There’s no need to guess at the idea behind “I Am Jesus Christ,” a first-person video game launching just in time for Christmas 2022.
The gamer is able to play as Jesus Christ in a recreation of the Savior’s life on earth, up to His crucifixion and resurrection. Produced by independent Polish companies SimulaM and PlayWay, the game is being promoted as “the world’s first Jesus simulator” wherein you get to “relive the most important moments in the life of Christ.” Touted by its developers as an effective educational tool, it also “has been approved by several Christian groups,” according to the website Game Rant.
But before you hit the “Buy Now” button, it would behoove us to look at what this game is really teaching.
Playing God
“I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; … I will be like the Most High” (Isaiah 14:13, 14), boasted the angel who would become Satan.
He planted the same virus into the mind of Eve: “For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5), said the devil in the Garden of Eden, tempting Eve to eat the forbidden fruit.
But what’s wrong with wanting to be like God? Didn’t Jesus even say, “For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you” (John 13:15)? Doesn’t Scripture tell us, “He who says he abides in Him [Christ] ought himself also to walk just as He walked” (1 John 2:6)? And isn’t that just what the video game is facilitating in a most conspicuous sense, to walk in the footsteps of Christ?
It’s not such a far stretch nowadays. Video gaming is increasingly being explored as a didactic tool in the medical field, the military, and even in elementary schools. Simulation video gaming is especially influential for its “immersive experience.” It is “purely meant to offer real-world experience to players,” “the best [being] … designed to make players feel as if they’re doing activities in the real world without doing it.”
And that’s what “I Am Jesus Christ” is—it’s a simulation video game. Its goal, by definition, is to induce the player into feeling like he is God and to try to make this experience as real as possible.
This is a problem, because attempting to become God is the very act that caused not only Satan but also Adam and Eve to fall. Sin is what brought so much suffering into the world. And “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).
This, becoming God, is not what Jesus meant when He charged His disciples to follow Him as an example. The very first of the Ten Commandments states, “You shall have no other gods before Me” (Exodus 20:3). You are not to prioritize yourself as a god above the one and only God. Walking as Christ walked means that we are to have His “mind” (Philippians 2:5)—His character. We are to imitate His humility (Matthew 20:28), His self-denial (2 Corinthians 8:9), His total dependence upon God the Father (John 5:30). We are to love as He loved (15:13).
Gamifying God
But let’s set aside, for now, the sacrilege of role-playing as Jesus and examine the game’s actual representation of Jesus.
à la Dragon Ball.According to Matteo Lupetti, a video gamer who wrote an article about his first-hand experience demoing the game, “I, Jesus, had to fast in the desert while surrounded by angels training me to fight. … With the press of a button, I could … gather the energy balls thrown at me by Satan and bounce them back.” He compared the scene to a Japanese anime battle “à la Dragon Ball.”
He also added, “Every now and then, I had to stop and pray to recharge my ‘Holy Spirit[,]’ consumed by the use of my powers.” He “[destroyed] evil crystals placed by Satan in several Palestinian cities,” “solved a bunch of puzzles in a celestial dimension to unlock new miracles,” “and made [himself] smaller to enter a little boy’s body and destroy viruses that were going to kill him.” Another article reported that “players can use telekinesis to enhance their carpentry skills.”
None of this is in the Bible.
To cap it all, “the game is designed to be replayable, with different choices leading to different outcomes.” Does that mean the player, as Jesus, could choose not to die on the cross for the sins of the world? That remains to be seen.
Perhaps most disturbing, Lupetti also interviewed the head of SimulaM and assured his readers that “the game is fairly serious in its depictions of Jesus’s life.” In other words, this simulator was not meant as a joke or satire. It was made in earnest, presumably to teach people about the gospel.
Unfortunately, what the game presents is an unbiblical depiction of the second Person of the Godhead, a gamified Jesus Christ degraded to fit “into the objective-challenge-reward system that makes up traditional gameplay.” The game teaches that Jesus lived not out of selfless love but to serve and empower Himself. Prayer is corrupted into an opportunistic trick to retain supernatural power; Christ is embodied as a superhero instead of the Lamb of God “slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8). And what does the player learn except that he is saved not by grace through faith but through selfish works? You become the savior, not the saved.
“Who Is Jesus?” You don’t need to buy a game to learn of the Savior. Our free presentation has the answers you need straight from God’s Word.