Killing for Jesus: the Video Game
Left Behind Games recently announced that Left Behind: Eternal Forces, the first of their Left Behind RTS games, will be released in October, positioned for Christmas sales. Other Left Behind products, from books to movies, merely made me roll my eyes. This one is simply jaw-droppingly, stomach-churningly bad-wrong. It reminds me of the Billy Graham’s Bible Blaster game from the Simpsons. “Keep firing! Convert the heathens!” Except in this game, you control Prayer Warriors who blow away non-believers and shout: “Praise God!”
Quotes from the creators’ game description:
- Conduct physical & spiritual warfare
- Wield modern military weaponry
- Command your forces through intense battles
- Control more than 30 units types – from Prayer Warrior and Hellraiser to Spies, Special Forces and Battle Tanks!
Gameplay elements include sending units to evangelize ordinary folks wandering the streets, then sending those new converts to military training to make them foot soldiers in your Jihad. Sure, you lose “spirit points” for killing innocents in your military missions instead of just your righteous heathen targets, but hey, collateral damage happens. It’s nothing a little prayer and maybe building a church won’t cure.
One harsh critic of the game is Jack Thompson, Born-Again Christian and anti-game-violence advocate, who severed his ties with the publishing company Tyndale House over its allowing the licensing of the game. He is quoted by the L.A. Times as saying: “We’re going to push this game at Christian kids to let them know there’s a cool shooter game out there. Because of the Christian context, somehow it’s OK? It’s not OK. The context is irrelevant. It’s a mass-killing game… You can be the Christians blowing away the infidels, and if that doesn’t hit your hot button, you can be the Antichrist blowing away all the Christians.”
Jonathan Hutson links the game’s creators to Rick Warren, best selling author of The Purpose Driven Life and it seems clear that the game’s marketing plan involves distributing it through Mr. Warren’s Mega-Church network. Hutson has some provocative things to say about the game which have made their way around the blogosphere:
You are on a mission – both a religious mission and a military mission — to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state – especially moderate, mainstream Christians. Your mission is “to conduct physical and spiritual warfare”; all who resist must be taken out with extreme prejudice. You have never felt so powerful, so driven by a purpose: you are 13 years old.
Hutson accuses Warren of having a Dominionist agenda. Warren’s Dominionist principles are well concealed, but he is clearly about “consuming individuals for the benefit of Church Big Business,” and offering up “millions of softened and conformed persons to further submit their minds and wills to the next world order,” which is right in line with the Dominionist agenda. He has concealed Dominionism’s literalism and Revelations-centricity to make his product more mass-marketable, I would suspect. When they all want to turn the world into a Christian theocracy, by “stealth” and “underground” movement or by military force if necessary, small details like that seem insignificant.
Perhaps what is most disturbing about this new game is it’s bold, in-your-face honesty. There is not much “stealth” or “underground” about it. There are only three kinds of people in the world of this Left Behind video game: holy warriors, the agents of the Devil, and people that need to be converted or killed. It’s unabashedly preparing teenagers to be foot soldiers in a coming holy war. It is that such an overt agenda can be propagated without the “mainstream” as much as batting an eye — that’s what scares me.
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