The Brick Testament is an illustrated version of the Bible with illustrations created entirely out of Lego bricks. It was created by Brendan Powell Smith.
A small excerpt from an interview with Brendan Powell Smith, who by the way is not a reverend by profession, and not affiliated with any Christian denomination as far as I have been able to tell;
Quote:
We have to ask: what put the idea of the Brick Testament into your head?
I’ve been fascinated with religion ever since I became an atheist at about the age of 13. Prior to that I had been a regular churchgoer and my mother was even a Sunday School teacher at our local Episcopal church. But as my childhood was approaching its end, I had this idea (I’m not sure from where) that it would be a good idea to “prepare for adulthood” by consciously trying rid myself of what seemed like childish ways of thinking. I recognized superstitions for what they were, and tried to turn away from “magical thinking”. I didn’t intend for any of this to affect my religious beliefs, but in the end it did in a profound way, and soon enough I found myself the only atheist I knew amongst my family, friends, and community. And being in that situation really made me wonder just what it was about religion that kept so many others believing.
So I studied religion and philosophy at Boston University, and that’s when I first read the Bible through for myself. I found that experience so full of surprises that I have never really gotten over the shock. I guess I must have been expecting something very dry and boring, but found instead that it was chock full of lurid stories, high drama, and terribly obscene behavior. I was realized that there must be very, very few people who have ever actually read this book. And so from that point on I knew it would be a worthwhile project if I could think of a way to retell these stories in a way that could capture people’s attention and still stay true to the original.
It wasn’t until a few years out of college that I happened to get back into LEGO building as an adult. But then it was only a matter of time before it occurred to me to try building some scenes from the Bible out of LEGO. And while constructing the LEGO Garden of Eden and designing Adam, Eve, and God, I came to see that this could be just the novel sort of medium I’d been looking for to bring a wider knowledge of the Bible’s stories to people unready or unwilling to slog through “good book” itself.
I’ve been fascinated with religion ever since I became an atheist at about the age of 13. Prior to that I had been a regular churchgoer and my mother was even a Sunday School teacher at our local Episcopal church. But as my childhood was approaching its end, I had this idea (I’m not sure from where) that it would be a good idea to “prepare for adulthood” by consciously trying rid myself of what seemed like childish ways of thinking. I recognized superstitions for what they were, and tried to turn away from “magical thinking”. I didn’t intend for any of this to affect my religious beliefs, but in the end it did in a profound way, and soon enough I found myself the only atheist I knew amongst my family, friends, and community. And being in that situation really made me wonder just what it was about religion that kept so many others believing.
So I studied religion and philosophy at Boston University, and that’s when I first read the Bible through for myself. I found that experience so full of surprises that I have never really gotten over the shock. I guess I must have been expecting something very dry and boring, but found instead that it was chock full of lurid stories, high drama, and terribly obscene behavior. I was realized that there must be very, very few people who have ever actually read this book. And so from that point on I knew it would be a worthwhile project if I could think of a way to retell these stories in a way that could capture people’s attention and still stay true to the original.
It wasn’t until a few years out of college that I happened to get back into LEGO building as an adult. But then it was only a matter of time before it occurred to me to try building some scenes from the Bible out of LEGO. And while constructing the LEGO Garden of Eden and designing Adam, Eve, and God, I came to see that this could be just the novel sort of medium I’d been looking for to bring a wider knowledge of the Bible’s stories to people unready or unwilling to slog through “good book” itself.
Source: http://nexuszine.wordpress.com/2008/06/06/interview-the-brick-testaments-reverend-brendan-powell-smith/
Knee-Jerk Reaction: Some Christians Defend Atheist Bible and Attack Sams Club For Removing It From Shelves
NOVEMBER 28, 2011 BY DAVID SHEDLOCK
Smith Mocks God Killing Herod, Calling God An Assassin
Proverbs 18:5-6 [source]
It is not good to accept the person of the wicked, to overthrow the righteous in judgment. A fool’s lips enter into contention, and his mouth calleth for strokes.
Sam’s Wholesale Club, a division of Wal-Mart, is doing the Lord’s work by removing a blasphemous book from its shelves, and sadly many reactionary Christians are responding with foolish lips calling for a boycott, not of the book, but of Sam’s Club!
The atheist at the center of the controversy, Brendan Smith, must be laughing all the way to the bank for duping conservatives into opposing a decision by Sam’s to stop selling his book. Why did they fall for the trap? Because Smith called his book “The Brick Bible”. It is a collection of distorted “stories” illustrated with LEGO bricks and characters. Though the book itself openly mocks God and the Bible over and over again, many naïve Christians are so ignorant of the Bible they don’t even see it and are buying the book for their children.
