Christ On Console: Final Fantasy VII
A theological reflection on the story and characters in Final Fantasy VII
“The land is mine and you reside in my land as foreigners and strangers.”
- Leviticus 25:23
As a child, Final Fantasy VII was one of my favorite games. Looking back now, I see that its story echoes deep Christian themes. Alongside other influences, it likely helped shape who I am today.
Every character in Final Fantasy VII plays a role in the fight against evil. Each one walks a personal path of salvation. And together, they reflect the diverse journeys of Christ’s disciples.
In Part One, we’ll explore the overarching story and its spiritual allegories. In Part Two, we’ll look more closely at the characters and how their lives mirror the disciples of Jesus.
Final Fantasy VII is a reminder that not all video games are empty or corrupt. Some, like this one, carry profound echoes of the sacred. In an age when so much media feels spiritually hollow if not openly hostile to faith, it’s worth paying attention to the rare stories that still whisper of grace, sacrifice, and redemption.
Midgar: The City of Babel
The story opens in a great mechanical womb: Midgar. A fortress-city powered by Mako, a glowing substance siphoned from the lifestream, deep within the planet. Shinra, the corporate god of this world, reigns supreme, offering light, energy, and progress to those who comply, while burying the poor beneath its steel foundations.
We begin the game with sabotage. A small group of rebels, Avalanche, blows up a Mako reactor. Their act is a protest. The planet is dying. Shinra is bleeding it dry. Most of the city’s inhabitants have stopped noticing, whether voluntarily or by ignorance, becoming cut off from the Divine.
Midgar is more than setting. It is the condition of fallen man: self-assured, technocratic, enthroned on stolen divinity. Like Babel or Rome or Silicon Valley, Midgar is what happens when man builds without God, when he consumes the sacred for convenience.
And yet, even in this fallen city, seeds of longing remain. The rebels seek truth. Aerith, a girl from the slums sells flowers. And Cloud, the mercenary and main character with no past, will soon begin a long pilgrimage home.
Exodus
“Your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God.”
- Isaiah 59:2
When the group flees Midgar, the story expands and the illusions begin to unravel. Cloud is not who he claimed to be. Sephiroth, once a heroic soldier, becomes a shadow in the wilderness, a wanderer seeking reunion with a cosmic mother and enthronement as a god.
This is the Exodus portion of the tale: the journey into the unknown, the confrontation with false idols, the unveiling of hidden sin.
Sephiroth embodies the fallen archangel. A creature once radiant, now warped by pride. His desire is not healing, but domination. He plans to wound the planet and descend into its core to merge with it and become divine. “You will be like God” (Genesis 3:5) is his creed.
Sephiroth is not simply evil. He speaks of prophecy, of purity, of destiny. But his gospel is a counterfeit. Like modern technocrats and cultish ideologues, he offers salvation through control, transcendence without love, reunion without repentance.
Cloud, by contrast, is unraveling. His memories are fragmented. His identity is a collage of trauma, shame, and falsehood. He is, like many today, alienated from his origin and unsure of his name.
But the truth will not stay buried.
Golgotha
“He was pierced for our transgressions... and with His wounds we are healed.”
- Isaiah 53:5
Aerith is the last of the Cetra, an ancient people attuned to the divine. She speaks to the planet. She prays. While others wield swords and guns, she bears the world’s suffering in silence.
In the Forgotten City, a sacred place sought for its intense spiritual energy and deep connection to the planet, she kneels alone. She prays. She seeks divine help, a higher power to intervene and restore what has been desecrated.
Then comes the blade like the Roman spear.
Sephiroth descends from above and pierces her through. There is no warning. No spectacle. Only a swift, precise act of violence as if to silence the last holy voice on earth.
Her death is the Calvary of this story.
Aerith does not resist. She does not curse. She prays. She dies. And with her death, the story begins to shift. Evil is exposed. Hearts are stirred. The illusion breaks.
This moment remains burned into the memory of millions. It is a digital icon of cruciform love… The innocent sufferer whose quiet sacrifice becomes the hinge of redemption. Where others fought, she knelt. Where others cursed, she interceded. Where others survived, she gave herself.
She prayed alone, in a land reminiscent of Eden, a place still alive with divine energy, unspoiled by steel. And there, like Christ in Gethsemane, she chose obedience over survival.
Cloud's Descent and Confession
“The truth will set you free.”
- John 8:32
Cloud collapses. The trauma of Aerith’s death, the revelations of his false memories, and the weight of Sephiroth’s manipulations finally break him.
He falls into the Lifestream… A sea of memory, spirit, and identity. It is a kind of purgatory. And there, he must face himself.
This is the point of repentance.
Cloud was never the hero he pretended to be. His strength was borrowed. His memories were stitched from fragments of guilt and shame. He has spent the story pretending to be someone else.
But in the depths, with Tifa’s help, he remembers the truth. He admits who he was: a scared boy from Nibelheim, desperate to be seen, to be loved. He confesses. And in that confession, he begins to heal.
The Christian life follows the same pattern. Before we can rise with Christ, we must die with Him. Before we can proclaim the Gospel, we must be known in our weakness. The world prizes curated identity. The Kingdom demands the truth.
Cloud returns not stronger, but more honest. And that honesty becomes his strength.
The Final Confrontation
“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
- Romans 12:21
As the planet nears collapse, Sephiroth enacts his final plan: to wound the earth so grievously that its healing force will gather into one place where he can merge with it and ascend.
This is the temptation of modern god-making. Hurt the world so deeply that only you can fix it. Create the problem, then sell the solution. Offer yourself as savior to the very world you have broken.
But the story resists this logic. The prayers of Aerith echo. The sacrifice holds. The very planet fights back creating huge living weapons as protectors of nature.
Cloud and his companions descend into the depths, into the crater that Sephiroth has made. There, they do not confront him with machines or science, but with truth. With the bonds forged in suffering. With the memory of the Aerith’s sacrifice.
At the end Cloud goes forward alone and defeats Sephiroth, not as a god, but as a man.
Come Out of Midgar
We all begin in Midgar. We all live under false gods, drink false comforts, and perform false identities. But the call of the Gospel is always the same:
“Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins” (Revelation 18:4).
You do not need to save the world. That work is finished. But you must remember who you are. You must descend into the truth of your life. You must let the false self die.
Only then can you rise at your strongest.
I was just thinking the other day about how Final Fantasy VII follows a loosely Christian narrative structure. Cloud clearly represents a Christ figure battling against evil. Sephiroth and his mother Jenova are obvious representations of Satanic influence, and the whole dynamic mirrors the ancient Sumerian myth of Tiamat and Kingu with those same archetypal patterns. Great article.