Question #1
Answer and earn: 5 Doves

Jesus said that God’s word is ________.

a. lightning
b. truth
c. life-giving

Memory tells me Grandma kept the Nintendo Entertainment System in the toy room upstairs, but for some reason, it’s in the living room this time:

It’s Saturday morning. I know for certain it was Saturday. I’m in my pajamas and sat on the low-pile carpeted floor. The TV set is in front of me—a pale, unassuming wood that does nothing to interrupt the drabness of the house it belongs to. I open the little double doors at the bottom to find something to play. The selection isn’t large, but various wires, VHS tapes of sermons, and other objects typically glanced over fill the spaces in between. My eyes eventually fall to a cartridge that makes my little gay heart skip a beat. 

On it: an illustration of a warrior man in what can only be described as a steel one-piece bathing suit. It grips his pecs for dear life, his legs completely bare. His face is frozen in a triumphant howl as he wields a sword and shield emblazoned with a red Crusader cross. He is surrounded by arms reaching and grasping at him through portals to the underworld, and above his head the game’s title gleams: Spiritual Warfare.

I pop it in and play for about an hour or so. No one else ever seems to be around. I count this session among one of many accumulated losses, for ultimately, I had sinned. I did consider that the building downtown called BAR might be a trap, but Miss Lucifer had won on this day. Inside, the room was empty save for one lone angel. He says something to the tune of you’re bad and you should feel bad. The screen fades to black and GAME OVER overtakes it. Here, read: YOU’VE GONE TO HELL.

There it is. That familiar feeling again. A scorch from my feet through my spine to my crown. Heart begins to pound and blood tumbles through my veins. The room gets hotter. Sweat forms at the hairline and my breath grows heavy. Before long, the color around me pales and paint melts down the walls. The room gets hotter. Rotting hands kissed by ulcers reach through the floor and grasp at my limbs. The room gets hotter. The couch catches fire, flames lick the wedding shot of my dead father resting above it. A cacophony of demonic shrieks floods my ears. The room gets hotter. I feel the weight of my sins, all my deviant thoughts stacked high, and the room swelters.

The title screen rematerializes. Thankfully, Grandma has never witnessed my failures, but she might as well have.

🩸

I’ve climbed into the beautiful oak tree in the backyard. It seemed older than time and its trunk thick and huggable. Its body is lined with scales—pieces that unlatch at the bottom and curve slightly toward heaven. When I run my palm downward, it’s ecstasy. But upward is jagged and can sometimes bite back. A trinity of large branches form a cradle, and those three spread out into arboreous fractals.

No one else ever seems to be around. There’s not even the ambient whir of cars, no mutterings of passersby. I’ve climbed into the beautiful tree in the backyard, but I am also in the forever unlit junk room in the house upstairs. An octagonal slatted window overlooks the backyard with its swing set and the lilac bush and beautiful tree. I am standing at the slatted window, but I’m also cradled in the tree, and both versions stare at each other in silence.

🩸

Question #4
Answer and earn: 5 Doves

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.

a. True
b. False

The year is 1990 and the gaming company Color Dreams is seeking salvation from financial ruin. Their business model: developing and selling unlicensed games for the Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES. Amazingly, they were able to save a portion of their bottom line by skirting official distribution and still ended up making games that were shit. On top of this, they were just a ripe one year old by this point and didn’t pose any threat. The company and its memory were left to die of natural causes.

However, they were able to resurge in the form of an offshoot: Wisdom Tree Games. The lore surrounding its creation is varied. One version tells of a Sunday School teacher named Michael Wilson who wanted to push Christian values into the burgeoning gaming market. Another version claims that it simply started off as a joke by Dan Lawton, Color Dreams’ founder. The most likely scenario is that both held some truth like two heads of some weird evangelical hydra. Their first entry—Bible Adventures—was a surprising success, sparking the eventual creation of their ten-game catalogue baptized in the Holy Spirit.

In response to the underground network of unlicensed games, Nintendo threatened to pull distribution from any retailers who entertained it, blocking Wisdom Tree’s ability to proselytize at Walmart. This didn’t spell despair, as their promised land ultimately lay in Christian bookstores. These brick-and-mortar altars to the kingdom of heaven were untapped by the secular Nintendo, who decided against any litigation so as to not appear as though they were on the side of Satan. Wisdom Tree forged ahead and placed their fifth title, Spiritual Warfare, at Family Christian Stores where my grandma picked up a copy.

