October 8, 2007
Although there has been some recent talk around the Net about the use of the Halo series to attract kids to church activities, Saturday's New York Times coverage (see GamePolitics write-up here) seems to have crystalized the debate over the practice.A lively discussion at the blog site of bible scholar Ben Witherington nicely captures the opposing views. Witherington - who pretty clearly is not conversant with video games - doesn't like the idea of using Halo to attract youthful congregants:
This whole sorry approach to youth ministry smacks of absolute desperation and fear - fear that if we are not relevant, we cannot attract a crowd. Is this really what Jesus would do? I don't think so...
If you have so little creativity or imagination that you imagine that the only way to appeal to youth is by appealing to their most base and basic fallen instincts, then get out of youth ministry - you haven't got the tools for the task...
Lisa, a reader of the site who describes herself as "a reasonably avid gamer," weighs in to disagree:
Playing, say, Grand Theft Auto in a church would be a vastly different story... If a church has specifically made it its mission to be culturally relevant to today's youth, if you're eliminating video games as an option, you're highly limiting the tools you can use to reach out.
Another reader, Jake, adds:
[Perhaps] you're judging video games as a medium more harshly than films... A second possibility is that you are equating the violence in Halo with vengeance or senseless violence - which is debatable given the narrative the game follows...
Witherington replies, but his lack of familiarity with games is evident:
When you play a 'Versus' sort of game, or in that sort of mode, you are in the first place setting up a scenario for individual winners and losers. There is nothing about this that builds community...
Secondly... I do have a major problem with a game that takes endless hours to play, or win, and is so absorbing that it encourages the worst sort of narcissism...
Thirdly, there are numerous studies out there to be had about how these games affect and indeed encode violent images on young brains in various ways that going to a movie that lasts an hour or so would not do.
Jake replies:
I disagree completely that community cannot be built around a game like Halo... I've... formed friendships with people online as I've played, as well as enjoyed the community when I get together with friends in person and play...
Marc Axelrod weighs in:
My Super Nintendo helped me through a lot of seminary nights when I just didn't feel like studying... As a pastor, I've had great times playing NFL Blitz and other games with the young people... But I wouldn't feel right playing a game with gratuitous violence. I don't know if Halo 3 is a case example or not. I did play Virtua Fighter 4 at church with a couple of my confirmands last Sunday night. Maybe that was a borderline call...
Comments
Re: Faith Community Debates Halo 3 Youth Ministry
I see this as just much cultural divide than religious. It is more common to find people who believe that guns are the root of all evil and cartoons such as Bugs Bunny or Tom and Jerry may cause their kids to become violent. The church has bought into this too. The false notion is that if we get rid of all guns and all influence of violence people will be peaceful. This is absolutely false. Cain murdered Abel and he had no influence of Halo. It is a heart problem.
Due to political correctness, Halo would be more acceptable 30 years ago than it is today. As a boy we played army with fake guns. We pretended to kill each other with play knives in battle while wrestling to the ground. We understood the difference between fiction and real. These games didn't make us become murderers. We were pretending. It was fun.
For those who don't want their kids to be exposed to any violence, I suggest you don't read the Bible because it is full of violence. David cut off Goliath's head with a sword. Deborah did a number on a guy's head with a tent peg, and when you think about it Noah and the flood, all those people were killed in massive numbers. Perhaps that is the most violent of all. We teach our kids this story like it's a nice little story with animals. God killed these people. My point is, not all violence is evil. I don't think shooting pixels on a television screen hardly qualifies someone to become a murderer.
Come on church, lighten up.
IMO, children shouldn't go to any church at all, being left to make their own decisions when they are grown up enough to question and choose which religion, if any, they'll pick up. I've been raise as a catholic by influence of my family, and the way I see, the interest of the churches in children indeed lies in the ease of manipulation, especially throught fear. Fear of going to hell eternally because you didn't want to go to mass in one weekend, because you took communion without confessing (a rite that wasn't even created by Christ). I've managed to become a free-thinker and leave this behind, but no matter how much I discuss this stuff with my mother and my grandmother, they can't see a different point of view (which is, in fact, because of a life of belief, or brainwashing).
And I also have to deal with things like this: I'm preparing an RPG session, looking through the D&D Monster Manual, and my grandmother sees the illustration of the flesh golem, then she says I'll end up as a satanist (despite the fact I've already explained to her that satanism has nothing to do with worshipping the devil - she answers me that's it's what she believes so it doesn't matter if I explain or not). By playing a game.
