Line #4 YMMV/UndergroundZealot


1	* AlternateCharacterInterpretation: Paul is a jerkass (or does that even count as "alternate"?), Straight has the hots for Paul and is in the closet, Ranold secretly knows Paul is up to something but is just stringing him along, and Barton is an NPO spy.
2	** Straight is the one who's lying when he says that the Christians killed 'while resisting arrest' were all unarmed. He has more reason to lie about it to Paul than Paul's superiors do.
3	* DesignatedHero: Paul is not a likable protagonist, to put it lightly. As an agent of the OneWorldOrder, he's responsible for the deaths of dozens of unarmed civilians and is a terrible husband to Jae. His conversion is supposed to a HeelFaithTurn, but it comes across as him exchanging one form of zealotry for another, as he acts like a sanctimonious jackass to everyone who isn't a Christian and ''prays for the death of several thousand people''.
4	* MoralEventHorizon: The [[DesignatedHero "heroes"]] pray to God to dry up the city of Los Angeles, and it works. As addressed under ValuesDissonance, this is confirmed as killing ''thousands of people''. The death toll is probably much higher than that; LA is a city of almost four million people, although WorldWarIII may have cut down on this, and every last one has two or three days at most to leave the city ''on foot'' before they die. The death toll would probably be on par with UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar, and most of it would be not those actually responsible for the oppression of Christians but the old, sick, injured and young. Everyone in a hospital would be doomed. Oh, and everyone they killed is [[AndIMustScream going to hell to burn for all eternity]]. Really, the only question is who crossed the horizon: the Underground, who only prayed that LA's water supply be cut off for seven days, or God, Who went ''far'' past anything requested or even helpful.
5	* RootingForTheEmpire: While pretty much everyone agrees that the persecution of religious folks in the series is pretty terrible, the Christian protagonists can also come across as sanctimonious asses to at least some readers. Furthermore, most of the technological and medical advancements of the "Atheistopia" world government have undeniably improve the quality of life for many, giving them some sympathy in spite of their villainy.
6	* StrawmanHasAPoint: After WorldWarIII, the UN decided that enough was enough and outlawed the biggest instigator of conflict in the world, religion, and ''it worked.'' Meanwhile, the Real True Christians claim that they weren't responsible for WorldWarIII and that they're just peaceful people who want a free exchange of ideas, but over and over they demonstrate that they have absolutely no qualms with torturing and killing anyone who believes differently than they do.
7	* ValuesDissonance:
8	** The "Christians" are (understandably) upset at their persecution at the hands of the government. So what do they do? Pray for God to dry up the city of Los Angeles, and He does. Jenkins blithely describes how "thousands" of people died as a result. It becomes even more horrifying when you realize that the very old, the very young, and the infirm would be among the first victims.
9	** Jenkins seems to think that peace on Earth is a bad thing. This mostly has to do with the common dispensationalist conceit that God is ''irrevocably'' the only one ''capable'' of bringing about peace without [[BalanceBetweenGoodAndEvil having to offset the strife somewhere else]]. In this case, Atheistopia's peace is displacing conflict into persecution of [=RTCs=]. In other words, unless the Tribulation has just passed, "world peace" is self-contradictory.

Context YMMV / UndergroundZealot