I have just begun to look through the book online, but it is full of sarcasm and ridicule, showing God on a hammock on the Seventh Day, and portraying Jonathan and David as homosexuals. One of Smith’s chapters supposedly tells the story of Ananias & Sapphira which he calls “Accept Communism or Die.” Other chapters include the “Temple Tantrum” (Jesus Cleansing the Temple), and “Herod Assassinated” (by God), “Instructions for Genocide”and “Camp Defecation”.
It is so bad that Christians and conservatives such as Townhall, PuritanDownloads, and Jesus2020 are even using their advertising dollars to support the author’s online version of the book. Even more shockingly, this guy has been getting away with this for about 10 years(!) and hardly anybody has taken note of it.
Other Christian websites are covering the story, portraying Smith as a poor persecuted Christian who just wants to the get the truth of the Bible into people’s hands with a unique and fun format.
CNET mentions the idea that it wasn’t by a Christian only in passing:
Smith said that the only complaint he’d managed to uncover himself is one post on the Sam’s Club Facebook wall contending that “The Brick Bible” [was] created by someone who doesn’t believe in God.”
Other groups totally missing the import include Christian Today of Australia,
Marisa Martin of World Net Daily goes so far as to give the atheist the benefit of the doubt that he is not really up to no good, and heaps praise upon the book:
To be fair, the majority of Smith’s illustrations are straight, true to the text, biblical depictions that should give no offense to anyone. They are extraordinarily inventive and fun to look at….
Smith correctly cites Bible verse and chapter for each picture and occasionally makes editorial comments, which are clearly marked as such…. At least he still concerns himself with the Bible and finds it worthy, in the sense that he is dedicating his life’s work to it. A highly unusual undertaking for an atheist…!
…We are also much broader minded than our critics paint us, with Sunday school teachers and churches using Smith’s books and posters, atheist or not…Whether intentional or not, the power of the Bible is still evident – even when translated into little plastic bricks.
Martin, who claims to be a Christian doesn’t know her Bible, or doesn’t care that God, Jesus, and the Bible are deliberately being attacked. Smith regularly leaves out relevant passages which counter his hatred of the God of the Bible.
For Smith’s part, he brags on his own website that he is trying to inculcate a morality the opposite of what the Bible teaches. He is honest about his intentions, even while lying about the Bible.
Making Fun of Apostles Being Freed From Prison, Equating it With a Magic Trick [Source]
Smith Writes: One of the best things about Bible stories is how they remind us to teach our kids the moral values that we might not think to teach them otherwise. Take for example: racial intolerance, deception, and favoritism. Our four new stories added to the Genesis section of the website today begin with the patriarch Abraham aghast at the idea of his son Isaac marrying anyone of the Canaanite race. We move on to Isaac deceiving foreigners about his wife, just as his father had before him. Then Isaac and Rebekah bear twins, and each favors one twin more than the other, culminating in Rebekah and Jacob using lies and deception to fool blind, elderly Isaac and screw over Esau.
Of course, God doesn’t just show his approval for these moral values by blessing Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Those who know their Bible know God himself outlaws intermarriage with other races, practices favoritism by treating the Israelites differently than all other nations, and occasionally even uses deception to accomplish his goals. So parents, teach your children well. Love one child more than the next. Lie to foreigners that your wife is your sister. Conspire with a loved one to deceive an elderly family member, and you too will be walking in the righteous path of the Lord.
We have so little knowledge of the Holiness of God, that blasphemy passes by us with hardly a sigh.
Has anybody stopped to think why an atheist wants to publish a book of “children’s Bible stories?” It is because he has an agenda. Part of it is the same agenda and tactic skeptics, atheists and various leftists have been trying to use for years: disparage the Bible by claiming it is full of pornographic and violent content,[1]. But Smith also twists other parts of the Bible and deliberately turns the Truth of God’s Word on its head. Smith’s uses children’s LEGO characters to distort the Bible, in hopes of getting it into the hands of children, or worse yet, into the hands of adults who will buy his perverted view of God’s Holy Word.
So have Christians thanked Sam’s Club for pulling this attack on the Bible? No, it seems as if, even after knowing that the “Bible” was being distributed by a hater of God and His Word, Christians in the name of the First Amendment and supposedly religious freedom are coming to the book’s defense. This is foolishness of the highest sort, “accepting the person of the wicked”. Christians do not ascribe to the notion that we will “defend to the death” someone’s right to attack God. If a man wants to attack God, let him defend himself. But I wish it were only the First Amendment people were defending. They seem to equate this man’s blasphemy with the Bible
Here are some of the posts on a website showing the silliness of some Christians;
What about all the Christian parents that want to purchase for their children…..Sams ignores the majority and caves to the minority…..no more Sam’s for me…..
