Metacentricities

I’ve blogged about it before. Left Behind, the incredibly well selling series of books about the end times, the rapture, etc. has spawned a video game, called Left Behind: Eternal Forces. Of course, because of it’s basically premillenial dispensationalist theology (that’s the term for people with the eschatology that there will be a rapture of all believers, followed by a tribulation, which includes the reign of the antichrist,) it is problematic. It is certainly not the eschatology I subscribe to (I actually don’t have one.) But it is the eschatology of many people in this country.

But this is the thing, the video game is, from what I can tell, not as bad as it’s been portrayed.  It has been portrayed, in a number of places, including Talk2Action and SFGate suggesting that the point of the game is for players to convert or kill those that they come into contact with. Talk2Action says:

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.

SFGate says:

Behold, blessed children, the new and upcoming "Left Behind: Eternal Forces" video game, based on the freakishly best-selling series of apocalyptic trash-lit books. It’s an ultraviolent, hilariously inept, wondrously accurate portrayal of what every true right-wing Christian fundamentalist really fantasizes about after they’ve had one too many pink wine spritzers and have logged a few hours in the gay chat rooms and have sufficiently indoctrinated their happily numb kids with tales of vile homos and scary "progressive" liberals who want to buy them candy and tattoo their sacrums and feed them organic hot dogs.

Interestingly enough, conservative Christian bloggers aren’t even in agreement about the game. One blogger says:

It is true that the player scores points by converting non-Christians, but that is hardly surprising since the game comes from evangelicals. No one kills people for not converting, although Christians are depicted as fighting anti-Christ security forces who are trying to kill them. Even when killing in self-defense, the Christian loses points.

Another says:

If it were a realistic game, it would teach the kiddies to look a bit closer to home for evidence of antichrist.

"Thinking about what will happen when you die should be as exciting as ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,’?" Mr. Lyndon said.

Despite the violence of the game, promoters say it embodies Christian values. There is prayer for soldiers before battle, and players lose "spirit points" for unnecessary killings. The promoters suggest Jesus’ commandment that his followers should "turn the other cheek" has been misunderstood

So what’s the truth, really, about this game? There is a fascinating discussion going on about the Wikipedia entry on this game. Leave it to secular gamers to tell you exactly what this game is about. GamespyPC says:

It’s this wrestling back and forth for the souls of the people that makes the gameplay dynamic so interesting. Players aren’t competing to kill the enemy army — rather, they’re trying to save them, and each person killed represents a failure rather than a success. 

That actually sounds a lot more like the evangelicals I’m familiar with. Gamespot seems to agree:

As you’d expect, you’ll be encouraged to do good while playing the game, but you may also do evil, as well. Like many real-time strategy games, Eternal Forces features a variety of resources that you need to accumulate to build units. One of these resources is your spiritual rating, which measures how good or evil you are. If your troops kill civilians and innocents, your spiritual rating drops, and if it drops too much, you may see your units defect (each unit has his or her own spiritual rating), and if drops too far, demons will show up. While demons are incredibly powerful units, they’re uncontrollable and capable of turning on you as well as the enemy. On the other hand, if you do good (by building churches), your spirit rating will rise, and angels may appear to help you out. This idea of consequences, as well as rewards and punishments, reinforce the game’s sense of morality.

All of the game sites basically agree with this. Yes, there is killing in this video game. So what? They are trying to sell the game to 13 year old boys that are used to Grand Theft Auto, Doom and Quake. If there wasn’t any killing, I doubt they’d sell any games. Is that a problem? Yes, but it is a very different problem than has been portrayed for this game. (One might even argue that losing points by killing, which is the direct opposite of any other game, is an interesting counter message to kids who play the game.) Call this game an interesting study in how people with the "Left Behind" eschatology are working to make money, and manage to mangle Christian doctrine while they are at it, which is, of course, what they are already quite good at. That’s really about all you can say.

I think, in the end, this will backfire on those who are working to try and decrease the influence of the Christian right in the US government. This kind of inflammatory (and ultimately false) reporting on this game is going to help to fuel the notion that some people, like the folks at Talk2Action are anti-Christian, which they are most certainly not. And it also helps to continue and deepen the rhetoric of conflict, and I’m really not clear that the rhetoric of conflict is the right approach to take in regards to the Christian right at this time.

Is there a threat from the Christian right? Absolutely. But remember Roy Moore, the 10 commandments guy from Alabama? He lost. In the end, most people in this country are not the Christian right. One blogger said this about the coverage of the video game by the left: "How they must despise Christians, especially conservative ones, to believe that some well-known Christian leaders would actually endorse the massacring of non-Christians because they did not convert. " This is the kind of attitude that is going to turn "purple" Christians away from progressive messages. And, in the end, it’s the purple Christians that are going to make the difference.

Update: There is an interesting discussion happening on Street Prophets, where I cross-posted this blog entry.

technorati tags: leftbehind, videogames, christian, radicalright

Subscribe to the comments through RSS Feed