In recent years, as I’ve chronicled the fractures in gaming media (including hypocrisies of online drama cycles and the fragility of consumer culture), there is one subject matter that has always remained a tricky one to explain: targeted moral pressure.

For most of my life, targeted moral pressure has often been the boogeyman of people who express that some vague notion of “Freedom” is the highest moral good attainable. Ironically, what “Freedom” is varies from one social group to another and ironically contains its own parameters for people ought or ought not be free to say or do. But rather than get caught in those semantics, I will instead talk about the recent drama surrounding the video game, Stellar Blade: Blood Rain.

The main contention you are likely being told is that the greatest evil is that some extrinsic“authority” is denying you the ability to spend your money in a manner you deem appropriate for yourself. This is regardless of the fact that these measures of control are exhibited from earnest Christian voices or progressive advocacy groups. What you are being told is that you must “react” to some broader inversion of authority.

Meanwhile, what you are never told to think about is why various payment processors are allowed to pick and choose these things already and what that even means, existentially. Most people take payment processors as a given and never think about how commerce, once a humble servant of the household, now postures as its master.

Payment processors like Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal all act without legislative charter or public accountability. They get to decide who eats and who starves, whose voice echoes in the public square and whose is silenced. The fact that few people ever question this shows just how pervasively we have all been programmed.

But nobody is taught to think about these things correctly and in the only manner by which anyone can understand these things. That being theologically. Indeed, addressing payment processors means understanding that many of our current conundrums cannot be properly addressed or fixed without understanding that they are theological disorders. The hand of Mammon has grown long and subtle, as I explored in earlier reflections on censorship and payment processors.

Commerce is supposed to serve the common good within its proper bound. However, these days, commerce arbitrates morality. Commerce doesn’t yield to law or conscience, but to publicity campaigns and the murmurs of unseen councils (shareholder values). The whip of

economic exclusion is often wielded by those crying loudest for moral clarity. These are people who wield money as power and can bypass the slow, bureaucratic nature of legislatures.

Lessons from the Pornhub Nexus and Sphere Usurpation

As detailed in prior analysis I did of Lexorius’s The Secret War to Censor the Internet, Christian organizations like Trafficking Hub, Exodus Cry, and Morality in Media have leveraged bureaucratic tools against platforms like Pornhub. The Serena Flight lawsuit against MindGeek (Pornhub’s parent) exemplifies the cascade: RICO charges, bypassed Section 230 protections, and Visa’s complicity inferred from its on-again, off-again relationship with the company. The allegations against MindGeek are grave, including dozens of lawsuits involving underage abuse and trafficking.

While censorship of pornography is an ostensible good, the means also subtly affirm a libertarian default: that pornography should largely remain legal and available but with corporate censorship applied selectively when it crosses certain lines. This concedes the ground that such material belongs in the public square at all. Christians should instead insist on its full eradication through lawful, sphere-appropriate means (legislation and gospel transformation), not selective corporate gatekeeping that leaves the poison intact while merely relocating it. But the means betray a system that has found it necessary to use one set of principalities and powers against another without being aware of itself. In other words, nobody questions the fact that our only means of advocacy is to bypass the magistrate’s robe and preacher’s pulpit for corporate fiat. Nobody questions why that is the only power anyone recognizes.

This is because the spheres are inverted.

Here, I am echoing Abraham Kuyper’s doctrine of sphere sovereignty in which society comprises distinct realms: family, church, state, economy, arts, and education. Each sphere is endowed with God-given authority and limits. No sphere may dominate another. The state must not swallow the church or family; the merchant must not excommunicate like a bishop or wield the sword like the magistrate. As Kuyper articulated, these spheres derive their sovereignty not from the state but from the immediate kingship of Christ over every square inch of creation.

When Christian groups normalize financial deplatforming, however vile the target, they teach the mechanism to their adversaries. What is built today in the name of Christian purity will tomorrow target the Saints. Judgment begins at the house of God. We cannot redeem culture by deforming its God-ordained structure. Lawful means such as legislation, cultural persuasion, and gospel proclamation honor the spheres. Corporate bypass does not.

This manifests in the very cultural battles I dissect on Fandom Pulse and in essays applying William T. Cavanaugh’s Being Consumed. Pornography’s commodification of the body mirrors the transient consumerism that devours and discards controversies from YouTube drama feuds

to gaming patronage networks. The market, detached from any sense of higher morality, becomes a tool for soft power.

Recall Anita Sarkeesian’s consulting on Slay the Spire 2: not overt censorship, but insurance-like influence shaping what gets funded and distributed. Nepo-patronage in projects like Mixtape 2026 reveals the same: economic levers deciding cultural output absent genuine market sovereignty or artistic merit.

Humanistic Roots and the Rise of the Totalizing Sphere

Drawing from earlier examinations of humanistic anthropology (Maslow, Rogers), our current societal disorder stems from a view of man as basically good, corrupted only by “sick” institutions. The solution was to empower the state (or its proxies) to control those spheres, eroding Kuyperian boundaries. The state has now become Hegel’s “march of God through the world,” absorbing ethics, education, welfare, and now commerce. Objective truth and divine law become obstacles to be relativized or removed. In their place: procedural power plays dressed as righteousness.

Post-Enlightenment secularism assumes a neutral public square where Christianity is an optional overlay. John Frame’s normative perspective corrects this: The world is God’s world, Christian at its root; deviations are distortions. Institutions born of godly purpose (commerce included) have been repurposed for power struggles. Christian NGOs wielding economic pressure compete for control rather than reforming within bounds. This is not advancing the Kingdom; it is betraying it from within.

