Gaming and the World of Fantasy

Finally! My last blog entry on the book, Understanding Evangelical Media. This has been a very interesting, sometimes fascinating, sometimes infuriating, journey. For the first time, I agreed with pretty much everything I read in the last chapter I had to read, “Evangelicals’ Quest to Find God’s Place in Games.” Kevin Schut, the author of this particular chapter, means of course video, computer, and role-playing games, not the Olympics.

Anyway, I often find that writing about something I agree with is one of the most difficult things to do. It’s easy to get angry at someone and rant for a while, but what do you say when you agree? Simply writing, “I agree with this chapter,” is not enough to fulfill this assignment. So my task, I guess, is to find something I agree with and add a profound thought to it that will make all 3 of my readers marvel at my intellect.

Kevin Schut takes a long at games produced by Christian evangelicals, and the evangelical response to some mainstream games. One thing he focuses in on is an evangelical attack on games (especially role-playing games) that they suck the player into the world of fantasy to the point where they lose touch with reality. Some have pointed, and with good reason, to the Columbine high school shooters and how these teenagers were nearly addicted to the first-person shooter game ‘Doom.’ This was a key factor, it is argued, in the massacre they carried out in 1999.

This argument does make sense, but I definitely don’t agree with the extreme version that all people who dive into the gaming world will lose touch with reality. Many people are quite capable of keeping the two lives separate. But for some, it doesn’t look that way. I guess, like anything, it depends on the person. Evangelicals should refrain from making across-the-board judgments, and look closer at the individuals in the situation.

“BIG NEWS: The Internet Changed Religion” Really?

In one of the most boring articles I have ever read (and she calls herself a communications student) titled “Online Religion and Finding Faith on the Web,” Cheryl Anne Casey presents her view that a new media development doesn’t just add something to the environment it enters, but it changes it as well.

She expands this in her discussion about religion and the web. She says that religion’s arrival into the Internet was not just an addition to the Internet; it changed the Internet itself. In the same way, bringing the Internet into organized religion was not just an addition; it changed religion as we know it. This was in both clear and more vague ways.

The question is, is she right?

I don’t think so. Putting religion on the web has not changed any specific religion. Sure, they have presented themselves differently, and some are living out their belief system in different ways than before. (Ex, joining discussion groups to talk about specific aspects of a religion with people from around the world rather than just discussing it with those in your immediate area.) But the core doctrines of any religion have not really changed. The religion, then, is still the same.

What about the Internet? Has the arrival of religion changed the World Wide Web in any way? Not really. Religion has definitely added something to the Web, but I hardly doubt we can say it has changed it. The Internet is still basically the same. For example, before organized religion jumped onto the Internet-bandwagon, people discussed various issues online. And now, people still discuss things on online, though religion seems to be now a key topic.

Of course, I might be right out the window as well. Maybe if Casey had defined what she meant by ‘change’ a little better, her case would be stronger.

As it is, it isn’t.

www.media-ecology.org/publications/MEA_proceedings/v2/Casey02.pdf

Great Comics, Great Stories: The Perfect Couple

“Mainstream comics [producers] are remarkably open to people of faith, unlike some of the other mass media.”

Thomas Carmody is very clear about his belief that readers of mainstream comics are more open to Christian messages. In chapter 14 of Understanding Evangelical Media, he explores how evangelicals have (and should) behave in the world of comic books, comic strips, and graphic novels. He argues that Christians, and Christian messages, can find a home here far easier than in any other form of media. He cements his point by director our attention to the Christian messages that have often come through the work of such popular mainstream comic creators as Charles Schulz (Peanuts) and Johnny Hart (B. C. and Wizard of Id).

But what Carmody does not mention is that besides the Christian messages that often appear, these are also great comic strips. Peanuts touched people with its lightly humorous tale of a klutzy boy named Charlie Brown and his friends for 50 years. The audience was so wrapped up in the story that they accepted the messages without opposition.

Many Christians in the media today seem to hold to the mistaken idea that they can simply produce media, no matter how awful, and God will use it to reach people. This type of thinking has lead to a line of terrible comics, appalling music, and horrendous atrocities some call ‘movies.’ They forget that Jesus often reached people through parables that not only contained great messages, but were also great stories.

Take the Prodigal Son, for example. Just the characters alone are enough to grab an audience. A father desperate for a rekindled relationship with his son. A son that, while at first wants nothing to do with him, now just wants to be back in the same household. And an older brother, jealous because of the father’s response to his son’s return. The captivating characters and great story help us to remember the message in the way that a bad story can’t do. People will probably be turned off from the story and not bother consuming the media long enough to get to the message.

This is what Christians need to remember if they hope to reach an audience larger than those who already agree with them.

Christians Made a Reporter Puke

In an article that appeared in Rolling Stone Magazine in May of 2008, Matt Taibbi describes his often ridiculous journey through a Christian retreat program. But rather than say he is a reporter, he goes in undercover, pretending to be one of the many Christians traveling to this retreat. The results are very interesting, to say the least.

