by
mr maple
Faithful readers of the NY Times may remember this shocking title:
"Thou Shalt Not Kill, Except in a Popular Video Game at Church." The article described the growing trend of church youth groups in using Halo (a popular first-person shooter video game) to draw the tough crowd of teenage boys into the church:
Far from being defensive, church leaders who support Halo — despite its “thou shalt kill” credo — celebrate it as a modern and sometimes singularly effective tool. It is crucial, they say, to reach the elusive audience of boys and young men.
Witness the basement on a recent Sunday at the Colorado Community Church in the Englewood area of Denver, where Tim Foster, 12, and Chris Graham, 14, sat in front of three TVs, locked in violent virtual combat as they navigated on-screen characters through lethal gun bursts. Tim explained the game’s allure: “It’s just fun blowing people up.”
Once they come for the games, Gregg Barbour, the youth minister of the church said, they will stay for his Christian message. “We want to make it hard for teenagers to go to hell,” Mr. Barbour wrote in a letter to parents at the church.
I will say outright that I do enjoy playing violent video games (though the thought of killing people in real life makes me nauseous); to say otherwise would be hypocritical and self-deceiving. However, I cannot say that I am proud of it (I'm trying to stop) and I will definitely say that the church should not endorse it either. Before I say anything about the benefits of "culturally relevant" means of outreach, I must mention another article from that day that caught my eye.
This one, titled "
A Priest Methodically Reveals Ukranian Jews' Fate", described one priest's journey in uncovering the truth behind the relatively obscure Holocaust of Ukranian Jews:
Knocking on doors, unannounced, Father Desbois, 52, seeks to unlock the memories of Ukrainian villagers the way he might take confessions one by one in church.
“At first, sometimes, people don’t believe I’m a priest,” said Father Desbois in an interview this week. “I have to use simple words and listen to these horrors — without any judgment. I cannot react to the horrors that pour out. If I react, the stories will stop.”
Over four years, Father Desbois has videotaped more than 700 interviews with witnesses and bystanders and has identified more than 600 common graves of Jews, most of them previously unknown. He also has gathered material evidence of the execution of Jews from 1941 to 1944, the “Holocaust of bullets” as it is called.
Often his subjects ask Father Desbois to stay for a meal and to pray, as if to somehow bless their acts of remembrance. He does not judge those who were assigned to carry out tasks for the Nazis, and Holocaust scholars say that is one reason he is so effective.
Father Desbois' actions go completely against the grain of what we would consider "cultural relevance." Few want to remember the grisly affairs of the Holocaust. In fact, much of modern media is designed to insulate its viewers from similarly ghastly crimes that are commonplace in many areas of the world; the genocide quiz was designed to highlight our own ignorance and rather casual approach to atrocities of unbelievable scope and scale. When we do remember, we would prefer to think that the Holocaust is an event relegated to the past and that those who seek to dig it up are masochists who thrive on shame and suffering. But a single priest, working quietly and without fanfare, managed to unearth and display for the public eye the dirty secrets in humanity's closet: mass graves that bear grim testimony to our perverted penchant for using death as a means of gain.
One common thread in posts by critics of Christians and Revelife is our self-absorption with a sort of sub-culture of Christianity: our tendency to pick apart the most exquisite details of our faith and its relevance to the world around us. And the criticism is true, even if the saying of it is unpopular. We love sitting behind the protective shield of our computer screens to debate the value of teaching evolution in schools, abortion, the morality of movies, the intricacies of the Christian dating scene, various differences in theology. While these discussions have their place in modern Christian living, they reveal for those who believe in the same radical faith of Christ and the Bible a large and savage neglect of the weightier matters of the law: the abuse and perversion of justice, the responsibility to love and forgive our neighbors, the sanctity of community and security.
Several commenters to the first post in this series mused, "I wonder how they're going to tie this all in to Christianity."
It is a shame to Christians to think that Christianity's relevance to genocide needs to be explained. What elements of Scripture and Christianity do not scream in tortured response to the crime of genocide? If we who call ourselves followers of Christ do not flinch or cringe with sorrow at the mention of humanity's greatest crime, then what familiarity can we claim to the heart of God himself - the God who wept at the tomb of Lazarus, that fiercely defends the cause of the orphan and the widow, that flares with anger at the death of innocents? It is precisely in this arena that Christians should speak the loudest and with the most passion, conviction, and eloquence. It is here that the raw power of God's grace ought to shine and transform the most; where Christians should feel completely comfortable speaking, debating, and acting on behalf of those who are mute and powerless.
In the depths of our own hearts, our churches, and our congregations, what will our perspective of cultural relevance be? In contrast to the question, "What does this world
want from the church?" perhaps we should be asking, "What does this world
need from the church?" There is a simple answer to that: "To do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God." (Micah 6:8) The most powerful testimonies that a Christian possesses are grace and truth. One is scarce because of our innate, competitive desire to obtain every selfish advantage; the other is scarce because of our unwillingness to come face-to-face with the real and present condition of our humanity.
In the specialized context of genocide, there is abundant opportunity for Christians to demonstrate their true relevance to the world as agents of grace and truth and as advocates of justice, mercy, and humility. This does not even begin to delve into other areas of grotesque and blatant human sin: child slavery, sex trafficking, and poverty. Here, in areas where our responsibilities are most clear and profound, we are the most silent. Is that silence a moral failure? Why is a Christian voice in these areas considered new and profound instead of expected as the norm? What is it that keeps us from speaking up more, from acting with greater purposefulness and grace, from being more educated and aware?
