Just don't go to any out-of-the-way New England towns
If you follow me on Facebook, you might have noticed I've become a little enamored (if not obsessed!) with the "Silent Hill" series, which I finally discovered once I got on the cutting edge of 2000. I'd go as far to say that at least the first three "Silent Hill" games are good proof of video games as art. At the least they do a better job presenting horrific imagery and creating suspense than most of the horror films released in the past ten years while delving in a fairly nuanced way into issues like child abuse, misogyny (the second installment in particular), violence, and guilt.
Of course, part of my admiration might just come from the fact that I love horror stories about esoteric cults, and "the Order" that's driven the plot of nearly every "Silent Hill" game is like the ultimate embodiment of that trope. By comparison, even their regular members make the most violent fundamentalist extremists of other religions look like Ned Flanders. Even the villain of the third installment, Claudia, who arranges for a brutal murder at one point, turns out to be one of the Order's more compassionate and liberal theologians. That the Order's God is demonstrated to be actually real isn't an assuring statement on the nature of the universe and the divine, but on the other hand admittedly it's not much of a God if it can be completely thwarted by a romance novelist with a hunting rifle.
Would I convert to the Order if it were around? Well, while they've had a very poor track record with bringing their God into the mortal plane, they do have all the major world religions beat in the contemporary miracle department, with a record of something like 356,592 to 0. That's not bad for a religion that seems to be completely localized to a small city, but admittedly healing the sick is generally preferable to conjuring up industrial-style torture pits that vaguely resemble hospitals and schools. Then again, it is tempting to join a religion that lets its clergy dress like this:
Of course, part of my admiration might just come from the fact that I love horror stories about esoteric cults, and "the Order" that's driven the plot of nearly every "Silent Hill" game is like the ultimate embodiment of that trope. By comparison, even their regular members make the most violent fundamentalist extremists of other religions look like Ned Flanders. Even the villain of the third installment, Claudia, who arranges for a brutal murder at one point, turns out to be one of the Order's more compassionate and liberal theologians. That the Order's God is demonstrated to be actually real isn't an assuring statement on the nature of the universe and the divine, but on the other hand admittedly it's not much of a God if it can be completely thwarted by a romance novelist with a hunting rifle.
Would I convert to the Order if it were around? Well, while they've had a very poor track record with bringing their God into the mortal plane, they do have all the major world religions beat in the contemporary miracle department, with a record of something like 356,592 to 0. That's not bad for a religion that seems to be completely localized to a small city, but admittedly healing the sick is generally preferable to conjuring up industrial-style torture pits that vaguely resemble hospitals and schools. Then again, it is tempting to join a religion that lets its clergy dress like this: