“Fallout 3,” produced by
Bethesda Game Studios, is an example of a role playing game that had
multiple endings based on player decisions. The game received a lot of
awards in the gaming community but there were some problems. The game
allowed the player to become addicted to morphine and alcohol. There are
plot lines in the game that allow the player to access a weapon that
launched mini nuclear bombs called the “Fat-Man”. This is a reference to the
bomb dropped on Japan.
One
of the most disturbing quests in the game involves deciding whether to
detonate or disarm a nuclear device in a small town called Megaton. The
player can either kill all the residents and annihilate the town by
detonating the weapon or save everybody by permanently disarming it.
Consequently, parents were less than pleased when they found out that their
children were responsible for killing hundreds of people, even in a virtual
setting. The game developers were creating an environment where a child (or
adult) could possibly recreate some of the most horrific moments in human
history. The moral ramifications are obvious as young children are not
capable of fully understanding the consequences of these actions. These
types of experiences lead to a desensitization of a person's perception of
death and murder. They will begin to associate real death with virtual death
and thus become disconnected from a very real part of life.
One popular argument from
video game advocates is that games increase hand eye coordination. This is
only true inside the gaming world. Once you leave the gaming world these
motor skills are largely worthless and cannot be applied in reality outside
the gaming environment.
Games are not all bad.
There are certainly innocent, educational or story based games that are
non-violent. There are many sports and simulation games that are non-violent
but there must be one underlying question: “How does this glorify God?”
Spending time with friends and family, playing a game of soccer, or
something similar would be more beneficial to bring the family together.
Another issue here is
time. When does the time commitment become something beyond a casual
experience? Children especially cannot regulate their time and would spend
all hours of the day playing games. This leads to an addiction that is not
easily broken. Children become out of shape, lose social skills, and their
ability to function and communicate in society is limited. We can see
further evidence of this since the advent of texting. Teens and young adults
have begun to lose the ability to interpret human emotion through body
language.
Games require an
incredible amount of time to “beat” and some are even unbeatable. They
simply perpetuate until the player grows tired of the game and moves on to
the next installment. We are talking hundreds, if not thousands of hours
dedicated to developing a person’s virtual skill. This is time not spent
with a spouse or family. This is time not spent on education, or learning a
trade. This is time not spent reading books or developing critical thinking
skills needed to understand our reality. Most importantly, this is time not
spent serving God and is therefore wasted time.
How Demons Enter Through Fantasy: The Seducing Spirit
Everybody is born with an
imagination. This imagination can be used to build a home, write a book, fix
a car, or any number of situations requiring problem solving and creative
solutions. The imagination can also be used to create a fantasy world in
which we can escape reality. This is an illusion formed in our mind. We can
create an event or sequence of events in which we are in TOTAL control. We
can fulfill our most personal longings without fear of rejection or failure.
We can become a “god” in a sense as we are in complete control of all
aspects of the illusion. The stronger the pain, or rejection; the stronger
and deeper the illusion.
Our imagination is a
faculty of our inner man; the illusion is created from within our heart
(soul) with an influence from one of the three following choices:
-
The Holy Spirit
-
Our Spirit
-
A
Demonic Spirit
We create this fantasy
world to escape the pains of reality, such as rejection. For example, within
this reality we are always the center of the illusion. We are in complete
control; we are important and everything always works out perfectly. We will
always score the winning goal. If we don't score the winning goal in
reality, we can replay the moment over and over in our mind and change the
outcome to feel better about it. Men tend to sexualize their fantasies to
gain power, money, women, fame etc. Men will always get the girl and she
will always be satisfied beyond her wildest dreams. Men will spend millions
in this illusion having the fastest cars, the nicest homes etc. Revenge is
another motive in our fantasies. We can exact the perfect revenge without
consequences.
Women on the other hand
tend to romanticize their fantasies about the perfect man. This man will
happily cater to her every need and desire. He will always satisfy her and
take care of her. He will always say kind things and act perfectly in
public.
The problem with this
illusion is that it is a lie! There are pains and rejections in real life.