I can’t believe in a nation built by God fearing men that I’m hearing this. Sams I hope every Christian family stops going thru your doors. Take everything else on your shelves that r violent sexually provocative…[2] your shelves are full of it. But sure yank a BIBLE!!!
Sams this is a dumb move on your behalf, we the people of God need to hold our heads high and take a stand that we are believers and we want more of these things in our stores and less of the world things. I am a Sunday school teacher and you have very few thing for us as it is …IN GOD I TRUST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We are so quick to take offense that we often deny the gospel in the name of defending it, and don’t take offense when we should be outraged. When Christians argue in court that the Ten Commandments should be allowed on a courthouse square because it serves a secular purpose, this is in essence to secularize the sacred. Our desire to assert “our rights” leads us to complain about minutia and make hypocrites out of our neighbors. Watch the complaints again this season that will arise because stores use the term holidays instead of Christmas. Who cares? Has the word Christmas on a sign in a shopping mall ever saved anybody? Has our gospel witness been reduced to a single pair of words in an ad for Barbie Dolls, GI Joe’s, and LEGOS: “Merry Christmas.”
I fear there is a famine of the Word of God in our churches, and the gap is being filled with the rants of atheists, and yet we don’t even see the difference between the Word of God and the words of Satan. We are starving and blind.
Revelation 3:17 Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:
[1] For example, the Bible condemns sexual perversion and the violence of wicked men. The complaint of the atheist is disingenuous. He is like the child molester who complains that the indictment charging him with a crime is too explicit.
[2] I had to censor this for its use of mild profanity, sadly all in the name of defending the Bible.
Source:
http://caffeinatedthoughts.com/2011/11/foolish-christians-defend-atheist-bible-and-attack-sams-club-who-wisely-stops-selling-it/
Knee-Jerk Reaction: Some Christians Defend Atheist Bible and Attack Sams Club For Removing It From Shelves
NOVEMBER 28, 2011 BY DAVID SHEDLOCK
Smith Mocks God Killing Herod, Calling God An Assassin
Proverbs 18:5-6 [source]
It is not good to accept the person of the wicked, to overthrow the righteous in judgment. A fool’s lips enter into contention, and his mouth calleth for strokes.
Sam’s Wholesale Club, a division of Wal-Mart, is doing the Lord’s work by removing a blasphemous book from its shelves, and sadly many reactionary Christians are responding with foolish lips calling for a boycott, not of the book, but of Sam’s Club!
The atheist at the center of the controversy, Brendan Smith, must be laughing all the way to the bank for duping conservatives into opposing a decision by Sam’s to stop selling his book. Why did they fall for the trap? Because Smith called his book “The Brick Bible”. It is a collection of distorted “stories” illustrated with LEGO bricks and characters. Though the book itself openly mocks God and the Bible over and over again, many naïve Christians are so ignorant of the Bible they don’t even see it and are buying the book for their children.
I have just begun to look through the book online, but it is full of sarcasm and ridicule, showing God on a hammock on the Seventh Day, and portraying Jonathan and David as homosexuals. One of Smith’s chapters supposedly tells the story of Ananias & Sapphira which he calls “Accept Communism or Die.” Other chapters include the “Temple Tantrum” (Jesus Cleansing the Temple), and “Herod Assassinated” (by God), “Instructions for Genocide”and “Camp Defecation”.
It is so bad that Christians and conservatives such as Townhall, PuritanDownloads, and Jesus2020 are even using their advertising dollars to support the author’s online version of the book. Even more shockingly, this guy has been getting away with this for about 10 years(!) and hardly anybody has taken note of it.
Other Christian websites are covering the story, portraying Smith as a poor persecuted Christian who just wants to the get the truth of the Bible into people’s hands with a unique and fun format.
CNET mentions the idea that it wasn’t by a Christian only in passing:
Smith said that the only complaint he’d managed to uncover himself is one post on the Sam’s Club Facebook wall contending that “The Brick Bible” [was] created by someone who doesn’t believe in God.”
Other groups totally missing the import include Christian Today of Australia,
Marisa Martin of World Net Daily goes so far as to give the atheist the benefit of the doubt that he is not really up to no good, and heaps praise upon the book:
To be fair, the majority of Smith’s illustrations are straight, true to the text, biblical depictions that should give no offense to anyone. They are extraordinarily inventive and fun to look at….
Smith correctly cites Bible verse and chapter for each picture and occasionally makes editorial comments, which are clearly marked as such…. At least he still concerns himself with the Bible and finds it worthy, in the sense that he is dedicating his life’s work to it. A highly unusual undertaking for an atheist…!