A little more on topic, religion alienates me like the way I've explaines, so I don't like it at all, and I like it even less for using our media to lure the young and possibly do to them what they tried to do to me.
Sorry if the post is disperse, I'm quite sleepy right now.
1. Big bang theory? I believe you are referring to a scientific assumption concerning the expasion of the universe from a point of sigularity [which has yet to be explained]: a claim with universal and binding connotations, a claim that attempts to describe. The claim itself is supported by a limited collection of emperical observation. Emperical observation, due to our limited scope and metaphysical indeterminancy, cannot be trusted to establish, with certainty, the origins of our universe.
Consequently, as you've said, our minds are not capable of passing judgment (with the current facts and "truth finding" methods avaliable to us) on a naturalistic theory rooted in emperical unity. Thank you for implicitly illustrating the absurdity that occurs when we jump from natural judgments to supernatural judgments.
2. The question is not concerned with the free will argument. The topic on hand is that God personally commited actions that define our conception of evil. Even if I were to entertain the free will argument, you will eventually fall into a critical delimma: the human condition does not permit or logically allow the existence of a diety that claims to possess ALL of the following attributes: all-knowing, all-good, all-just (all attributes are posited on God, by man, in the Bible; the contradictions are too numerous to list).
Christian dogma penetrates virtually every facet of society: http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/AntiXtian.htm (my favorite parody). Allowing supersition to exist without critique, when it exists solely because it is indoctrinated or terrorized into the ignorant, is not a viable option for an ethical person.
"This whole sorry approach to youth ministry smacks of absolute desperation and fear - fear that if we are not relevant, we cannot attract a crowd. Is this really what Jesus would do? I don’t think so..."
im not very religious, infact i down right hate christianity, or atleast the way it is being taught but thats not what im talking about. jesus did make his points relevant to people because without relevance people do not learn, he used parabols, like the mustard seed and all that other crap.
personally i find it hilarious because whether gamers like it or not and im a gamer by the way. the game is violent, you shoot people, people die. the game premotes teamwork and community but it is still violent. again i went to the midnight launch so dont get angry with my comments i love the game. christianity is about community, but using games as a medium to spread their beliefs is not the way to do it.
the declining of religious youths means one thing, we as a society are becomming more and more detached from spirituality, even those that say they are christian or muslim or hindu or buddhist arent following because they chose to but because it is tradition, because their parents or community believed one thing and gradually the little voice in thier heads that questioned what they truly believed was squashed and follow the crowd because they cannot deal with change and frankly dont give a damn
So, by this logic, kids who play or cheer for a certain team in baseball are taught to... what? That there are winners and losers? That games are only fun if you win? I remember playing little-league baseball, and even if we lost, we were still awesome about it and didn't gloat. I think THAT was what games taught us to do- even if not everyone acts that way. But a community CAN be built on such thinking.
Let's even step away from that line of thinking and consider Co-Op mode, and metagame scoring, where you need to work with others to progress, while at the same time competing for a score throughout the game.
"Secondly… I do have a major problem with a game that takes endless hours to play, or win, and is so absorbing that it encourages the worst sort of narcissism…"
2 hours a day, you could beat Halo 3 in about a week. That's not endless.
"Thirdly, there are numerous studies out there to be had about how these games affect and indeed encode violent images on young brains in various ways that going to a movie that lasts an hour or so would not do."
Name one such study, by a reputable research group. And then tell me they said there was a direct link and actual causation between the two. No? Move on.
"My Super Nintendo helped me through a lot of seminary nights when I just didn’t feel like studying… As a pastor, I’ve had great times playing NFL Blitz and other games with the young people… But I wouldn’t feel right playing a game with gratuitous violence. I don’t know if Halo 3 is a case example or not. I did play Virtua Fighter 4 at church with a couple of my confirmands last Sunday night. Maybe that was a borderline call…"
At least this guy admits he doesn't know enough about the game to make snap judgements. The violence level in Halo 3 is significantly less than alot of other titles. Unless you count the flood, there's no dismemberment to speak of.
My aunt, whom I really hold no love for, goes with members of the christian church community and places bets on survivor, trying to figure out who's going to be kicked off, who is going to win, etc.. Gambling is considered a sin by most religions, but it brings them together as a community. So what are you trying to say? That there's a right way and a wrong way to bring people together as a more tight-knit community? That certain ways are invalid because they don't conform to someone else's standards? That the means of doing such a thing have less importance than the ends of such a method? We could do a WHOLE lot worse. You could bring people together for an ORGY for the benefit of the religious community, but that wouldn't really conform to most people's views, first of all, and it's not really the best way.