Faithful readers of the NY Times may remember this shocking title: "Thou Shalt Not Kill, Except in a Popular Video Game at Church." The article described the growing trend of church youth groups in using Halo (a popular first-person shooter video game) to draw the tough crowd of teenage boys into the church:Far from being defensive, church leaders who support Halo — despite its “thou shalt kill” credo — celebrate it as a modern and sometimes singularly effective tool. It is crucial, they say, to reach the elusive audience of boys and young men.
Comments (7)
"In the specialized context of genocide, there is abundant opportunity
for Christians to demonstrate their true relevance to the world as
agents of grace and truth and as advocates of justice, mercy, and
humility."
Christianity is a diverse, fractured, and tribal family. The only person who speaks for even 1/10th of Christianity is the Pope, and even then, half of Christianity does not theologically agree with the specific doctrines of the Catholics.
We are divided but we are also distinct units. It broadens our reach, but it makes it rare when 1.5 billion followers of Christ combine in a single geographical cause.
Can the church / Christianity do better? Probably. Would it make a difference? Yeah. Would it eliminate entirely this evil? Probably not. Genocide usually involves a corrupted world-view and guns...from Sudan to Iraq to North Korea...
Jesus is the answer...but besides continued prayer and a readiness to help when the doors/borders are opened, I don't know what we could do at this point...
From a historical perspective, Christians have traditionally been at the forefront of many (if not most) social movements for justice and mercy. Consider the Sisters of Mercy, Alcoholics Anonymous, Mother Theresa, William Wilberforce, the Salvation Army, Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Day, Albert Schweitzer, and the countless number of unnamed workers and advocates. Though one could cynically argue that, statistically speaking, this would be inevitable in a predominantly Judeo-Christian society... but that doesn't give due credit to the conviction from which each of these people and organizations worked and labored. And yet today, Christians seem to be nearly underrepresented in these same areas.
What I find sad is that Christians are more likely to learn about "the evils of" evolution or safe sex or gay marriage or the liberal left in their churches long before they learn about the evil of genocide. I find it sad that most Christians will learn about their moral responsibility to stop genocide in secular schools before they ever hear a description of it mentioned at the pulpit (except as an illustrative point for a Christian principle for living). I first learned about these things from my non-Christian friends long before I ever heard them mentioned from Christian ones.
there is slight hope
Mr. Maple....I could have read this post and said amen to it, if there was even a small acknowledgment that some Christians do get it, and that many Christians are loudly banging the drum for justice.
You make it sound as if you've unearthed this vast ignorance among the Christian world, when in fact, if you looked at the responses to your quiz on the whole, they were surprisingly informed. I gave the quiz to a sampling of my Christian and non-Christian friends...you may be surprised to know that my Christian friends did significantly better.
I, personally, might not be able to do missions where I want to and feel God has called me to because of my stance on Darfur! I have spoken loudly and often on Darfur and my name has made it on a blacklist.
Please understand me, I'm not saying you're wrong. There is a great amount of ignorance in the church, but to say that the church always stands idly by while the worst genocides in history have gone down is just mis-informed.
Instead of just being judgmental of the church, why not acknowledge that some people get it and are living that out and invite others in the church to become informed and chase after God's heart?
btw...I asked one of those people who asked how you would tie this into Christianity what he meant, because I too thought it was inherently Christian to discuss this, and he said because all of our posts are usually pushing some form of morality and so overtly Christian he was surprised to see us discussing something other than our own little sheltered world of Christianity and doctrine.
i really think it's because many Christians have a hard time saying something wrong from a religious stance unless it's explicitly mentioned in the Bible. and unfortunately for them, a lot of what is socially unacceptable in this century was perfectly fine back then (genocide, slavery, etc).
i hope, and often pray, that someday we will realize that we don't need God to back up our morality. we don't need to point out a specific verse in order to prove something immoral, especially in the cases where the Bible is silent. i don't need a 2000-year-old book to tell me that genocide, the sex trade of children, and many other things are terrible atrocities. and if you do, i'd question how moral you are to begin with.
@thepurpleporpoise - Looking back, I realize that I did put things very harshly... though to clarify, my criticism is not that Christians aren't represented at all or don't make any efforts. We do, and I was definitely impressed by the base knowledge and range of responses from people. However, my criticism is a matter of proportion. Our protests against abortion dwarf those against genocide; the money spent in lobbying congress against homosexuality outstrips that of lobbying for stricter enforcement against sex trafficking. I think our money, time, and efforts are a reflection of our priorities as a whole, and in this respect it may be hard to say that the American church is being as responsible as it can be.
@mrmaple - Well, with what you said there....I couldn't agree more. I have certainly been outspoken about the blatant hypocrisy in protesting abortion, but staying silent on genocide....what's the difference really? And for the record, I completely agree with everything you said in the post.
I was just somewhat offended by it too, because I do everything I can to stop genocide. I have been to a number of rallies in nebraska and DC and I have personally talked to all of my elected officials about the current genocide. That's all I was trying to get at. Sorry, If I came out swinging.