Gaming Crisis

As many of you know, I have spent the last year working on a thesis about video gaming and Christian ethics (for related posts see here, here, and here). Apart from this meaning that I haven't blogged consistently for a while, it has also lead me to conclusions that I never thought I would reach. I am, in fact, having a GAMING CRISIS.

When I first started out on my thesis, I was pretty sure I knew where I was gonna end up. I am a pacifist by faith and by nature and the violence that I saw on video games haunted me. Watching my hubby and his friends play Black Ops together really use to bother me, even though what they were 'killing' was a) zombies and b) pixels. My first inclination was to run away and hide.

So when I started talking to hubby and friends about their gaming I was pretty sure that it was wrong. I thought it only glorified violence and killing and that didn't sit well with how I understood my faith and the person of Christ. I also just didn't think it was normal for anyone, no matter what faith, to enjoy watching others get killed, pixelated or not.

I was a student who started on research believing I knew what the conclusion would be. Hopefully I am not the only one who has ever done that.

Colour me shocked when I realised about two months ago that I was changing my mind.

Thanks largely to the work of Kevin Schut and his book Of Games and God (if you are into this kind of stuff seriously spend the few dollars to get this book, it is epic and so well written and easy to understand!) I started to delve into the world of Christianity and gaming and the beauty that there is in this art form. Schut, to my delight, didn't gloss over the difficult questions of violence etc, but rather engaged with it in a way that showed deep commitment to his faith and deep consideration of his love of gaming.

In short, his book blew my mind....and changed my thesis.

I began to seriously consider if I was one of those Christians that I had always despised. You know the ones. They are outside stores that are selling GTA with signs telling people how evil gaming is. I never wanted to be one of those people and yet my attitude was such that I was closed off to the idea that gaming could be anything other than violent and disturbing.

Meet my gaming crisis.

It is rather like a faith crisis, when you suddenly realise that everything you ever thought about the Bible was actually taught to you by a broken human being and maybe they didn't have everything right and maybe, just maybe, you know nothing at all about anything. That was my gaming crisis in a nut shell. I realised that I had formed my biased opinions on a small segment of gaming that I had seen and then blindly applied that to everything without stopping to ask if I actually knew what gaming was.

I was adrift in an ocean of gaming uncertainty.

To some extent I am still there. My thesis is not complete. In fact I am due to start writing my concluding chapters next week. Though I am excited about the discoveries I have made, I am also very uncertain that I really know anything about what I am trying to say anymore. All I know is, my conclusion will not be the same as I thought it would be.

I guess that is the nature of true research.

I have even started to game a little. I have started with Skyrim as my first game because of the possibilities that it offers. I am not tied into a particular character, nor do I have to engage in killing if I don't want to. It is perhaps a baby step, but it is something. This has come about due to the fact that Schut argues that you can't engage with a medium if you aren't involved with it. My friend Kent will be face palming right about now as he has been saying this to me for years, and I simply ignored him, so sorry Kent, I guess I couldn't ignore it when it was in print from a scholar of media haha.

So where does this leave me??

I HAVE NO IDEA!!!

Give me another two months to complete this thesis and I will get back to you. 

Just know, this crisis may end with me playing Black Ops after all.

Cool guys don't look at explosions....

      

SPOILER ALERT!!

I am sitting at my in laws house watching the above movie. 

Now I have always been a keen action movie fan. Despite the crap scripts and easy to guess plot lines, and despite the fact that the main characters always have more muscles than acting talent,watching stuff explode followed by the inevitable witty one liner has always appealed.

So let me say I am more shocked than anyone else to find that this has changed!!

I mean Bruce Willis!? Who can say no to a good Bruce Willis flick??

And yet something is sitting ill at ease with me as I watch cars flipping and the chandeliers falling and the gratuitous use of swear words and the name of Jesus used as a profanity. And not for the reasons you are thinking.

There seems to me to be someone fundamentally wrong with a world that pays millions of dollars to watch a movie that cost millions of dollars to make because it blew up millions of dollars worth of stuff.

Does any one else wince when hundreds of cars are destroyed simply to make a good 30 second shot? Does anyone else consider it an injustice to a country to go into the poorest parts in order to cheaply destroy and rebuild people's houses in order for entertainment? Does anyone think that it is bad form to pick at the worst parts of a country's history in order to create a plot line or a believable villain?

Does anyone else think that the movie industry earns its money by playing of the real world horrors of war, murder, death and destruction? Not to mention the twisted use of sex.