The game itself is the laziest kind: a clone. One of The Legend of Zelda, to be exact. Instead of shining rupees, the currency in Spiritual Warfare are  doves. Instead of fighting monsters like Octorocs and Moblins, the player brings salvation to men and demons. Instead of a wizened elder arming you with a sword for the journey ahead, a guardian angel gives you a piece of fruit to chuck at your enemies. The end goal is to travel through different regions and obtain all six pieces of the Armor of God so that you can defeat the unnamed evil final boss. Big mystery as to who that might be.

Wisdom Tree games, much like Veggie Tales, acted as a malformed third arm of Sunday School. Indoctrination, but make it fun for the kids. Biblical principles are woven into Spiritual Warfare’s mechanics: bombs are the Vial of God’s Wrath, the various fruits you throw are the Fruit of the Spirit, the player’s progress is tied to obtaining items like The Belt of Truth and Samson’s Jawbone. Along the way, the player quite literally evangelizes. The enemies you defeat turn into kneeling disciples. If you’re unlucky, a demon might fly out at you instead. Apples are particularly helpful in this case as they do not disappear upon contact with an enemy—the perfect double-tappers. 

Though doves and hearts to recover any lost HP are dropped from the converted, the player’s biggest spoils come from scripture quizzes given by guardian angels. Each encounter requires you to answer five questions worth five doves each: either true/false or multiple choice. Most are drawn from The New Testament. If you answer all five correctly, you’re awarded ten additional doves and recover two hearts. If you manage to get even one question wrong, you’re denied restoration. You know immediately where you’ve failed because the game blares an 8-bit downward crescendo as your character’s face melts into a frown. The thing about these quiz-angels is that they’re fucking everywhere. At points, it feels like you can’t walk two steps  without one haphazardly flying across the screen. What’s more, the questions get harder and deeper into scripture the more you complete. By the time you hit Question 50, you’re on the biblical B-sides. 

Question #23
Answer and earn: 5 Doves

Jesus was delivered up to be crucified for ________.

a. His sins
b. our sins
c. 20 denarii

Mom only wanted to bring me closer to Dad’s memory. 

On Thanksgiving of my birth year, I sent her into labor. Because she and Dad were a little preoccupied, the two sides of my family had one of their rare gatherings. That Thanksgiving, my two teen sisters broke bread with Grandma, her husband, my two aunts, uncle, and their horrible spouses. They bowed their heads over turkey and mashed potatoes in Grandma’s apple-decorated kitchen.

The air of judgement was palpable for my sisters. While everyone at the table was from the same backroads in southwestern Ohio, they had been raised differently. Mom’s side was composed of river people from a bad neighborhood by poor white standards. If they weren’t fist fighting other kids down the street, the adults were hurling punches at each other in the backyard. They swam unblinkingly with water moccasins and weathered numerous floods. Dad’s side, by comparison, was like something from Seventh Heaven. Devout, middle class, never screaming over plates of food under threat of growing cold. Never confronting anything, really. My aunts sneered across the table at my sisters. Grandma lobbed passive aggressive comments their way. My uncle—the golden child—wielded his accomplishments as social currency. Once dinner reached its awkward conclusion, they played kickball in the backyard under the giant oak tree. 

The only other time I’ve heard of another such blended gathering was soon after my birth at my dad’s favorite spot—the fine establishment known as Pizza Hut. Again, my aunts sneered. Again, my uncle boasted. Dad took it all on the chin to keep the peace and avoid the outcast status he’d known for so long. Mom wanted to order spaghetti instead of pizza, and Grandma told her it was un-American.

When I was two, Dad invited Mom for a ride on his Harley, but on this fateful day, she turned him down. He stopped by another of his favorite haunts, Phantom Fireworks, and with supplies in tow, he mounted his bike. When turning out of the unpaved drive, a rock and the Jack Daniels betrayed him. He spun out onto the blacktop and died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. 

