So the “Left Behind: Eternal Forces” game mentioned a few times here has shipped, and Wal-Mart is under fire by critics of the game for stocking it. Personally, rather than having it pulled from the shelves, I’d rather see the game fail miserably on its own merits or lack thereof. Wishful thinking, I know – these days, slapping a Christian theme onto a mediocre product is a sure way to boost sales. Just look at the success of Mel Gibson’s “The Jesus Chainsaw Massacre” movie a few years ago.
As one of the responses here a while back pointed out, the initial articles about LB:EF were incorrect: rather than being rewarded for killing non-believers, you do in fact receive a penalty of some sort for killing instead of converting them. How to recover the points lost for the taking of a human life in the name of God? Prayer. Yes, your in-game units have to say their prayers, apparently a time-consuming process which diverts them from other work.
So I was incorrect in implying that the message of the game is “It’s okay to kill infidels.” In reality, the message is “It’s okay to kill infidels so long as you put aside time to pray for forgiveness later.”