(This is the third in a series of posts addressing questions about the cultural captivity of the church. You can read the previous posts here and here.)
During my last semester as a college professor, I came across a surprising article in the weekly student newspaper. At least, I found it surprising; though in retrospect, I should have been known better.
It was a detailed review of a newly released computer game. I didn’t pay any attention to the game’s title because I was so caught off guard by the fact that the student newspaper at a Christian college had no qualms about praising, and encouraging others to buy, the latest graphic game of military slaughter.
The reviewer described in bloody detail the game’s improved graphics, enhancements that depicted the bloodshed more realistically than ever. (I wondered how he knew what realistic blood splatter looked like.) The game was the newest “first person shooter” game. (That is, a game where the player holds the computer gun in his/her hand, then points and shoots at human figures on the screen in order to survive and accumulate points).
All in living color, of course.
I initially considered writing a letter to the editor to express my dismay, but I thought better of it. Why not wait to see if anyone else shared my dismay.
No one did, apparently. Or, perhaps they were biting their tongues like me. Several weeks passed with no response.
So, I devised a better plan. I would submit my own article reviewing the latest version of my favorite sex game. (No, I have never played any such thing, but I assume that they must exist. My imagination was not strained at all by concocting one ex nihilo.)
My review would go on and on in effusive detail praising the graphic depictions of the female (or the male) anatomy – in living color, no less – and the many arcane, sexual positions available as the player scored more and more points by scoring with more and more sexual partners.
Then, at the end of my imaginary review, I would admit to my satire and ask a simple question: Why, dear reader, are you preparing to write a letter to condemn my fictitious review when you had nothing to say about an earlier review glorifying a graphic, bloodthirsty game of war, complete with exploding bodies and crushed skulls?
What kind of moral calculus is that?
I wish I had gone through with my plan, but I didn’t. It was my final semester before moving on, and I didn’t quite have the energy needed for another campus-wide controversy. In my experience, many readers of that particular newspaper had difficulty recognizing, much less appreciating, the art of satire. And my days as an educator were coming to an end.
But my questions remain.
Why is bloodshed and human slaughter, the kind of violent acts that our Lord Jesus explicitly prohibits, so much more acceptable to Christian people than images of nudity and sexuality?
No, I am not diminishing the destructive power of pornography. But is pornography any more corrosive to the human psyche, any more more dehumanizing for those who participate in it than a blood-thirsty killing game that transforms a player into a butcher, that desensitizes him to the horrors of murder, pain and human suffering?
At least sexual intercourse was God’s idea, and He blessed it with the bonds of marriage.
But human violence arose from the sulpherous heart of original sin. Our Creator rendered his eternal verdict over this brand of wickedness when He cursed the first murderer, Cain, and banished his blood-stained hands from his presence.
Does the church think or act any differently than the rest of our violent society when it comes to this problem of casual, gaming violence? Murder as entertainment?
I don’t know the definitive answer to this question, but I suspect that on average, we are no different than anyone else in the neighborhood who relaxes after school (or work) by watching a computer screen filled with atrocious, bloody acts of human carnage created by yours truly.
Lt. Col. Dave Grossman has written a fascinating and disturbing book examining the psychological effects of violent video games on children and adolescents. It’s entitled Assassination Generation: Video Games, Aggression, and the Psychology of Killing (Little, Brown and Co., 2016).
Grossman excerpts the findings of a medical report presented to Congress in July 2000 by a coalition of 4 professional medical, psychiatric and pediatric associations. Their congressional report concluded that:
“Well over 1,000 studies…point overwhelmingly to a causal connection between media violence and aggressive behavior in some children…[V]iewing entertainment violence can lead to increases in aggressive attitudes, values and behavior, particularly in children. Its effects are measurable and long-lasting…[it] can lead to emotional desensitization toward violence in real life.” (10-11)
Grossman also compares first-person shooter games to the military training methods used to desensitize soldiers to killing on command. He says:
“Violent video games teach kids to kill using the same mechanisms of classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and social learning employed to train soldiers.”
What happens when a depressed teenager who is addicted to violent video games and feels that the entire world has become his enemy grabs a family gun and walks to the local mall?
We all know the answer to that question. We have seen on TV time and again.
Sadly, this is the kind of world we live in.
What are the people of God doing to address the social plague of daily violence traumatizing our school children? Placing armed guards inside our churches is the devil’s own suggestion, though I have seen and read about many churches doing just that.
But surely, everyone can understand, that is not the way of Jesus.
We need to examine ourselves and confess to the many ways in which we have eagerly conformed to a godless society. We are unable to find wisdom in the mind of Christ because we are too busy entertaining ourselves (for hours and hours) with the latest version of Call of Duty and Modern Warfare 2. So, we turn to armed guards instead of the Spirit of compassion.
Ask yourself this question. Can you imagine Jesus sitting for hours in front of a computer screen, laughing with glee and giving himself high-fives over his rising body count as he plays Call of Duty: Black Ops?
How many throats could Jesus slit?
The question answers itself.
It is long past time for God’s people to return their eyes to Jesus, the lamb of God, prince of peace, our suffering servant who came not to kill but to be killed. What does he ask of his church today?
Part of the reason that slaughter is more acceptable than nudity for too many Christians is that the thinking of ancient pagan schools of thought entered Christianity in the late 4th century. Hatred of pleasure and sexual pessimism from these pagan schools of thought warped our view of sex in Christianity. The purpose of sexual morality is to motivate people to keep their sexual activity within marriage. Yet, as Freud complained, we have become sexually repressive as Christians, and our sexual morality effectively seeks to desexualize us. Thus, we are too negative as regards sex and sexuality.
The other side of your question on slaughter can be partly explained because we have in the US become (as Matthias Chang puts it in his book) brainwashed for war, and programmed to kill. Constantly seeing images of destroyed towns and cities in history books and on TV has served to desensitize us. The fake history (really propaganda) dehumanizes even the civilian population of any country that has been targeted in the past 100 years by the military-industrial-banking-government complex. As well, it does not help matters when moral cretins on various Christian television programs call for slaughter (often in support of Zionist Israel).