ME19four: life, faith and role-playing games
Friday, April 28, 2006
Christian Role-Playing Games?
(Category: life, faith, role-playing games, d'uh!)
My sitemeter has a handy feature - it enables me to find out something about who visits the site, and what brings them here. Every so often there comes up a search for "Christian Role-Playing Games" - et viola!
Well, I don't have time for a developed post on this at present - I'm spending too much time on the Role-Playing Games and not enough on the vocation as it is, and this (blogging) is interesting, but peripheral to the dog-collar.
But a thought has struck me this morning. Why do people want to know about Christian Role-Playing Games, and what is being meant by the search phrase in the first place?
Are they (you?) looking for a "safe" and potentially sanitised sub-culture version that you or your kids can play without being "tainted?" (Sorry, that's not quite the right word, but I'm in a hurry, and if this comes across as being aggressive, please accept my apologies - maybe it's just born of personal passion).
If so, please consider this question. Why? Ancient Judaism might have held onto the principle that the touch of the "unclean" spoiled the holy and took away the specialness. In Christ we see the classic example of the opposite - the holy coming into the midst of the normal to render it blessed. To make the mundane a place where God is. The call to all Christians is to be salt and light. To purify and illumine the places where we are and we go, not to retreat into ghettos and sub-cultures.
That's not comfortable, it means taking risks. But that's the call and the pattern of Jesus. It led him to the Cross, and in the light of Easter think what that meant for the world. Risky sacrifice as key to eternal life. And we have the benefit of the presence and guidance of the Holy Spirit, don't we?
I don't use my role-playing as an evangelistic tool. I do wonder sometimes how I could and what would be the right approach. I allow people to know me as a person, and trust that God's Spirit will give me the wisdom to see the doors open and know how to respond rightly and at the right time. (I'm going to be trying a little more of that approach this summer on offereing a seminar on understanding spirituality and faith in a particular Game-world, in fact).
For a more pro-active, in-game approach, you could play a Christian character (if the setting allowed it), or in a manner which displays Christian values and virtues (which makes me think of Frodo in the Lord of the Rings, showing courage, love, self-sacrifice and so forth).
If you and I are serious about our faith and the well-being of those under our care we would do far better by equipping them to live out their Christian faith in all spheres of life. (Surely this comes under the much-neglected "love the Lord your God with all your mind" which must include the imaginitive and creative urge within in each one of us, if we are truly made in the image of God.)
Take Christian faith into the game, and not the game into the ghetto.
[end "passionate" mode]
... and if that qualifies as a "rant", then please accept my apologies!
Later addition: Of course, the subversive potential for writing a Role-Playing Game that is implicitly Christian and a potential part of the mission process is a tantalising challenge. Except to do so would do exactly what many Christians accuse RPGs of doing, being channels of indoctrination and contact with the "spiritual" under false pretenses. (Or is that being "as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves"? - although given the context of the quote - Mt 10 - I think it's a misapplication).
(I really must do some "work"!) ¶ 8:27 am 0 comments
My sitemeter has a handy feature - it enables me to find out something about who visits the site, and what brings them here. Every so often there comes up a search for "Christian Role-Playing Games" - et viola!
Well, I don't have time for a developed post on this at present - I'm spending too much time on the Role-Playing Games and not enough on the vocation as it is, and this (blogging) is interesting, but peripheral to the dog-collar.
But a thought has struck me this morning. Why do people want to know about Christian Role-Playing Games, and what is being meant by the search phrase in the first place?
Are they (you?) looking for a "safe" and potentially sanitised sub-culture version that you or your kids can play without being "tainted?" (Sorry, that's not quite the right word, but I'm in a hurry, and if this comes across as being aggressive, please accept my apologies - maybe it's just born of personal passion).
If so, please consider this question. Why? Ancient Judaism might have held onto the principle that the touch of the "unclean" spoiled the holy and took away the specialness. In Christ we see the classic example of the opposite - the holy coming into the midst of the normal to render it blessed. To make the mundane a place where God is. The call to all Christians is to be salt and light. To purify and illumine the places where we are and we go, not to retreat into ghettos and sub-cultures.
That's not comfortable, it means taking risks. But that's the call and the pattern of Jesus. It led him to the Cross, and in the light of Easter think what that meant for the world. Risky sacrifice as key to eternal life. And we have the benefit of the presence and guidance of the Holy Spirit, don't we?
I don't use my role-playing as an evangelistic tool. I do wonder sometimes how I could and what would be the right approach. I allow people to know me as a person, and trust that God's Spirit will give me the wisdom to see the doors open and know how to respond rightly and at the right time. (I'm going to be trying a little more of that approach this summer on offereing a seminar on understanding spirituality and faith in a particular Game-world, in fact).
For a more pro-active, in-game approach, you could play a Christian character (if the setting allowed it), or in a manner which displays Christian values and virtues (which makes me think of Frodo in the Lord of the Rings, showing courage, love, self-sacrifice and so forth).
If you and I are serious about our faith and the well-being of those under our care we would do far better by equipping them to live out their Christian faith in all spheres of life. (Surely this comes under the much-neglected "love the Lord your God with all your mind" which must include the imaginitive and creative urge within in each one of us, if we are truly made in the image of God.)
Take Christian faith into the game, and not the game into the ghetto.
[end "passionate" mode]
... and if that qualifies as a "rant", then please accept my apologies!
Later addition: Of course, the subversive potential for writing a Role-Playing Game that is implicitly Christian and a potential part of the mission process is a tantalising challenge. Except to do so would do exactly what many Christians accuse RPGs of doing, being channels of indoctrination and contact with the "spiritual" under false pretenses. (Or is that being "as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves"? - although given the context of the quote - Mt 10 - I think it's a misapplication).
(I really must do some "work"!) ¶ 8:27 am 0 comments
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Blog's Worth
Hat tip: John
I'll take cash then, and sell out tomorrow!
:) ¶ 11:56 am 0 comments
My blog is worth $2,822.70.
How much is your blog worth?
I'll take cash then, and sell out tomorrow!
:) ¶ 11:56 am 0 comments
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Tuesday Giggles
(Category: life)
I know I shouldn't but my mate Adrian just sent me this...
Proof positive that I really should give up this blogging lark, perhaps?
¶ 11:14 am 0 comments
I know I shouldn't but my mate Adrian just sent me this...
Energizer Bunny arrested - charged with battery.A pessimist's blood type is always B-negative.Practice safe eating - always use condiments.A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother.Shotgun wedding: A case of wife or death.I used to work in a blanket factory, but it folded.Marriage is the mourning after the knot before.A hangover is the wrath of grapes.Corduroy pillows are making headlines.Is a book on voyeurism a peeping tome?Sea captains don't like crew cuts.Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?A successful diet is the triumph of mind over platter.Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.A gossip is someone with a great sense of rumor.Without geometry, life is pointless.When you dream in color, it's a pigment of your imagination.Reading while sunbathing makes you well-red.A man's home is his castle, in a manor of speaking.Dijon vu - the same mustard as before.When two egotists meet, it's an I for an I.A bicycle can't stand on its own because it is two-tired.What's the definition of a will? (Come on, it's a dead giveaway!)A backwards poet writes inverse.
In democracy your vote counts. In feudalism, your count votes.
Proof positive that I really should give up this blogging lark, perhaps?
