Gaming!

I don't know if anyone really reads this, but if you do....

Many things can waste our time, everything is competing for that most precious of commodities: our time. Some of them are good, some are bad, some can be either. I once heard a chapel speaker say "Everything you have can either be a tool or an idol. Which will it be?" Do you use things to serve God, serve others, and sometimes just relax? Or do you let them control your life?

An example: Video/Computer Games
I know many people who are completely obsessed with one or more video games. They will play it when they wake up, when they get home from school, and through the night till 2 or 3 am. Granted, some video games are fun, especially to play with a few friends in one room. But they can too often gain control over one's life. And I believe that many, such as Halo, by Bungie Software/ Microsoft, seem to bring out the worst in people. I have seen people who are normally mild-mannered, turn into yelling, swearing, violent young men when they play this competitive First-Person-Shooter. Is this the fault of the game, or of their own lack of control, or the fact that they have no other outlet for their anger? I don't know, but I'd like to put forth a fourth option. It's obsession. They have ceased to use it as a way to relax, have a good time. It is now their life, what drives them.

This can also be seen in the more recently-released Massively-Multiplayer-Online-Role-Playing-Game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft, by Blizzard Software. The characters one builds up in this game becaome a status symbol, something they are immensely proud of. And if anything were to happen to this beloved mixture of colored pixels, megabytes of information, and sound bites, the person would be quite angry. Why? Because they've put inordinate amounts of time into slowly building up this computerized fictional character. Why in the world would a person do that, anyway?

Why am I so against video games? Do I have any idea what I'm talking about? Yes, sadly, I do. I used to be obsessed with computer games of any sort, be they RTS's, FPS's, RPG's, or Flight Sims. I played them so much they became everything I could think about, talk about, laugh about. Rather than what Paul talks about in Philippians 4:8-9, I set my mind on such trivial things as computer games. I regret this horribly, and realize that I struggled with this for years, until I finally got so fed up with it that I deleted every game from my computer, and have stopped playing them almost completely. I have, on occasion, sat down with a few friends for games like Nintendo's Super Smash Brothers, but other than that I try to stay as far away from the gaming world as possible.

I hate games. I've seen some good ones, ones I'd love to play at a party, in community. But most games quickly take over a person's life, drawing them away from authentic community to a lonely life alone, or alone with other lonely people in online gaming communities. Why would a person who lives in a college residence hall or, worse yet, a married man, spend all of his free time alone?

To these people, I say... "Get off your lazy... "seat"... and do something productive for a change!"

This does not only apply to computer games, but I use those as an example because they're closest to my heart, as ashamed as I am of that fact.

There is my rant for the month. One that I've been stewing on for years now. If anyone wants to talk to me about this issue, I'd love to talk to them. They can e-mail me or call me or whatever. But of course I won't post my contact info here. If you know it, good. If you don't, well, um... write me at my junk mail address, which is shoes_kill[at]hotmail.com