At Odds With Discipleship

Were Christian young people and youth groups more Christian in previous generations? Did they know more about what it means to be a Christian disciple? Does the more lax atmosphere that is present in most youth groups today undermine Christian distinctiveness? Was it better when alcohol was frowned upon? When was the cinema was considered too worldly? When the last thing you did was play football or go shopping on a Sunday? Has Christian discipleship become harder today and if so what can we do about it?

A lot of questions I know. They arise out of a conversation I had with some of the young people I have the joy of working with about computer games. I believe that nearly all popular computer games are too violent - at the extreme see Grand Theft Auto - and they are at odds with discipleship. That is the playing of violent computer games and being a Christian are antithetical. Now my young people didn't see the problem - 'they're just games' was the reply I received many times. It's just something to do, it has no effect on our thinking or behaviour. As you might guess, I'm not so sure. In a world which is pervaded by violent images and violence everywhere - between countries, in classrooms, in homes, on the big screen and the small screen - violence becomes normative or at least not something we can avoid.

Stanley Hauerwas writes, 'Have you ever known anyone, yourself included, who would rush out to see a movie or a play about peace? We say we want peace, but in fact we know we love conflict and even war ... on the whole peace just does not seem very interesting to most people ... We simply have to admit that for most of us peace is boring' (Christian Existence Today, 90-91)

In other words, violence is an escape from boredom and computer games are an escape from boredom.  We live in a society that is afraid of being bored. So we spend our spare time, trying to kill others - whether it be the enemy, or in the case of Grand Theft Auto a policeman or bystander. How do we disciple Christian young people who enjoy playing violent video games and violent films? - 'the fight scenes were rubbish/brilliant' is a common comment we hear.  How do we confront this enjoyment of violence? Does it matter? Is it okay, that is, is it at odds with discipleship? How can we avoid the divorce of what we believe from how we act?

A lot of questions without too many answers. Any thoughts out there?

Comments

[ash]

You might find this interesting.

I think that there is something interesting here about discipline which we have lost here in the West.

I was fortunate enough to be able to see The Last Samurai recently, which is a film that moved me in some way. Here you had a whole society built around being warriors and suchlike and who were extremely disciplined. they knew how to fight, yes, but that was not their real aim: their aim was to defend the emperor and to do as he commanded.

Interestingly, with most martial arts I have come across, the emphasis is on defence. The arts are designed to empower somebody when under attack, and are not for beating up people on a drunken whim.

There was an element of this in the West, once, but that died with World War One. These notions of honour seem practically nonsensical to our "free(?)" thinking minds.

Yet it is these very notions, I think, which are the key. The problem with computer game violence is it lacks context. Violence is never "good" overtly, but it is controllable.

My point is that we can teach people to control these fascinations with violence, so that it does not encourage them to be senseless in it, but deeply thoughtful of it.

if that makes any sense at all...

[graham]

Regarding the comment from Ash, Hero is a great film that subversively employs a violent movie genre to make an altogether different point.

[Brodie]

I think there may be some mileage in thinking about how this has probably in one sense been the most "protected" generations to walk our streets (that is if they are allowed out).

When I was a young kid we'd disappear all day and make our own adventures. Now many kids are hardly let out of the sight of the supervising adult. Or the environment that they get to hang around in has been so sanitised that there is no possibility for excitement. Do violent computer games thus is someway allow us to simulate our need to be adventurous and heroic (I'm including both male and female in this).

I think this is in part why there has been such an increase in extreme sports - we need to be adventurous, we need to know we are frail and "one slip and your a goner".

I think ties into this is the whole issue of rites of passage – or something that we do (apart from getting drunk and falling over) that marks the passage from childhood ( being a teenager) to adulthood. The problem is many adults I meet are busy still trying to be teenagers, so there is a lack of good role models for the kids, there is no “virtuous community” for them to join!

[fernando]

on one level i think there is not a lot of difference between two hours spent playing a football game on the computer and two hours watching a football game. however, after seeing hundreds of live football games I can recall a great deal of what went on in each them and describe them in creative detail, but I can't remember what went on in a computer football game a day or two later. in a similar vein 4 hours competing on a golf course seems to test my patience and character far more than the same time spent playing a computer golf game.

those are examples of computer games being harmless but poor substitutes for real activities. i wouldn't damn them, in one says they are like watching a b-grade adaptation of a great novel.

but I do wonder about the correlates for the violent games we see today. I was in my early twenties when the first castle wofenstein and doom games came out, which lead the uber-violent game genre. what I found interesting is that as these games evolved, they required ever more sophisticated skill sets to master them. this demanded more time, usually alone, and less relationality.

to me it is not just the violence that is a problem, but the violence in solitude, especially as it relates to the social functions of those in key stages of relational development.