We will not always score the winning goal and our spouse will not always act
correctly and say the right thing. Revenge is never sweet, and there are
always consequences.
Have you ever zoned out
on a long drive, and then all of a sudden you snap out of it as you arrive
safely at your destination without any specific recollection of the drive
itself? You have to ask yourself, where did I just go in my mind?
Daydreaming is a natural human element. It all depends on where the fantasy
leads you.
“I made a covenant
with mine eyes; why then should I think upon a maid?”
(Job 31:1)
“If my step hath
turned out of the way, and mine heart walked after mine eyes, and if any
blot hath cleaved to mine hands…”
(Job 31:7)
This tells us that our
heart follows our eyes. If our eyes fall willingly on something Holy then we
will be Holy in our heart. However, if our eyes fall willingly on something
unholy then we are defiled and our heart is dark.
“For where your
treasure is, there will your heart be also.
The light of the body
is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full
of light.
But if thine eye be
evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that
is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!
No man can serve two
masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he
will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and
mammon.”
(Matthew 6:21-24)
If we find treasure in
any dark thing not of God, be it video games, porn, books, TV, movies etc.,
then we are filled with the darkness thereof. This filling of darkness is
the result of sin. This sin opens the door to the seducing spirit and this
filling of darkness is the evil spirit coming in.
“I will set no wicked
thing before mine eyes: I hate the work of them that turn aside; it shall
not cleave to me.”
(Psalm 101:3)
Seducing Spirits Have Friends
The nature of seduction
is that we are not aware of what is happening. We don't immediately
recognize the influence of the seductive moment in our lives. Seduction does
not happen in an instant. It is a gradual decline of our defenses against
impure thoughts. The seduction will start off shallow and inconspicuous. It
will increase in depth and complexity as we get more and more personally
involved.
When somebody creates a
fantasy that you pay money to be a part of, you become a voyeur. You are
vicariously living out somebody else's fantasy. Take for example a sex scene
in a movie. By willingly watching that sex scene you are inviting in the
spirit of lust, adultery, fornication and more. By watching, you are in fact
participating and fellowshipping with these evil spirits. This can lead to
more than just an addiction to racy or pornographic movies. This can lead to
a desire to act out scenes and you may come to idolize characters from the
movie.
The
media is only the vehicle of temptation. Let’s get back to video games. By
playing a video game you are no longer simply watching. You are an active
participant. It gets even worse with the live games on the internet because
with a headset you can then speak the fantasy into your reality and you are
communicating with other people in the same fantasy. When people play role
playing games for example, they are taking on another identity. They kill,
murder, steal, and condone others who do these things. So as we have seen,
what we allow in our “eye gate” has the potential to enter our heart. In the
Bible, the heart refers to the soul. We don't have to act out our fantasies
in our physical bodies to be guilty of the sin. Dwelling on an impure
thought and not casting it down/out opens the door to demonic problems.
“But I say unto you,
That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery
with her already in his heart.”
(Mathew 5:28)
When a person spends a
significant amount of time in a make believe world or world of fantasy, the
line between fantasy and reality becomes blurred. We begin to desire the
fantasy more than reality.
The Impacts of Unrestrained Fantasy
What are some of the
impacts of unrestrained fantasy?
-
Creates tracks in our mind.
-
Causes people to avoid responsibility.
-
Causes false comfort.
-
Causes addiction.
-
Opens the door to seducing spirits.
-
Blocks intimacy.
-
Creates selfishness.
The tracks created
in our mind are mental railroad tracks that are constantly distracting us
and pulling us back to the fantasy. We may find ourselves slipping into the
fantasy world more and more often, while doing anything repetitive such as
dishes, laundry, driving, taking a shower etc. The fantasy takes more and
more of our consciousness of real life and diverts it toward the fantasy in
your mind: the lie.
A person may start to
avoid responsibilities in order to spend time in the fantasy world. This
is especially true of gaming. The addiction can become so strong for some
people that they will skip school, call in sick to work and cancel
appointments in order to spend time in the fantasy world. Children may lie
to parents and sneak time on video games after restrictions have been
employed. This is a greater problem for an adult as there is nobody to hold
them accountable and they can become reclusive.