…We are also much broader minded than our critics paint us, with Sunday school teachers and churches using Smith’s books and posters, atheist or not…Whether intentional or not, the power of the Bible is still evident – even when translated into little plastic bricks.
Martin, who claims to be a Christian doesn’t know her Bible, or doesn’t care that God, Jesus, and the Bible are deliberately being attacked. Smith regularly leaves out relevant passages which counter his hatred of the God of the Bible.
For Smith’s part, he brags on his own website that he is trying to inculcate a morality the opposite of what the Bible teaches. He is honest about his intentions, even while lying about the Bible.
Making Fun of Apostles Being Freed From Prison, Equating it With a Magic Trick [Source]
Smith Writes: One of the best things about Bible stories is how they remind us to teach our kids the moral values that we might not think to teach them otherwise. Take for example: racial intolerance, deception, and favoritism. Our four new stories added to the Genesis section of the website today begin with the patriarch Abraham aghast at the idea of his son Isaac marrying anyone of the Canaanite race. We move on to Isaac deceiving foreigners about his wife, just as his father had before him. Then Isaac and Rebekah bear twins, and each favors one twin more than the other, culminating in Rebekah and Jacob using lies and deception to fool blind, elderly Isaac and screw over Esau.
Of course, God doesn’t just show his approval for these moral values by blessing Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Those who know their Bible know God himself outlaws intermarriage with other races, practices favoritism by treating the Israelites differently than all other nations, and occasionally even uses deception to accomplish his goals. So parents, teach your children well. Love one child more than the next. Lie to foreigners that your wife is your sister. Conspire with a loved one to deceive an elderly family member, and you too will be walking in the righteous path of the Lord.
We have so little knowledge of the Holiness of God, that blasphemy passes by us with hardly a sigh.
Has anybody stopped to think why an atheist wants to publish a book of “children’s Bible stories?” It is because he has an agenda. Part of it is the same agenda and tactic skeptics, atheists and various leftists have been trying to use for years: disparage the Bible by claiming it is full of pornographic and violent content,[1]. But Smith also twists other parts of the Bible and deliberately turns the Truth of God’s Word on its head. Smith’s uses children’s LEGO characters to distort the Bible, in hopes of getting it into the hands of children, or worse yet, into the hands of adults who will buy his perverted view of God’s Holy Word.
So have Christians thanked Sam’s Club for pulling this attack on the Bible? No, it seems as if, even after knowing that the “Bible” was being distributed by a hater of God and His Word, Christians in the name of the First Amendment and supposedly religious freedom are coming to the book’s defense. This is foolishness of the highest sort, “accepting the person of the wicked”. Christians do not ascribe to the notion that we will “defend to the death” someone’s right to attack God. If a man wants to attack God, let him defend himself. But I wish it were only the First Amendment people were defending. They seem to equate this man’s blasphemy with the Bible
Here are some of the posts on a website showing the silliness of some Christians;
What about all the Christian parents that want to purchase for their children…..Sams ignores the majority and caves to the minority…..no more Sam’s for me…..
I can’t believe in a nation built by God fearing men that I’m hearing this. Sams I hope every Christian family stops going thru your doors. Take everything else on your shelves that r violent sexually provocative…[2] your shelves are full of it. But sure yank a BIBLE!!!
Sams this is a dumb move on your behalf, we the people of God need to hold our heads high and take a stand that we are believers and we want more of these things in our stores and less of the world things. I am a Sunday school teacher and you have very few thing for us as it is …IN GOD I TRUST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We are so quick to take offense that we often deny the gospel in the name of defending it, and don’t take offense when we should be outraged. When Christians argue in court that the Ten Commandments should be allowed on a courthouse square because it serves a secular purpose, this is in essence to secularize the sacred. Our desire to assert “our rights” leads us to complain about minutia and make hypocrites out of our neighbors. Watch the complaints again this season that will arise because stores use the term holidays instead of Christmas. Who cares? Has the word Christmas on a sign in a shopping mall ever saved anybody? Has our gospel witness been reduced to a single pair of words in an ad for Barbie Dolls, GI Joe’s, and LEGOS: “Merry Christmas.”
I fear there is a famine of the Word of God in our churches, and the gap is being filled with the rants of atheists, and yet we don’t even see the difference between the Word of God and the words of Satan. We are starving and blind.
Revelation 3:17 Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:
[1] For example, the Bible condemns sexual perversion and the violence of wicked men. The complaint of the atheist is disingenuous. He is like the child molester who complains that the indictment charging him with a crime is too explicit.
[2] I had to censor this for its use of mild profanity, sadly all in the name of defending the Bible.
Source:
http://caffeinatedthoughts.com/2011/11/foolish-christians-defend-atheist-bible-and-attack-sams-club-who-wisely-stops-selling-it/