There was no longer a buffer between the two families. Instead, a deal was struck to ensure I connected with my dad’s side. I’d spend every weekend at Grandma’s house. “If I had known what they’d do, I’d never have let you go over there,” Mom laments today. Conveniently, my three cousins spent every other weekend at my uncle’s, who lived in the same little town Grandma did. The boys were frequent visitors at hers, me at their dad’s. This meant when excluding some weekends I or they couldn’t be around, and counting the number of years it occurred, there were at least one hundred eighty five weekends where my older cousin had the opportunity to fondle me. And he took advantage of most, I reckon.

🩸

I’ve arrived at the entrance to the woods in my uncle’s backyard. They seem wider than the Red Sea and contain many tree trunks thick and huggable. Bodies lined with scales—pieces that unlatch at the bottom and curve slightly toward heaven. If your palm runs downward, it’s ecstasy. But upward is jagged and sometimes bites back. A trinity of noises—birds chirping, older cousin shouting in anger, and younger cousin wailing in pain—all beneath these arboreous fractals.

No one else seems to be around, not oldest cousin, not Uncle, no neighbor to pass by. I’m standing at the entrance of the woods, and I am frozen. In older cousin lives a demon of rage, and younger cousin has pushed him too far under these beautiful trees. I am standing at the entrance of the woods, and I look back at Uncle’s house in silence.

🩸

Your faith looks weak,
you’ll need more spirit…

The tips Spiritual Warfare provides to aid players are sparse. Nonexistent, really. While not unlike The Legend of Zelda where you’re dropped into the world and made to find your own way, Spiritual Warfare feels at once more complex and less intuitive. The signs are vague, the junkyard dogs are undefeatable, the train conductor is bitchy and won’t let you ride the train without a ticket, nor tell you how to get one.

In spite of these trials and tribulations, I’d traversed through FIELDS, DOWNTOWN, and HOUSES. I warded off demons. I found keys, unlocked doors, purchased anointing oil with doves, and obtained The Belt of Truth and The Breastplate of Righteousness. I pelted different foes with my dumb little fruit: fast-paced businessmen with gray hair and suits darting to and fro across the screen; gang members firing bullets the size of their heads. Green-haired men zigzagging around in overalls and wielding… Paddles? Flyswatters? 

Boss 3 is where I abandon all hope. The thing about bosses is that they are entirely unremarkable. Typically, game artists and designers will put more thought into making bosses distinct from the other characters a player might encounter, but these chumps look exactly the same as every other NPC rando. Boss 3 appears in the form of a lowly repairman wielding a wrench. You enter toward the bottom of the screen and he at the top. Rows of bricks partition you from him and the door that leads to the Boots Shod With the Preparation of the Gospel. The player is meant to wait for the repairman to launch a tracking bomb down your way, then guide it to portions of the brick wall highlighted in pink. With each explosion, ladders appear that will eventually allow you to ascend. 

Six-year-old me didn’t quite understand what I was supposed to do here. I would try launching pears, apples, and pomegranates. I would try placing Vials of God’s Wrath and exploding them to no avail. My little avatar would be hit with the tracking bombs and die countless times. I couldn’t outsmart this goddamn game, and my failure caused me to weep. Before I’d discovered the trick to win the level, I’d already given up. I’d switched off the console and begun searching for my tub of Lincoln Logs instead. 

Question #100
Answer and earn: 5 Doves

God gave us Jesus “who knew no sin,” to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

a. True
b. False

The drive along I-71 between Cincinnati and Columbus is flat and unremarkable. However, there is one billboard along the way that’s become a real Ohio claim to fame (if there could ever be such a thing). When you’re driving toward Columbus, the billboard reads HELL IS REAL. Toward Cincinnati, IF YOU DIED TODAY WHERE WOULD YOU SPEND ETERNITY? I recall another one further down the road with five commandments printed on either side, but it seems to have disappeared. The next checkpoint after HELL is the Rumpke Landfill, and then a billboard depicting two golden wedding bands and the words, HOLY MATRIMONY IS ONE MAN AND ONE WOMAN.

By contrast, parts of the drive to my Pentecostal church in my Grandma’s town were somewhat beautiful. The street on which it lived was lined with tall, skinny trees and sprawling soybean fields beyond them. I remember many Sundays where I’d beg Grandma to let me sit in adult service with her. The alternative was going down to the basement for Youth Group to chant “I MAY NOT MARCH IN THE INFANTRY / RIDE IN THE CALVARY / SHOOT IN THE ARTILLERY / I MAY NOT MARCH IN THE INFANTRY / BUT I’M IN THE LORD’S ARMY, YESSIR!”