False comfort
is created because we are never rejected from the fantasy. We can distract
ourselves from the pains of soul damage and traumas. These issues are never
dealt with and will lie just below the surface causing all sorts of other
problems like insecurity and shyness.
This can also lead to
addictions such as drugs, food, sex, and other things because once we
leave the illusion of safety; we still need comforting in real life. Once
outside the illusion and back into reality, we discover that our hurts are
still there. We are then constantly on the lookout for new ways to bury the
pain.
We discussed previously
how seducing spirits enter into us. We ask them to enter our lives!
By not facing our pain and looking to God for forgiveness and healing, we
are looking to Satan for the answer. He will happily supply us with all
manner of distractions to keep us busy and hurting for the rest of our
lives. Only when the pain outweighs the pleasure will we turn from sin and
ask God for help.
Intimacy
requires an acute sense of the now and self-awareness. We cannot be intimate
and close to others if we are lost in a fantasy world. Relationships and
careers suffer heavily from gaming and the entertainment industry as a
whole. When a person is immersed in a fantasy, they are disconnected from
reality and the feelings and needs of others. Their perception is blocked
and they are shut off from receiving love from outside the fantasy.
This leads us to
selfishness. When a person comes to the point that reality is just too
painful, when the illusion replaces love and comfort, this person will
become selfish and withdrawn. They will become self-centered and quick to
anger if their game time is interrupted.
STATISTICS DO NOT LIE
Here is a short list of
people who played video games and ended up murdering people before they were
caught or killed. This list is taken from the book
Xenogenesis - Changing Men Into
Monsters by Stephen Quayle.
Evan E. Ramsey,
16 years old,
shot and killed two and wounded another two at the Bethel Regional High
school in Bethel, Alaska on February 19, 1997. Later he told investigators
he liked to play the shooting video game Doom. He was sentenced to 99
years in prison and will be 85 years old when he is eligible for parole.
Michael Carneal,
age 14, fired upon students having a prayer meeting at Heath High School in
West Paducah, Kentucky in 1997, killing three girls and wounding five
others. Michael was obsessed with the violent games Doom and
Mortal Kombat. At his trial, he was sentenced to life in prison
without the possibility of parole.
Eric Harris
and Dylan Klebold,
ages 18 and 17, killed 12 students and a teacher at Columbine
High School in Colorado of 1999. Both of them were obsessed with the video
game Doom. When cornered by the police, they used their own
guns to commit suicide.
Devin Moore,
age 18, went on a shooting spree in Fayette, Alabama in 2003, killing three
policemen with a gun he had snatched from one of the officers when he was
brought in to the police station and in the process of being booked. Moore
would later tell investigators, “Life is a video game. Everybody got to
die sometime.” Moore’s favorite video game was Grand Theft Auto.
He was sentenced to death by lethal injection and is on death row in
Alabama.
Seung-Hui Cho,
age 23, killed 32 people at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg,
Virginia in 2007. When confronted by police, he took his own life with his
gun. He was known for playing violent video games which included
Counterstrike.
Jared Lee Loughner,
age 23, killed six people and injured 13 others, including Congresswoman
Gabby Gifford in Tucson, Arizona in 2011. HAt
his trial e was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility
of parole. He was known for having played violent video games.
Anders Behring
Breivik, age 32, killed 77 people in the 2011 attack at the summer
camp on the island of Utøya, Norway. He claimed to use the shooting video
game, Call of Duty, as a training mechanism for his killing
spree. Due to the extremely liberal laws in Norway, he was sentenced to just
21 years in prison and will be eligible for parole after 10 years.
James Holmes,
age 25, killed 12 people at a Century movie theater in Aurora, Colorado
in 2012. He was known for playing violent video games. He was sentenced to
life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Adam Lanza,
age 20, drove to the elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012 after
he had shot his mother to death. At the school he shot and killed 26 grade
school children and six teachers, before taking his own life. Investigation
showed that he had regularly been playing shooter video games.
Aaron Alexis,
age 34, was the shooter at the Washington Navy Yard, in Washington D.C.,
that left 13 people dead. He took his own life as the police closed in on
him. Investigations showed that he had played violent video games for up to
six hours at a time.
