Sunday, May 24, 2020

Drugs, alcohol, women, impurity, crime.... and video games?



I've noticed on a few conversion stories and also some sermons that I have watched recently that there it's becoming more and more usual for 'gaming' to be grouped in with all the 'pre-conversion' vices.

Priests, preachers, converts, this isn't fair!

Imagine a conversion testimony or a powerful sermon which condemned "Drugs, alcohol, women, impurity, crime and ... books"

Everyone would think, "you what?" 

Sure there are trashy books out there, basically pornographic literature, seedy novels with racy titles and a women (or man) with very little clothing on the front of it.... 

But that doesn't mean "books" as a medium, as a type of entertainment, are a pre-conversion vice.

Maybe you could say someone addicted to gambling video games, sure, a pre-conversion vice.... maybe someone who played video games 8 hours every day and did nothing else, a pre-conversion vice...... maybe someone who deliberately played games with impurity and outrageous and gratuitous violence in them, games that probably account for about 5% of all those in the top 100 sales of last year in video games, maybe that would be a pre-conversion vice.

But gaming as a whole.... no way, its not a pre-conversion vice, its simply a form of 'play', of healthy distraction, just like reading or nature watching or watching a sports game, or playing snooker.....

So be careful, more specific if you want to list gaming as your pre-conversion vice.... playing Tetris on the bus to work is hardly confession matter.

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