Each service began with what felt like an eternity standing for praise and worship. I would reluctantly clap along and try to follow the lyrics on the projector screen floating above the altar. Women kicked off their shoes and galloped frantically down the aisles. As my clapping grew weary, sweat formed at my upper lip while the tone deaf voices of parishioners flooded my hearing from all sides. My vision blurred as my eyes darted from the projector screen to the flag twirlers in the front pews. 

The pastor’s sermon began after praise and worship and a baptism if one was scheduled for that day. At some point, the pastor would pause for communion and we would be given plastic shot glasses of Welch’s grape juice and unsalted wafers. “Snack time!” I would always think, because enduring collective spiritual psychosis sure does work up an appetite. Wicker baskets were passed around to collect tithes from the middle and working class members of the congregation, and then back to preaching—Eve plucking the apple was the seed of evil, Cain grew the roots, and Sodom and Gomorrah were the tree that sprouted. The pastor often rattled on about these epicenters of evil. When God’s fifty believers were nowhere to be found within, He cast judgement.

Still, no preacher’s sermon could come close to how often Jesus speaks about hell in the Bible—he gushes endlessly about the consequences of earthly sin. Evangelicals, too, love hell. When the promise of salvation isn’t enough to convert a non-believer, use fear instead! Grandma took this strategic approach to heart. “Those who committed abortion would have a millstone hung about their necks!”  “All gays are on a grease pole to hell!” Whenever I’d ask her about what my dad was like? “He’s in heaven now,” was all she could bring herself to half-heartedly mutter.

Guilt festered when I quietly swooned over a boy in class or found myself mesmerized by Aladdin’s open vest. I always tried to have a girlfriend to ward off the rumors. I thought I needed to pray harder. 

I ritualized bedtime by curling up completely under the covers, surrounded by a herd of stuffed animals. First, I’d say The Lord’s Prayer followed by my own: a plea for salvation. Sometimes my dreams were surreal. Sometimes they were funny. Sometimes I dreamt of hell. As in the scripture my church propagated, the hell in my dreams was a landscape of fire and brimstone—everything red and acrid and unbearably hot. Blood-curdling howls ricocheted between the walls. I heard the“ weeping and gnashing of teeth” written of in Matthew 25:30. Those of us who bore wicked thoughts were lined up and yoked. Traveling from person to person were shrouded figures, one wielding a scorching brand. There was smoke and the smell of charred skin. Another came to deglove each sinner and yet another followed with hedge trimmers to sever and cast their hands away. 

I knelt and bore witness and waited my turn. 

🩸

I’ve climbed up the muted blue stairs to the toy room. It seems we’re playing a game of hide-and-seek, and older cousin and I are hiding. I think I know what this leads to, and I look toward heaven. He suggests the dark cluttered closet just over there—a chill runs down my spine but for him, ecstasy. I long for the backyard, for the arboreous fractals. 

No one else is around, no one passes by the door to the toy room. I enter the dark, cluttered closet with him, but retreat to somewhere else deep in my mind. I think of the beautiful tree. Enveloped in forgotten shirts and coats, his hands guide mine in silence.

🩸

Hallelujah, Soldier 
of God! You have
defeated the final
foe and freed the
city from his evil
influence. May God 
bless you in all
that you do!

As a kid, I never made it to the end of Spiritual Warfare. I didn’t get to behold the glorious message at the end. It’s not that I didn’t want to finish it, but when contemplating the selection behind the little double doors of the TV cabinet, I began to dread the thought of the game. Boss 3 had killed my spirit; my little venture into BAR bit me in the ass, and I was done feeling despair when I was supposed to be having fun. The game was maliciously difficult. My death count was too high, the path forward too opaque to justify the hours I sacrificed. 

This means I never made it to DEMON’S LAIR: a labyrinth of brown stone passageways with a two-toned, frowning mask impressed above the entry. The area is overlain with hues of yellow, red, and orange, and demons fly rapidly toward you at every turn. The player sees hints of a new enemy—his clawed footprints are scattered across the ground. Once the player progresses enough, the palette suddenly changes. The warm tones are swapped for blues, greens, and purples, and slime bubbles around the stone walkways. 

