Ender’s Game is a brilliant science fiction movie about a boy called up to serve in Battle School as humanity teeters on the edge of interstellar war. It’s superbly acted and supported by benchmark special effects—but if that’s all audiences get from this film then they’ll have missed out on at least one valuable life lesson: You can oppose an enemy with every fibre of your being, but that doesn’t mean you have to hate them.

Ender’s Game is based on the 1985 Nebula and Hugo Award winning novel by Orson Scott Card, and given the author has occupied the executive producer’s chair, it’s not surprising it has made a successful transition to the big screen. Asa Butterfield (Hugo, The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas) stars as Andrew ‘Ender’ Wiggin, a quietly brilliant third child from a family of prodigies. He grows up in a world shaped by humanity’s hair’s breadth victory over an invading alien race and the fear that the insectoid ‘Buggers’ will one day return. Every resource is now bent towards preparing for that eventuality, including the world’s children. Harrison Ford and Viola Davis star as officers from the International Fleet searching for a much needed military messiah. They send Ender to an orbital strategy school where he must battle his fellow students to prove he has the leadership qualities they’re looking for. But what Colonel Graff and Major Anderson keep secret is that not all the games Ender plays are as innocent as they seem.

Ender’s Game is a film that has courted controversy on a number of fronts. Orson Scott Card gave his story unintentional notoriety because of his public, Bible-based opposition to same-sex marriage. In the United States gay and lesbian groups have organized cinema boycotts even though the topic has no presence in the film. But other reviewers have criticised Ender’s Game for its seeming justification of violence. Certainly Ford’s Colonel Graff is determined to do whatever it takes to shape Ender into a heartless weapon:

Ender: Sir, you made them hate me.

Graff: We need a Julius Caesar, a Napoleon. We hope that’s you.

Ender: But Napoleon lost.

Graff: Not before he conquered the known world.

Ender’s Game touches on the immorality of creating child soldiers but Graff maintains that no cost is too great when humanity faces its ultimate extinction. Ender obediently devotes himself to overcoming every opponent, but he never embraces violence the way the film’s critics suggest. Rather, Ender realises that understanding brings compassion: “In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him.”

Ender extends this love even to the Buggers who are apparently poised to destroy earth. He will do all he can to defeat them, but his understanding of their motivations won’t allow him to demonise them. What the film actually presents is a warrior who reflects the character of Christ.

Why is it that Jesus asks us to “love our enemies and pray for those who persecute you”? Isn’t it because that sort of love flows from our understanding that their selfish, even vindictive motives are the same ones we once held?

Christians are confronted by two parallel temptations every time we come into spiritual conflict. On the one hand, pride and self-righteousness can lead us to reject our opponent out of hand, happily abandoning them to the judgement to come.

On the other, we can feel so uncomfortable with conflict that our compassion overwhelms our conviction and we settle for peace at any price. Satan is happy with either approach, but Jesus requires us to walk the middle line with Ender. It is Jesus’ heart that bluntly condemned empty religion and immorality all the way to the cross and yet still prayed, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

The Christian must stand against a sinful world’s advances with every breath God puts at their disposal—like Card stands against same-sex marriage—but without losing sight of the fact that these are the very people Jesus came to save.

And it is that enduring love that has defeated even the most ardent opponent. By the climax of the film, Ender has become every bit the warrior Graff hoped he would be, but he has added one weapon the Colonel never expected: compassion, even for his enemy.