Taibbi subjects himself to several days of worship music (which he describes as ‘awful’), speeches by a “hulking ex-paratrooper pastor” and small discussion groups with five other men. The men sit around a table and describe a time in their life when they were spiritually wounded, something they would like healing for. Taibbi, not wanting to present any of his own story, goes for something less than truthful. “My father was an alcoholic circus clown who used to beat me with his oversize shoes.” To his surprise, his audiences buys every word of it.

The retreat ends with a final healing session. With the key speaker shouting instructions and yelling out names of demons (“In the name of Jesus Christ, I cast out the demon of lust! I cast out the demon of cancer! I cast out the demon of handwriting analysis!”), the crowd weeps and wails as, presumably, demons come vomiting (literally) out of their souls. Through all of this, Taibbi remains the steadfast skeptic.

So did I. When I first started reading, I figured this would be another colourful attack against Christians. I couldn’t believe this idiot of a reporter would rip apart Christians in this way. But gradually, my anger shifted to the Christians he encountered on his journey. Regardless of the fact that they didn’t know they were being watched and critiqued by a journalist from Rolling Stone, they still should have acted the way Christ would have. Rather than behaving like followers of Christ, they acted like a cult.

Of course I could be wrong, and Taibbi was simply presenting his false perception of the events. Regardless, I think this shows how much of the secular world sees Christians: bizarre and completely detached from the rest of humanity. We look totally inaccessible. Was this the Christianity Jesus intended to bring to earth? I doubt it.

Like Taibbi, I think the only thing I will take away from this is a demon vomit bag. Take that, you demon of handwriting analysis!

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/20278737/jesus_made_me_puke/1

Remember

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

— Lt.-Col. John McCrae

Big Brother is Watching You . . . but is this a bad thing?

Surveillance. It’s almost as bad as the f-word these days. People are terrified of it. We object to more cameras on our streets, we freak out when we realize Google Earth can zoom in to our back yards, and we scream “human rights!” when the FBI decides to tap terrorists’ phones. I find it odd that something that is meant to keep us safe has so many people running in fear.

From this article, it seems like we were on the opposite side of the extreme fifteen years ago. In “Sound Scans of the Urban Body: Cellphones, Eavesdropping and Ambient Music,” John Shiga talks about an English DJ in the 90’s named Robin Rimbaud. Rimbaud had taken to hanging out in his room with an audio scanner late at night (creepy). He figured out how to pick up the signals being sent between cellphones. He would record random conversation, edit them a bit, then add them to his music.

So if you called your mom from a bus stop in London, part of the conversation might have ended up on Rimbaud’s next album.

When Rimbaud’s music appeared, angry people took to the streets. You’d think so, right? Wrong actually. Most people seemed to be fine with it. Rimbaud was, after all, taking precautions to make sure know one would recognize their own voice. “He pitch-shifts the voices and edits out information that might identify an individual,” Shiga wrote in his article.

So fifteen years ago, people were okay with a random person buying a scanner and listening in on their conversations. Now, we freak out if the government says they have to do this for “national security.”

What changed? Not sure. And it doesn’t really matter. But the question now is, is this mentality of fear a good thing? Is it good that we’re all terrified of ‘Big Brother’ listening to our cell phones? No surveillance seems dangerous. These cameras and wire-taps have helped stopped many crimes from taking place.

But maybe there’s too much of what could otherwise have been a good thing.

Maybe we need to find some sort of balance.

How to Target the Wrong Audience

During Spring Break this year, I traveled to the mid-western State of Kentucky to visit the Creation Museum. The creators of this 70,000 square foot facility built it to promote their view that the Biblical account of a six-day creation by God can be taken literally, word for word.

Using interactive displays, 3D technology and dozens of really creepy-looking life-sized plastic people, the creators spread their message in a fun, exciting way.

According to their website [www.creationmuseum.org], the museum’s mission is to (1) call Christians back to the absolute truth of the Bible, (2) be a witnessing tool, and
(3) be a resource for information and education.

It didn’t take me long to figure out that there was a lot more emphasis placed on #2 than the others. Beside an interactive display of the Garden of Eden, a poster clearly showed how Adam’s sin was paid for in Christ’s blood. The tour ended with a 10-mnute video telling me to make a decision about Christ right then and there.

Now I actually think it’s fine that this type of museum exists, one that promotes nothing but the six-day creation viewpoint.

But the owners should recognize that the majority of those who come through their doors already agree with their viewpoint. I probably wouldn’t spend $21.95 US to enter a museum completely devoted to a cause I didn’t already believe in, unless I wanted to learn about a different viewpoint than my own.

I think, then, that museums like this need to focus their presentation on their primary audience: those who agree with them. Witnessing could be a minor emphasis, but just not a predominant one.

It is better, I think, to equip those who do come through the doors to leave prepared to convince their friends that their viewpoint is right, than to hope evolutionists just happen to wander into a flood of salvation messages.