Once the player finds him, the final boss takes up a third of the screen. Big and burly and oddly blue, horns sprout from his forehead and fangs rise from the bottom of his mouth. He launches little blue mini-demons at you in quick succession across a moat of lava. After the player lands enough hits, he pauses, turns firetruck red, and sends his detached arms flying around the screen nearly too fast for the human eye to track. If I’d seen this as a kid in real-time, my nerves would have certainly kicked into overdrive and I’d immediately have turned off the TV.

After over two decades, I decided to return to this game that both feels at once like a blip in my memory and a formative part of my childhood. I scoured the net for an NES emulator, and pretty quickly found a site hosting a ROM version of the game. There he was again—that same hunk that was on the cartridge in his steel bathing suit. Once I loaded it up, all the memories came flooding back. The befuddlement, the frustration, the fear. 

After pressing any button to begin, the player’s first task is to choose a name. Amazingly, there isn’t any kind of filter applied to this—I’ve gotten away with DILDO, BITCH, and SATAN, words which, incidentally, also happen to describe my gender. My Simpson-skinned little boy character (the player’s only option) receives his Fruit of the Spirit, and I begin meandering around looking for the Armor of God. It doesn’t take long for me to acquire The Belt of Truth and move the boulder off of the pathway that leads to DOWNTOWN.

So, here I am once again seeking out BAR to recreate this memory burned into my brain. Once I finally stumble upon it, I lob my fruit at all the bar-going men in fuchsia suits piling out the door and walk my character up to the entrance. Inside, the angel tells me, You have no place in a bar, and snatches my Belt of Truth. I’m told I can find it again in SLUMS. 

No GAME OVER appears, and as it turns out, it never had. 

Question #219
Answer and earn: 5 Doves

“For God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son, that whoever does good deeds will have eternal life.”

a. True
b. False

What I remember is obedience. I was very pious growing up—a little goody two-shoes—authority and rules were my guides. My future promised to be straight and straight-edge, living free from substance and lust. I once sat out a viewing of Shrek at Grandma’s because I heard Mike Myers say “damn” in the preview. My cousins tried to lure me in from the swing set in the backyard—“it’s actually not that bad!” But I just doubled down, gripped the chains tighter.

I was small, cute, and frail. The perfect target. There was an aunt who called me toothpick and smacked me over the head. One uncle cast me into a pool when I wasn’t yet able to swim. Two others mocked me ceaselessly over a game of cards and when I was eventually reduced to tears and screams, I was scolded. The boys in the family called me every unoriginal name for “too girly” in the book. And of course, there was the molestation stuff. 

I didn’t realize until I was older—until I was well past my so-called faith crisis—that these experiences were abnormal. Still, any queer kid or gender deviant reared in dogma will understand without much need for extrapolation. I was raised Pentecostal, but I’ve been able to commiserate and resonate with the stories of ex-Southern Baptists, ex-Mormons, you name it. We’ve confirmed for each other that the doctrines are not just what you hear during Sunday service. They infiltrate every corner of your life. They are your life. You’re not meant to stray one hair from the path of righteousness. You cannot eat before thanking a higher power. TV-time is Veggie Tales and mega-church sermons. Literary cornerstones are The Holy Bible and the Left Behind series. Your bands are Mercy Me and Mary Mary. Your names are chosen from scripture. You quietly distance yourself from anyone who seems too worldly.

Hell is indeed real. I’ve severed half of my family tree, for I could not sever who I was or what I endured. Faces petrified in photos from 2010 and prior. As the years progress, I count new losses. I don’t interact much with social media, and any I do have is locked down tightly. The thought of publishing something under my full name terrifies me. My dad and grandpa are buried in the same town with that same dark, cluttered closet. 

I’ve leaned on different platitudes over the years. Sharing blood doesn’t mean you should spill yours; new families can rise from the rubble; sacrifice is necessary to survive; accepting the cards you’ve been dealt is a testament to your inner strength. While all true, they can’t fully close the wound. There’s no clear ending to this story, no glistening bow to wrap it in. I wander through life with trepidation as if I’m trapped in the burning corridors of DEMON’S LAIR. I’m still hunting for my six pieces of armor to defeat my final boss—forever seeking a way to repair my damaged memory.