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by Harley Schlanger, LaRouche Organization: Will the growls and howls of the pro-war wolves drown out the reasonable voices calling for peace and development?  Have we not seen enough war and destabilization to know it solves nothing, but makes matters worse?  The City of London needs Permanent war, but the Global Majority is crying out for […]

Think back to the last time you played a game. Was it a boisterous family game night with a board game like Ticket to Ride? A nostalgic weekend exploring the Oblivion remaster? A few hurried rounds of Wordle while pacing a hospital room? Now consider who made that game. What do you know about the hardworking coders, designers, composers, writers, and voice actors who made those small moments of joy possible? For Christian parents especially, it can be helpful to know a bit about the makers of games, just as it’s helpful to know about a filmmaker or TV series developer. What artists make often reflects their values. This isn’t to say Christians should only play games made by Christians. But if you’re looking for quality, entertaining games made by Christians, they exist. I’d like to introduce you to a few of them and encourage you to give them a try along with your friends and family. 1. Bug & Seek Some scoundrel has broken into Buggburg’s beloved bug zoo (the Insectarium) and stolen all the bugs! In Bug & Seek, your character must recapture the insects and reopen the zoo. Bug & Seek is what’s known as a “cozy” video game. As you play, your main goal is to rebuild the Insectarium. But you also have time to chat with the citizens of Buggburg, explore the countryside, and solve the game’s mystery in a leisurely fashion. And with more than 200 real-life bugs to catch, you’ll also brush up on your entomology. This lighthearted bug-catching simulator is the work of a husband-and-wife team, Chera and Craig Meredith. When burnout signaled the end of Craig’s time as an attorney, their family began praying about what might come next. They’d just moved to a house in the rambling woods of Tennessee, and exploring the local bug life became a favorite pastime for them and their two children. They became inspired: What if their love of gaming and their love of God’s creation could combine? “We hope it’s relaxing and peaceful for people, but also gives them an appreciation and respect for nature and especially insects,” Craig told me. “Seeing the immense variety and creativity of God in the insect world really opened my eyes [to] how interesting insects are and what they reflect about our Creator.” 2. Deliverance Would you like to slay demons by the righteous power of God, as an angel? That’s the story of the board game Deliverance. The village of Fallbrook is under demonic attack, and it’s up to you and your fellow angels to fend off the forces of darkness. In this cooperative board game, each player controls a different angel, and your team must work together to overcome the devilish legions assailing the saints. Deliverance’s creator, Andrew Lowen, had long enjoyed playing games before diving into development himself. He was especially fond of fantasy adventure games, but he grew frustrated that none of the game worlds cohered with a Christian cosmology. “I just got mad at God one day,” Lowen recounted to me, “and said, ‘Why doesn’t a game like this exist?!’ And at the time I didn’t realize it, but I was saying, ‘Here am I, send me.’” “The intent of my game is to refresh the heart of the saints,” Lowen explained. But non-Christians make up about half of his fans. He’s created a game that allows non-Christians to explore the wild world of Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection, no matter what they believe. Some of his favorite feedback has come from non-Christians with comments like, “Andrew, there is no God. But this game is sick!” 3. Legion TD 2 Legion TD 2 allows players to face off in a combination of chess and poker set in a fantasy landscape. “TD” stands for “tower defense,” and each team defends its king, managing resources and launching attacks against its opponents. Last king standing wins! The intent of my game is to refresh the heart of the saints. Legion TD 2 is the successor to an older video game. Brent Batas single-handedly built Legion TD in high school as a “mod,” or modification, of the fantasy game Warcraft III. Several years after releasing Legion TD, Batas observed the success of other mods-turned-games and decided to grow his game in a similar direction. Today, Legion TD 2 is run by a small team of full-time developers and a host of contractors, all working to keep the game running smoothly for players logging on from more than 100 countries around the world. For Batas, the enjoyment he brings his players is ample reward for the often grueling work of building and maintaining a real-time game. “That feeling of creating an experience for people and seeing it bring them joy, it’s like the best feeling in the world to me,” he explained to me. “I think I’m experiencing a small, small taste of what God maybe feels like when we actually enjoy his creation and live our lives the way he intended.” 