5.01.2006

Jesus loves... who?

Fifteen-year-old Ava Lowery created a powerful antiwar animation. Beginning with the words George W. Bush allegedly told Mahmoud Abbas—"I am driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, 'George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I did."—her animation WWJD? is a powerful montage of images of Iraqi children set to a young child singing the Bible School hymn "Jesus Loves Me This I know." It concludes with on-screen text of the Beatitudes: "Blessed are they who mourn, they shall be comforted..." The Georgia teen has been creating such animations for a year, and she recently submitted some to The Huffington Post's Contagious Media Festival. But the name of her website--Peace Takes Courage--has rung eerily true: she's received death threats and obscene emails including one that read, in part, "It’s people like you who need to fucking die and get raped while your corpse rots in the sun."

Her question remains a good one, What would Jesus do?

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