Gaming & Male Leadership

It is quarter to five in the morning. I've been up all night doing two things: Playing The Sims (a game I got for my nephews and then found out that they already had it, which was great because I'd always wanted to have it), and making a list of games that the boys could choose from so I don't make the same mistake twice. They're old enough now (14 + 17) to be able to choose their Christmas presents before Christmas. But, after spending all this time making this long list of games, a thought just hit me. Well, maybe it didn't just HIT me. I'd been growing more and more dubious the more I saw the descriptions of some of these games. I know the boys play these things, and they're really not my cup of tea. They're gonna play them anyhow. That's how I justified buying them exposure to such violence, besides I've never minded violence in movies that I watch. One of my favoite movies is Fight Club. The violence isn't my favorite part of the movie, but I don't refrain from watching an excellent movie just because violence is a necessary part of it.

(The plotline of Fight Club can be reduced, in my opinion, to this formula. Nihilism destroys civilization. Its end result is total anarchy, survival of the fittest. If you don't believe that you are the biggest, baddest, fittest character on the planet, stop with all the nihilism already. It sounds sophisticated, but it will make fools of us all. We will tear our world down around our ears and have nothing left but the hollow words of some dead hero that we followed to our peril. It is excellent philosophy. The words in that movie are POWERFUL, though some of them are dirty. It's the thoughts. Maybe that movie just speaks for my generation or something. I don't know. "We are a generation of men raised by our mothers. I don't think another woman is really what we need. Do you?" What does it mean to be a generation of women raised in divorce? Perhaps that's a question for another day, but I think it partially means the rejection of one's own feminine qualities. Women get rejected and abandoned, so don't be feminine. Be strong, somehow masculine and feminine both, and neither. Sick. Twisted. I hear people going on and on about giving male mentors and role models to young boys. I think people are so intent on this because they think it will curb the violence in our streets. What they forget is that women who were raised by mothers only are the women who will bear the next generation of children, and probably raise them by themselves. We need godly men in our lives to teach us our worth as women, to show us that there are godly men in the world, to make us dissatisfied with ungodly men. The best way to convince young boys to take God seriously is to convince young girls that guys who don't take God seriously aren't worth having. Beth Moore says that women have the power of influence, and it is a power that we we'd best learn how to wield well. I couldn't agree with her more. If you want to change men, change the women that they're competing for.)

Anyway. I was speaking of games. Once, I threw my games in the dumpster. I believed that that's what God wanted me to do, but then I made the mistake of telling my mom what I had done. She was apalled. So much money wasted. I said, yes, but the money had already been wasted when I spent it on games. Why should I waste both the money and the immense quantities of my time that those games would consume if I let myself get hooked on them. There is a verse in the Bible. Redeem the time, for the days are evil. If you apply that verse to The SIMS and to Civilization III, how do the hours spent playing those games qualify as redeemed time? If the days are evil and you only get so many of them, then how many of them am I wasting playing stupid computer games? They seem harmless. The ones I play aren't violent or anything, but they're not the best I can do with the hours of this life. When I get up to heaven and my life is reviewed by my creator, will I want to show off to him my top score on some game? I don't think so.

So, if I don't think that gaming is good for me, then should I encourage my nephews in it? They're going to do it whether I encourage them in it or not, but should I endorse this habit of theirs, or should they see me stop playing again and maybe sell my games. God, please give me the courage of my convictions.