Second, you seem to have some beef with the idea of "it's a game, people die in it" when the people who die are fictitious- lemme say that if it's okay for Franklin Delano Roosevelt to say "And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking," in regards to the D-Day invasion, or for political leaders to believe it to be "god's" will that a war be fought and won, where REAL people die for uncertain reasons, then a church using a science-fiction game to bring a community together is tame in comparison. Are we going to say "Hey, let's have a Lan-Party on X-Wing: Alliance, because people in those ships don't die!"? Or watch a science-fiction movie where people die but you don't really sympathize because their the bad guys?
Didn't he miracle up loaves and fishes for them?
At a church I use to go to the pastor actually played Halo 2 with some of the younger kids and even made jokes about it during a Sunday service.
Even in the youth hall we use to have game nights, with football, basketball, and two xbox systems hooked up to both television sets with two teams of 4 battling via the network setup.
One of the biggest thing churches have now is they don't have a good outreach program, and when one church tries something different everyone is kinda shocked, but I for one applaud them, this is a way to reach a broader audience and a way to get the message across, whether or not the message gets across depends on the person listening.
How long would it take someone to read a book that was as long as say, oh, THE BIBLE?
Or is my first impression more accurate...that this clown has NO clue what he's talking about?
It should be if you fight against games for years, THEN you get a superiority complex :P
Then again he may just be crap at English.
Oh wait...
"I think his violence is *artfully* done."
For example: When He recruited Peter He talked to him about fishing; with the woman at the well He talked about water. It was always in context and relevant to what the people were doing. Using a video game as a means to introduce the Gospel and Christ's message in not only relevant but precisely what Jesus WOULD have done. At least in my opinion.
Gamer: Right on J-man.
I don't see it somehow.
Mmmmm! Christian values at work, baby.
I suppose when screaming about the ravings of a genocidal, child-killing, "God" are not enough.... on top of the threat of eternal torture if you do not acknowledge a ficticious diety as master.... the only form of truth left is:
KILL THE ALIENS, IN THE NAME OF JESUS CHRIST!
"Didn’t he miracle up loaves and fishes for them?"
I think the modern equivalent would be if he could miracle up a finished copy of Duke Nukem Forever. That might get people listening.
If that was your opinion, then I have to say you are the mirror image of JT.
Dude, please just stop. You're as bad a bigot as JT and its just as productive. If you have something relevant to say, please do; but if all you're going to do is troll and spout your typical myopic vitriol please do it elsewhere.
That being said I believe the church may be "rolling with the times" so to speak. If it helps draw people in I am all for it. It is ultimately up to the parents to know where their kids are spending time. We have a skateboard church here in Seattle that uses the same methods to get kids to identify with them.
As to Pandralisk's biggest fan. Anonymity is a treasure on the internet. But it is also the Zero card: The fool, the beginning and the end of seriousness and ridicule (take your pick). In short, I think you're Pandralisk, and you're only making things worse.
If you're not Pandralisk, then chose another nick for yourself. Establish an identity and don't be an ass. That's all I ask.
On a brighter note, at least kids are getting free Halo parties.
"All Christians have an IQ less than 10, and I don't stereotype! I have nothing against Christians, but I hate them! They are all brainwashed from a young age, even though many question and even leave the church when they are older! They secretly ran the KKK AND the Nazis! And why? Oh, it’s all because of their Bronze-age war-god, who EATS BABIES, and TORTURES PUPPIES.
Their God also secretly lives on earth, as a profoundly gay black man with a hot pink afro and baby blue facial hair named Stan. He lives in Downtown New York, is married to a dustbin called Jim-Bob, and plays STRIP POKER WITH THE DEVIL on saturday nights.
It’s all proven in the bible. Really.”
:D
I have no idea how you came upon the ideas of Christianity. I never went to a church like that, and none of the people i know went to a church like that. I am so sorry that you had to experience that sort of thing, but the majority isn't like that. The majority also doesn't make headlines, because it isn't like that. Again I am sorry you had bad experiences and had to go through that. And if you haven't stop talking out your ass.
Wtf? LOL
But not an M-Rated game.
Master Chief is fighting a war against religion...