Christian name of God on the literal “coin of the realm”. Is it time for conservative Christianity to give up the “woe is us” rhetoric in the public square? Moreover, why is that line so seductive in the first place?