Now maybe I am getting old, or maybe my study has warped my brain, but when I watch people purposely smash into cars I tend to think of innocents who in real life may have had their lives destroyed by uncaring drivers. I watch people get their brains blown out and think of the families that never get to see their loved ones after they have died overseas in war.

Movies like these hold no joy for me anymore. The more real they get the more I am disgusted. The more the cool guys pay no attention to the havoc they wreak, the more angry I become with the industry as a whole.

Movies are our new day colosseum games. We watch the gladiators kill each other in ways that put us right in the ring with them. The reality of what we watch in a movie means we may as well be watching the real thing. The blood splatter, the life like choking of people, the use of people as pawns in a game. 

Why do we need this? What drives our blood lust? What makes us want to watch body bits blown off people? What makes us cheer when the good guy walks away without looking back at the explosion?

I am coming more and more to think that it is our fallenness humans that fuels the movie industry. Our desire for bigger, better, faster. Our drive for sex and violence. Our altruistic tendencies that turn people into objects to be watched. We know it is acting and no one is really getting hurt so we excuse the fact that we are turning war into entertainment, that we revel in true death of the baddy, that we want revenge and not forgiveness to win out in the end. As long as the good guy gets to walk away in one piece we will quite happily forget what he did to the hundreds of people he left in tatters behind him. We want a hero, not a saint, and heroes make things messy sometimes.

There are too many movies out there that sell on sex and death. There are so few stories of real redemption, forgiveness and healing. There are so few stories that show the best of humanity rather than the worst. And as I write this I am watching a man be thrown into the blades of a helicopter instead of being arrested and taken to trial. His daughter is killed too, instead of getting counseling for having a psychotic maniac as a father. Makes my point quite well I think.

*sigh* theology has destroyed my ability to mindlessly watch anything anymore.

I guess I will stick with Despicable Me.

Theology, Disability and the People of God.

For the last three days, from 9am til 9pm, I have been at a conference. It was held at Carey Baptist College (in conjunction with Laidlaw College) and was focused on Theology, Disability and the People of God. The two international keynote speakers were Professor John Swinton from Aberdeen University, and Professor Amos Yong from Regent University.

There are so many reflections that I want to make that I am not sure where to start! My overall impression of the conference was that it was wonderful. It was unlike any conference I have ever been to. There were people from all professions, Christian and secular, of both genders, many races, and of varying degrees of ability and disability. They were all given a voice through the variety of speakers and were all celebrated and embraced in a way that was truly moving and inspiring. It was a total contrast to the usual boring theological conferences I have attended.

I was privileged to be able to spend a substantial amount of time with Professor Swinton. He is a Jamaican Scot with a loving personality and a wicked sense of humour. Within a couple of hours of meeting each other we were joking and poking fun. I very rarely meet people I instantly connect with but this was one of those moments. He has a background in mental health nursing and has a phenomenal intellect and interest in all things theological. His work in theology and disability is profound and deeply moving and challenging. It was many of his words that stuck with me throughout the conference and shaped the way that I viewed and considered what I was hearing.

The entire conference was about challenging our views of what we believe disability is and how people with disability are treated in the church. The personal stories that came out in the talks were amusing, harrowing and confronting. A statement that particularly impacted me came from a man in a wheelchair who thanked the college for installing ramps for access. He said that this simple gesture was the gospel to him. I had never thought of it that way before. I am thinking now about my church's worship spaces and whether or not they are accessible to ALL people. I think it isn't just whether or not there are wheelchairs in your congregation already, but the need for churches to be wheelchair friendly from the assumption that people in wheelchairs are in their communities and so therefore will at some point come to the church (if we are doing our jobs properly!!).

Another thing that really challenged me was the idea around carer. I often approach people with disabilities as a 'carer' that is going to take care of the person who obviously needs help. I had never considered letting them be the host and me the guest, or letting them care for me. I had never thought that the gifts of the Spirit are as applicable to them as to me. I had made people with disabilities the 'other' and covering up through charity. I have been moved and convicted in the idea that charity is still continuing the thought that these people are 'less than' and not 'equal to'.

I have cried a lot the last three days. I have been moved by the bravery and love that I have seen exhibited. I have been overwhelmed by the response I got to my own paper (see previous post). I have made connections with people on ministries that I never knew existed. And I have seen God in the face of so many people who have been rejected and cast aside. 

I may reflect on this further during the week but I am still processing all the things that were said. 

At this moment, I am moved beyond words.