Church Voices

Having been raised in the church during the 1980s, I received much knowledge concerning morality, but some tidbits I picked up were less than stellar. One such inculcated gem, was a rabid disdain for dungeons and dragons; that sinister game that could infiltrate the minds of adolescents and convert them into suicidal devil worshiprs. Well, like a good Christian young man, I wasn’t hesitant about expressing my view to my friends who has partaken in that heathen ritual… needless to say, I felt a touch foolish the first time I watched them actually play a game… wondering why on earth we were so bent against it. Years later after having been in the ministry for a while, one of my students afforded me the opportunity to play a game, and I decided I’d try it out. I loved it, and have been playing it nearly weekly ever since. I can tell you truthfully that neither I, nor any of my students who participate in this game have committed suicide, nor have we begun worshipping Satan. In fact, I see that over the past year Dungeons and Dragons has become a peculiar draw to our ministry, as our regular gaming nights tend to draw a specific crowd that the church has largely ignored in the bulk of its outreach endeavors. In fact, two individuals we baptized last month came to us as a direct result of our playing of dungeons and dragons… clearly this is not the adversary’s domain… well, unless we decide to cede it to him, which most of us apparently have. This all begs the question as to why the church occasionally picks innocuous social phenomenon and decides to wage war against it, as though our eternities hung in the balance.

To be honest, I see the hand of a very intelligent adversary in this. During WW2 the British intelligence campaign known as “Bodyguard” engaged in an elaborate ruse intended to misdirect German resistance prior to the invasion of Normandy. One of these techniques was the use of inflatable tanks and contrived tread-marks throughout various fields in England, as well as false landing craft jamming the bays of England. This is how intelligent warfare is conducted… the wise adversary sets up phantom threats to conceal the real dangers in his arsenal. So it is with our adversary. Since the 1980s we’ve seen the occasional revelatory uprising of Christian watchdogs, who proclaim a book or a game to be an open door to Satan worship. It is spiritual death to our children, and our moral duty to openly oppose these things at every opportunity. All the while, religious syncretism, relativism, the death of sexual modesty, and other very real and very dangerous issues went virtually unopposed throughout the world’s congregations. And so, true to form, the American church does the easy thing and targets an adversary that can be boycotted or burned. Brilliant; ignore the call to wage war against spiritual powers and authorities, don’t bother with the corrupting influence of people who read books or play games, just berate a publisher and close your wallets, oh and don’t forget to level some partially conceived diatribe about satanic influence at people who already need Christ. Well, this all mindlessly ends in a bulk of the church jumping on board and rallying their teachings and parental oversight against a perceived threat. I don’t think I’d be exaggerating here if I were to suggest that perhaps 90% or more of said Christian populace has no first-hand experience with said threat, nor do they understand exactly why they should view it as a treat (save for the quick tidbits of zealous accusations they’ve gleaned from other Christians offering opinions on the issue). Are the Christians who jump on these issues bad people? …No, they’re just Christians who trust the church and are under the impression that this zeal of other believers has a solid foundation. Are these believers damaging possible evangelism opportunities, and ostracizing people needlessly? Absolutely. There is no doubt that people outside of Christianity view this type of paranoia as absurd (especially given that the vast majority of it is highly ill-informed and, well… absurd).

So what’s a believer to do? How about exercising a bit of shrewdness concerning the adversary’s intentions, and his ability to carry them out in and through the church? I’ve got to laud the wife of our senior minister who decided to actually read Harry Potter before passing judgment (she of course concluded that it is harmless fantasy fiction). I really appreciate Christians who don’t cede territory to the adversary that doesn’t really belong to him. In way of exhortation, please believers, exercise a bit of healthy skepticism regarding the zealous ranting of other Christians. Don’t take up a position on seemingly harmless issues unless you have a solid reason for doing so. Satan doesn’t have to make us worship him, it’s far easier to keep us looking like hysteric nuts, that no sane person would want to have anything to do with.