Mining Grace

When I was a youth minister I had a thriving Halo 2 ministry. My students saw to it that I gradually progressed from, “What does this button do?” to, “Yeah, I hit your warthog with a sticky!” I have to admit that it wasn’t all horrible. As far as bonding with students goes it was a great past-time.

As I played the game more and delved into some of the single player levels I discovered some implicit biblical themes. The enemy aliens are called The Covenant. They tend to occupy planets through their circular space craft, thus Halo(s). Their leaders are sometimes referred to as Prophets. Then you have the humans who are headed up by a super commando, Master Chief, who is part man and part superhuman battle-suit.

I figured that Halo was just another Matrix knock off, a product of a Christianized culture, picking up Christian themes haphazardly like stepping in bubble gum on the pavement. There didn’t seem to be enough intentionality behind the imagery to necessarily assume the writers/producers/creators of the game were trying to make any pro or anti Christian statement.

Well, I’m no longer a youth minister. I don’t play Halo. My skills are back to “What does this button do?” However, I have followed with some interest the release of Halo 3, the next installment of Master Chief vs The Covenant.

Since I don’t own Halo 3 much less a game system much less a television, my interest has been largely fueled by watching the Halo 3 trailers on youtube. They are told as if war veterans from the Halo 3 war were years later standing in a war museum providing interviews on their experiences in that particular battle.

What fascinated me was the overtly Messianic themes applied to Master Chief. Like I said, I have not played the game nor do I intend to. I’m not even that knowledgeable of the story line. However, what I do know about is the gospel. I know similarities to the gospel story when I see them.

Each commercial has the war veterans relaying two major themes. First, they were outnumbered, out gunned, and outmaneuvered. They were on the brink of the destruction. It is at this point that the interviewer asks some sort of, “How did you find courage to continue on?” Each answers with what I found to be the second major theme, “I knew Master Chief was there and still alive.” Then, one of the particular trailers ends with one veteran saying, “I was nearby when Master Chief armed his grenade.” It is followed by the image of Master Chief being held limp and apparently lifeless by a large Covenant Alien. The camera pans to his hand and shows him switch on a grenade. What you see unfold is a Messianic hero who conquers his enemies just at the point at which he has apparently been defeated in death. Each commercial ends with the word, “Believe”. Gospel parallels anyone?

I don’t mean to say by this that Halo 3 is a Christian video game or even a good video game. Nor do I mean to say that the gospel parallels are close enough to clearly explain what Jesus did on the cross. What I do mean to say is this is yet another example of what JRR Tolkien used to call “the one story.” There is one story, a meta-narrative woven into the hearts of all men and women. This one story is the gospel of Jesus Christ, the warp of redemptive history. Everyone knows the world is broken. It is so broken it feels like war everyday. Everyone has hopes of a Messiah and knows that they are not he. Maybe their Messiah is drink, intimacy, ambition, success, or other vice. But every once in a while that Messiah-longing breaks into fiction and you can catch glimpses of a human heart longing for freedom from sin, longing for victory over a broken world, longing for Jesus. They may only be glimpses and snatches of story line. But they are there.

Halo 3 is a reminder to me that the world does indeed long for and need a Master Chief. The travesty of Halo 3 is that it tells thousands of gamers that they can be their own Master Chief and overcome through skilled game play. The world desperately needs the real thing. The world desperately needs Jesus. Can’t you see it?

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I’ve included the video embeds through the link below. See if you agree.