4. Sainthood How do you meditate on the Great Commandment (Matt. 22:34–40)? Prayer? Song? Study? Now, you can also do it with a video game. In Sainthood, your character lands on an island off the coast of the kingdom of Kongo. This real-life country (which no longer exists) was evangelized by Portuguese missionaries around the 15th century and became a Christian nation. Your duties are simple and (for Christians) familiar: Serve your community and grow your faith. This cozy strategy game requires you to balance two resources (time and energy) in the pursuit of your two goals (faith and charity). You spend your 33(!) days on the island volunteering in the community, praying, attending church services, and learning about real-world church history. Catholic cathedrals were a key inspiration for Bisong Taiwo in creating Sainthood. These structures draw millions of fascinated visitors every year, most of them non-Christians “drawn to these great works of art because they are just beautiful in and of themselves,” Taiwo told me. Similarly, he hopes his game will soften players’ hearts toward the gospel. The game’s success gives him reason for hope. Sainthood boasts a 97 percent positive rating on Steam (a popular gaming platform), and approving comments from non-Christians are common: “If you’re not religious, like me, you still have a nice time management strategy game with no violence and a message of caring for others, which I think we can all use a little bit of.” 5. The Lost Legends of Redwall: The Scout Author Brian Jacques’s popular Redwall series is set in a world of woodland creatures. Brave mice, treacherous weasels, raucous otters, doughty hares, and bloodthirsty stoats populate the lands surrounding the Mossflower Woods. In the first book, evil rat Cluny the Scourge lays siege to the gentle creatures of Redwall Abbey, who must defend their home. The Scout—which takes place a few months before Cluny arrives at the abbey—is the first-ever official Redwall video game. You play as a young mouse from the village of Lillygrove, one of the outlying communities first hit by Cluny’s invasion. The game doesn’t feature combat but instead sends you through a series of stealth challenges and puzzles to rescue your loved ones and sound the alarm at Redwall Abbey. The Scout is the work of Soma Games, a Christian game company that aims to serve the world as “the C. S. Lewis of video games,” creating aesthetically beautiful and thematically rich gaming experiences that draw all who play them to consider and appreciate eternal things. Soma founder and COO Chris Skaggs told me how the world of Redwall fits within this mission: “The vibe, the feel, the ethos of Redwall is all about abundance and love and fellowship. . . . It’s a very Christian book at its heart, even if it doesn’t have Christ in person.” Skaggs also established Imladris, a community of Christians working in and around the gaming world. This “community of redemptive gaming industry pros” is laboring to empower and equip Christians in the gaming industry to pursue their craft in a way that glorifies God and bids his kingdom come, whether they’re quietly coding a hobby game or employed at a major gaming company. The work isn’t easy, and Skaggs and his community long for the day when fellow Christians appreciate the redemptive value of games the same way C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien inspired us to appreciate fantasy and science fiction. “I would want my faith community to understand that we’re doing something really cool,” Skaggs said. “[It’s] a valid art form that is going to change hearts and minds and lead people in beautiful ways to Christ.”

If gender is constructed, it can be deconstructed. If we built it, we can tear it down. Now you know why some activists have been so determined to convince us that gender is something we assign, rather than something we receive. If we assign it, then we can reassign it as we wish. We don’t receive our bodies. We can remake our bodies. No doubt you’ve observed the rise of transgender theory in Western culture. It’s the denial that the sexed body reveals and determines the gendered self. That’s the helpful summary we find in the excellent new book The Body God Gives: A Biblical Response to Transgender Theory, written by Rob Smith. Smith is an ordained Anglican minister and lecturer in theology, ethics, and music ministry at Sydney Missionary & Bible College in Australia. He’s written two previous books on gender and identity. This new book by Lexham (now Baker) gives you a little bit of everything. He breaks down the arguments of gender theorists. He guides readers on a who’s who of philosophers who built the intellectual foundations of the secular West: Descartes, Rousseau, Kant, Marx, Wittgenstein, Freud, Sartre, Derrida, Foucault. And he concludes with biblical argumentation to show us nobody is born in the wrong body. He writes, “God’s desire for my gender is revealed by the design of my body.” I appreciate the way he harmonizes the biblical story from Genesis to Revelation: “Our present task is to work with the grain of creation toward the goal of new creation.” Rob joins me on Gospelbound to talk transgender theory, how it spread, why it’s peaked, and where evangelicals need to go next. In This Episode 02:00 – Introducing Rob Smith and The Body God Gives 04:30 – The transgender tipping point 06:21 – Butler, Foucault, and gender theory 11:21 – Queer theory vs. trans theory 16:50 – Signs of peak transgender influence 21:47 – Sex, gender, and stereotypes 29:00 – Church culture and gender expectations 30:24 – Children, puberty, and medical debate 33:30 – Technology, identity, and disembodiment 39:38 – Genesis 1–2 and embodied identity 46:37 – Marriage, singleness, and biblical continuity 51:16 – Pastoring those with gender dysphoria 56:00 – Violence, fear, and identity conflicts 1:00:00 – Expressive individualism and the modern self Resource Mentioned: The Body God Gives: A Biblical Response to Transgender Theory by Rob Smith SIGN UP for my newsletter, Unseen Things. Help The Gospel Coalition renew and unify the contemporary church in the ancient gospel: Donate today. Don’t miss an episode of Gospelbound with Collin Hansen: Apple Podcasts Spotify YouTube TGC Updates

