This is pretty interesting.
What I think is so funny is that the Pastors must be totally ignoring the plot or dialogue of Halo, and just assuming its “Bad aliens vs. good humans”. But Halo doesn’t have a “good vs. evil” basis for the plot.
Sure the flood could be seen as the evil, but the biggest conflict is “religious beliefs vs. empirical evidence”. Throughout the game the humans aren’t more morally guided than the covenant, nor are they more peaceful. Humans are the protagonists because they aren’t religious. The Arbiter becomes a protagonist “good guy”, when he renounces his faith and accepts the evidence of the Masterchief.
Even the conflict with the flood isn’t good vs. evil. The conflict with the flood is more so “conservation vs. progress”. Consider the actions of 343 Guilty Spark, who is so afraid of information being lost or destroyed, that he wants to activate the Halos, so that he can end all life and active/destructive processes on the planet. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to say that 343 Guilty Spark would want to wipe out all life in the galaxy - flood or not. 343 Guilty Spark is the ultimate defense of obsessive preservation, and he uses rhetoric to trick the Covenant into fighting for his selfish ends.
People like to try to make Halo look like a biblical retelling by pointing out words like “Covenant”, “the Ark”, “John 1:17 (Moses created the law but Jesus gives us grace and truth)”, “The Flood”
And perhaps Halo is to an extent a biblical retelling. But rather than portraying the Covenant between God and his people as a good thing, the Covenant is portrayed as a deluded, senseless union, that only works to the selfish ends of the oracles. John 1:17 (MC’s name) could be interpreted as meaning that one should choose what they think to be true over the traditional religion when the two conflict.
In Halo, religion is a way to control and manipulate people. Therefore, why on Earth would a church see it as something they’d want to show. The message of Halo 3 is a huge insult towards religion, and its blatantly clear.
