Do you suspect we’ll see Christians picketing Game Stop and Wal-Mart for selling a game that celebrates violence, drunkenness, theft, prostitution, and heaven knows what else? Will we write books and Bible studies to refute the game’s poor theology? I doubt it. I suspect we’ll buy it. And play it...
I understand the temptation myself. It didn’t take me long to overcome the queasiness I felt during my first exposure to Vice City. Sure, I have qualms about murder and carjacking, but only in real life. It turns out it’s quite a lot of fun to pull someone out of their car and drive it around a while when there are no consequences (and no one really gets hurt). It’s also great fun to run down pedestrians and take their pocket money or shoot a cop to instigate a high-speed chase. I had no problem preaching on Sunday morning (in real life, of course) and selling drugs from the back of an ice cream truck (in Vice City, of course) on Sunday afternoon.
But, he doesn't stop there...
...if you can kill a man in your heart (as Jesus seemed to think you could), then why should we expect God to excuse us for offing someone on a video game? We evangelicals are pretty sure we can commit adultery in our hearts, and we seem to agree that viewing pornography makes us guilty of that heart kind of adultery. If viewing pornography (which isn’t a real affair, after all) makes us adulterers, then doesn’t killing someone in a video game (which isn’t a real crime, after all) make us murderers?
No, you’ll object. It’s different. Porn involves real people; video games don’t. You have a point there. But then again, the deep tragedy of pornography is that it objectifies and dehumanizes women (and men). It completely ignores all the things beneath the skin that makes a human a human—the spirit and personality and whatever else. It presents us with a facsimile of a person. A video game starts with the facsimile and then adds spirit and personality to make it more human so that we find more satisfaction in killing it.
<idle musing>
Yep. Face it, evangelicals are down on sexual sins, but let just about anything else slip by. I noticed it the other day at a Bible study; there were two parts to a verse. The first part dealt with loving the world, the second with adultery (which from the context seemed to be figurative—being unfaithful to God), but the only part that got mentioned was the second half. Loving the world was totally glossed over.
I have noticed it before. When there is a text that talks about death to self, it gets glossed over, or just plain ignored. But, turn a preacher loose on Romans 1, and watch out! Why is this? Maybe because death to self is addressed to christians, and is therefore too convicting? What do you think? Am I not seeing something, or seeing something that isn't there?
</idle musing>
2 comments:
Well, James, to be honest, there are many very concerned Christian Evangelical parents who don't let their kids play vid games and/or limit the violence they allow them to intake and/or only gudgingly allow their kids to play them. There is the idea that vid games "rot the mind" and provide a corrupting influence.
So, I think that the author of the article may not be painting an entirely accurate portrait of the situation.
That said, my problem is simply with the mindset/attitute that we have to determine at the outset what the so-called "moral law" is before we can determine whether or not playing a video game is "okay" or "taboo." We rely on the alleged existence of phantom "absolute" moral laws to dictate our actions. As such, the law serves as a means of pushing out the Spirit, and the life of the believer consists in endless debates about moral laws; in the meantime Paul's theology of living by the Spirit gets ignored.
At my blog, we have discussed the intersection of "real" and "virtual" worlds and the related moral implications. With the virtual world becoming more and more "real" and the real world becoming more and more "virtual" the distinction is on the verge of disappearing, or becoming merely academic. I predict that the Evangelical Conservatives will just end up saying that anything that is "immoral" in the real world is also "immoral" in the virtual world. But, as I say, this conclusion misses the whole point.
Check out this sermon by Paul Washer at YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuablTel0418
Jake Patten gave us an audio copy and it is very convicting and encouraging, and we thought you'd appreciate it.
Josh Lindstrom shared it with his youth group but alot of them just got offended.
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