In gaming and media, this plays out vividly. Payment processors pressure platforms over “lacking artistic value” in adult content or politically incorrect games, as seen in itch.io campaigns and Steam controversies. Japanese developers decry Western credit card influence on erotic games. The same tools targeting pornography now police pixels and narratives.

Hypocrisy in design (toned-down female characters vs. enhanced male appeal in Resident Evil titles) meets selective corporate enforcement. Online drama cycles thrive on this fragility: selective outrage, kayfabe feuds, and market-brained susceptibility to the next transient controversy.

The Path Forward: Reasserting Christ’s Lordship Over Every Sphere

The solution is reformation. Recover sphere sovereignty under Christ’s immediate kingship. Christians must labor for moral ends through moral means. This includes constitutional order, persuasion, and faithful presence in every sphere, not usurpation.

Let the church be the church: Proclaim truth, disciple believers, form communities that model ordered liberty rather than outsourcing purity to Visa.

Let the state be the state: Pursue just laws against genuine evils without demanding corporations act as de facto censors.

Let commerce be commerce: Restore it as servant, not arbiter. Support alternative economies, decentralized payment systems, and cultural production that values beauty, truth, and human flourishing over optics and liability.

Let culture and arts flourish: As essayists, critics, and creators, reject both puritanical overreach and licentious commodification.

As Kuyper reminds us, every sphere stands under Christ’s sovereignty. When one extends into another, it deforms design and invites tyranny under reform’s guise. Procedural righteousness is integral to the Kingdom’s advance. We must work not only for the good, but through the good. This is the way of Christ: structure over chaos, reformation over revolution.

Rejecting the False Dilemma

Recent controversies around Stellar Blade 2 have sharpened a familiar trap. Activists and critics now call for payment processors (Visa, Mastercard, and allies) to kneecap the sequel to Stellar Blade over what you are told is supposed to matter to you: hyper-sexualized design. The pressure campaign mirrors earlier efforts chronicled in my writing: Economic levers once aimed at pornography now target your video games.

My contention, building on prior analyses of both corporate censorship and the original Stellar Blade, is that Christians must reject this entire framing. It presents a false dilemma. Either align with Mammon’s long hand to suppress the game, or defend a series already steeped in elements antithetical to Christian order. Neither path honors sphere sovereignty or the kingship of Christ.

As explored previously, commerce was never ordained to act as cultural magistrate. Normalizing this “Ring of Power” for short-term victories also teaches the mechanism to our adversaries. What purges Stellar Blade today may silence faithful voices tomorrow. Judgment begins at the house of God. We train the world in tools of exclusion at our peril.

Why the Series Itself Warrants Anathema

I want to make it clear that this does not mean Stellar Blade (or its sequel) merits unqualified defense. Far from it. The original game’s narrative DNA reveals a deeper corruption than goon-bait, as detailed in my earlier exegesis. The android revelation reframes ideas such as God, tradition, family, and patriarchy as oppressive lies. “True self “emerges through rejection of assigned roles and bodily autonomy is affirmed as a sacred given.

Raven, the synthetic “Lilith” drawn from apocryphal Kabbalistic and Gnostic streams rather than Scripture, embodies defiant liberation: transcend programming, fuse opposites, ascend beyond created limits. Echoes of Lurianic tikkun olam, primordial androgyny (Adam Kadmon), and

reintegration over redemption pulse through the story. This goes beyond surface-level complaints about obtrusive fanservice or Eastern distinctiveness. The game swims in

metaphysical currents (progressive mythology, Marxist anthropology of power on bodies, and esoteric synthesis) that directly conflict with Christian theology.

Christianity affirms body, sex, kinship, and categories (male and female, creator and creature) as God’s gifts to be redeemed through Christ. These are not cages to escape or transcend via gnosis and self-construction. The Gospel restores creation under the incarnate Logos. Stellar Blade courts an alternate gospel: flesh made obsolete, simulated unions, yearning commodified into parasocial and self-romance shortcuts (transgenderism as “homosexuality 2.0”).

The experience of Stellar Blade is sold to you as a replacement for covenantal intimacy, but it is a hollow facsimile that seeks to fuel an endless, unfulfillable desire (and is precisely the transient detachment that William T. Cavanaugh diagnoses). Whether intentional or osmotic, these elements render the series culturally anathema for those holding biblical anthropology. Stop clutching pearls at every Korean developer choice. Follow the metaphysics and patterns revealed in the text itself, beyond authorial press releases.

Escaping the Binary: Proper Spheres, Proper Weapons

The arts exist to image truth and beauty under Christ, not to be policed by balance sheets or activist pressure. The church disciples through proclamation, exegesis, and counter-formation, not economic exclusion outsourced to liability-averse executives.

As Christians, we labor within bounds. Critique the game’s themes rigorously (through essays, reviews, cultural commentary, and building better alternatives rooted in created order). Pursue just law where genuine evils arise, but reject bypassing the magistrate for merchant discretion. Support markets governed by theological moorings, not absolutist commodification that turns cultural identities into products.

True freedom is found in bondage to Christ, not the rebranded autonomy of self-creation or algorithmic yearning.

This applies broadly to gaming feuds, media patronage, and online drama. Reject kayfabe binaries that force alignment with corrupt people. Sphere sovereignty protects liberty by limiting totalizing power (whether state, corporation, or activist nonprofit). Stellar Blade 2 may deserve cultural marginalization on its merits, but that case must be made through faithful presence in the arts, not by handing the sword to Mammon.

Christ reigns over every square inch. Our response to disordered culture is not pragmatic power plays but reformation. Let the economy serve, the arts create under truth, the church proclaim, and each sphere remain in its place. Engaging the false dilemma concedes the inversion. We

must transcend it (working not only for the good, but through the good, under the Lord who restores rather than transcends His creation). This is the narrow way forward.