Video game's religious wars stir debate

The headlines of this article caught my eye after seeing a child sitting in front of me one Sabbath with what I thought was a new kind of camera but was actually a small video game. I was very surprised at this but then I thought well I guess he has named the little person running around killing people after one of the people in the Bible, and they are out there fighting for the Lord. After seeing this article maybe it was one of these games eh?



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Video game's religious wars stir debate

Indeed there are bad religious video games, but there are also some good ones. I personally like the one that tells the story of David. There is no killing (except for Goliath and Saul), and it is very true to the Bible account. I just wish I could remember the name of it off the top of my head. Faith keeper or something like that maybe...

Anyway, my point is that if something is done in the right way (teaching the Bible truth and not embellishing the story), it can be quite a good thing, but when we create needlessly violent games that only teach a moral story in principal, we miss the mark. I am also fond of Bible trivia games for the computer, but then I love to fill my head with knowledge.

How do you make a computer game about Davids life and only Goliath and Saul die? I mean, we are talking about a warrior king here. How about the time when he married Sauls daughter and provided hundreds or philistin foreskins as wedding gift to Saul?

Simple, you create a gloss.

Gloss
1 : a surface luster or brightness : SHINE
2 a : a deceptively attractive appearance <selfishness that had a gloss of humanitarianism about it> b : bright often superficial attractiveness <show-biz gloss>

??

I was referring to the theological definition of a gloss – to gloss over a point.



Basically, you move very quickly over the less pleasing points and get to the more “family friendly” parts of the story.

Is that what we do with the bible aswell?

Probably, but that's a bit beyond the scope of this topic.

I sure hope we do not do that with the Bible as well. Making videos games of Bible stories like this is not a tool that should be given to children or adults. This is so sad. Just another form of intertainment and will just feed the user for games like this. I am a firm believer in using new technology for further the gospel but not like this.

So how would this differ from Your Story Hour?

So how would this differ from Your Story Hour?