George Herbert, a 17th-century poet and English clergyman, used his literary gifts to encourage the church. His poem “The Holy Scriptures” stands as a remarkable love song to the Bible. Its stanzas express devotional zeal for God’s Word, which Herbert describes as the book “that mends the lookers eyes” because it’s “the well that washes what it shows.” As Herbert argues, Scripture both shows our need for redemption and points us to redemption’s source. Similarly, in The Well That Washes What It Shows: An Invitation to Holy Scripture, Jonathan A. Linebaugh, professor of New Testament and Christian theology at Beeson Divinity School, shows that Scripture is much more than an artifact of an ancient culture or a rule book for daily living. He builds on Herbert’s metaphor to show that Scripture is instead the well that washes what it shows: The Bible reveals our need in order to then heal us. As popular interest in biblical theology has spread, the number of good introductions to the Bible has grown. Linebaugh sets his invitation to Scripture apart with a clear focus on who the Bible’s story is about. He points through the Bible toward Jesus, proclaiming how Christ creates a new reality and how Scripture is best understood within the new community Christ creates. Christ Focused Cultural references abound in this book. For example, Linebaugh draws inspiration from Lucas Cranach’s painting Martin Luther Preaching. In the image, Luther is preaching to a group of people with one hand on an open Bible, while his other points to the crucified Christ. Thus, Linebaugh argues, “Whatever passage a sermon speaks from, what the minister finally and only has to say and to give is always and only the crucified and risen Lord” (7). The Bible reveals our need in order to then heal us. When the risen Jesus speaks to his disciples on the road to Emmaus, he tells them what (and whom) the whole Bible is all about. “Beginning with Moses and all the Prophets,” Luke writes, “he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). Linebaugh takes Jesus’s claim seriously. He argues that, through the Bible, “God speaks to reveal need for Jesus. God speaks to give Jesus” (14). Given these statements, it’s no surprise when Linebaugh shows that Scripture’s story and shape are both Christocentric. The Bible’s story goes “from creation to new creation by way of the crucified and risen Jesus” (5). The shape of Scripture follows Christ’s trajectory of a descent to death, “but then, out of the ashes and from the dead, God raises up and brings to life” (14). Though Christ isn’t named on every page of Scripture, every story reflects the arc of his incarnation. Reality Creating Christians should never tire of finding the common theme in every section of Scripture: The God who spoke everything into existence also brings life out of death. Because the words of the Bible are God’s words, they have the capacity to do what they say. They’re “reality creating” (11). When God declares someone justified, she’s righteous. When God calls someone into new creation life, she’s born again. God’s words create a new reality. The power of God’s words is especially evident in the Bible’s first pages. God speaks to create the world, and the world is created. Yet along with God’s power, we also see his grace in those first pages. The world God creates is very good, but then humanity plunges it into sin. But the story doesn’t end there; God promises to bring life out of the death that humanity brought into the world. Every part of Scripture both reveals our need and provides the means for that need to be met. For example, the central question of the law is whether God’s promise is stronger than humanity’s disobedience and death. The answer is yes. Scripture shows this when we see God bringing his people out of Egypt and miraculously providing for them in the desert. Furthermore, the prophets trace God’s people’s descent into sin, but they continually demonstrate that “exile is not the end” (42). The New Testament reveals how, through Jesus’s death and resurrection, God brings life out of death. He brings a new creation into existence within the hearts and lives of those who follow Christ. We see our sin reflected in the Bible’s storyline, then we receive salvation through the gospel it proclaims. Church Centered The danger of much academic writing on Scripture is that it pushes readers to focus on individual study. Biblical literacy is a good thing, but Paul hoped that the Christians in Rome would be “filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another” (Rom. 15:14). In the same spirit, Linebaugh concludes his panegyric on Scripture by pointing toward ministry in the local church. When we love Scripture, we must do more than increase our knowledge of it. Knowledge must lead to real action (James 1:22). Linebaugh argues, “Ministry engages particular, real people and attends to what God, in the Holy Spirit and through the word, is doing to, with, and for them” (170–71). For example, we don’t call for repentance from those already crying for deliverance. When we love Scripture, we must do more than increase our knowledge of it. Knowledge must lead to real action. Ministry requires careful contextualization of Scripture’s unchanging content to serve the church well. Linebaugh’s book offers an invitation to do that as we live out Scripture’s narrative arc. He shows how the Bible illustrates the need for a contextualized ministry and provides the resources to accomplish it. There’s a crowded field of introductory books on the storyline of Scripture. Books like The Drama of Scripture, According to Plan, and From Eden to the New Jerusalem remain helpful resources for a whole-Bible theology. Linebaugh’s approach complements these volumes. Like Herbert’s poem, The Well That Washes What It Shows overflows with affection for Scripture as it reveals how each part of the Bible’s story preaches the gospel of Christ.

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