Bible Games: The Untold Stories

Today I was at Best Buy perusing all the cool new stuff. I'm only 24 and I can already tell that technology is moving faster than me. I was in the XBOX game aisle when I found, stashed among "Grand Theft Auto" and "Call of Duty 2," a game called "Bible Games."

It's kind of a kids game where you get to be a character from the Bible. For example, you can help Noah find all the animals, Moses part the Red Sea, and help Daniel get away from all those pesky lions. It all sounds quite amusing for a Christian kid. I remember having a similar game when I was young for that stone age piece of equipment called Nintendo.

I was thinking about how all those games have the same old stories. What if there was a really unique biblical adventure with some of the lesser known stuff--maybe one for the teenagers? Before I knew it I was thinking up ideas for a riveting sequel to "Bible Games" called "Bible Games: The Untold Stories." Here's some ideas:

You're an Israelite on a quest to kill all the Midianites except the virgins, which you have sex with for points. Based on Numbers 31.

Here's another game idea: You're a soldier of Israel and you have to kill every single living human in Canaan. Extra points for children. You lose points if they get away. Based on Joshua 10.

How about You're commissioned by God to stop the rise of the "Nephillim" by killing all the evil, fallen angels before they interbreed with human women. Based on Genesis 6.

Ok, one more: Bonus Round: You're Joshua and you have just found that Achan has taken some stuff from Jericho. It's your job to stone Achan, his family, and his animals to death as fast as you can. Based on Joshua 7.

In all seriousness, the reason I say that is because I feel many Christians are mis-representing the Bible and its God. It's not that Christians will deny that the Bible says a lot of strange and hard-to-deal-with stuff, but that it's just not ever talked about.

It's Bible games like the one for X-BOX that shows me even more that while most Christians, in theory, say the whole Bible is God's inspired word, they live and teach like only certain parts are worth anyone's time.

I spent near every Sunday and Wednesday in church for 24 years. I have heard thousands of biblical teachings, but not once have I ever heard a teaching on any "strange" passages of the Bible. Most of the Christians I know don't have a clue the Bible teaches that sacrificial blood is God's food or any of the other things like that.

I had a professor at Bible College who used to say to me, "many people believe the Bible because they don't know what it says." I shout a loud "AMEN!" to that one. What disservice pastors and parents are doing to people by only teaching parts of the Bible that are safe.

"The Bible Game" is a classic example of every Sunday school class I ever had up through high school--we talk about how wonderful it is that God gave the Israelites victory, but we conveniently forget they had victory at the great expense of thousands, if not millions, of innocent lives who were simply minding their own business. We talked about how he saved the Israelite firstborn from his own angel of death but forget that he killed a lot more than he probably saved--all over a bloody doorpost. Why would YHVH have to kill all the first born of Egypt? Couldn't he have simply taken Pharaoh's child to get the point across?

I spent my entire childhood and teenage years in Sunday School. It was a crushing thing when I grew older, and read the Bible for myself, only to find the God I grew to know and love was only part of the God of the Bible--the nicer-more-politically-correct part.

Christian parents out there would do well to teach their sons and daughters the whole Bible. Or are you afraid of what your children will find out? Hmm, maybe on second thought, you might be better off just exposing them to things like "Bible Games" and taking them to VBS this summer--that will probably give you more desirable results.