These are the most
infamous mass murderers but there are thousands of other men that play
violent video games and end up killing someone. Every time there is a mass
shooting, Barack Obama and other liberal politicians call for stricter gun
control, even going so far to make the case that guns should be taken from
the hands of citizens.
It is impossible to
legislate morality and stricter gun control or the outlawing of guns will
only take firearms away from law abiding citizens. Does any sane person
think that criminals will voluntarily turn in their guns? Such draconian
laws only makes it easier for the criminals when their victims can’t
properly defend themselves.
Why doesn’t Barack Obama
call for the elimination of violent video games? The answer is that the
video game manufacturers are a powerful lobby in Washington D.C. and no
politician wants to oppose them or the movie industry.
Steps to Pulling Down the Illusion
Here are the necessary
steps to pull down the video game illusion:
-
Recognize the issue.
-
Requires deep repentance.
-
Remove the fantasy at its root.
-
Replace fantasy with truth.
“Finally, brethren,
whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things
are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely,
whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there
be any praise, think on these things.”
(Philippians 4:8)
The very first thing we
have to do is to recognize the problem for what it is. An addiction to
gaming, porn, sex or whatever it may be must be acknowledged with proper
understanding. People do things for a reason. We mostly do something to get
a response or we are responding to something done to us. Once we have
accepted that we are sinners, we need to repent. We are held accountable for
the consequences in our lives and it is impossible to turn things around
without repentance. God will not take action without genuine repentance.
This also requires us to completely remove the illusion from our lives. Not
some or most of it, but all of it! The sin and the demonic problems will
remain as long as you hold on to the fantasy. Finally, we must replace the
fantasy with truth. We must acknowledge whatever it was that drew us into
the illusion in the first place. It can be rejection, some type of failure,
embarrassment, rape, or molestation. Whatever the problem, it must be dealt
with before you can receive help. We cannot begin to heal from a hurt if we
don't accept (admit) that we were hurt in the first place. Only then can we
accept God's love and move forward in Christ Jesus.
“That ye put off
concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according
to the deceitful lusts; And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; And that
ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true
holiness.
Wherefore putting away
lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of
another. Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath:
Neither give place to the devil.
Let him that stole
steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing
which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.
Let no corrupt
communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use
of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. And grieve not the
Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.
Let all bitterness,
and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you,
with all malice: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one
another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.” (Ephesians
4:22-32)
“But all things that
are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make
manifest is light.”
(Ephesians 5:13)
On a more personal note,
I would like to share with you my personal experience with fantasy and video
games. I had a number of traumas in my youth that caused me a lot of pain. I
became withdrawn and did not have a lot of friends. I was shy and meek. I
had no trust of people around me and so I became withdrawn into fantasy
novels written by Terry Brooks. At about the same time I discovered R.A.
Salvatore and his Dark Elf trilogy. These novels are written under
“Forgotten Realms, Dungeons and Dragons.” They follow along with the fantasy
world created in the “Dungeons and Dragons” gaming series. I read all that I
could find and completely escaped into this world. I started to believe that
I was born in the wrong time and that I would have been more comfortable
having been born in a different age or world altogether.
The books led me to one
of the first “Forgotten Realms” video games produced by SSI (Strategic
Simulations Inc.) called “Secret of The Silver Blades” in 1990. This was my
first experience with a role playing computer game and I was instantly
hooked. I never actually made it to the end of the game because I bought the
sequel as soon as the next release came out and dropped the previous game. I
remember going outside to do chores or hang out with friends and then at
night I would stay up all night playing these games. I don’t think I have to
tell you that my grades began to suffer. I was a sophomore in high school,
as my gaming progressed, my grades crashed. My parents would not upgrade our
computer, so I was pushed outside. I became an avid rock climber who smoked
pot, ate psychedelic mushrooms and dropped LSD. I started smoking cigarettes
and my rock climbing took a back seat to the “party” life.
I settled in with a
decent job as a cabinet maker and built myself my first gaming computer.
From that moment I played mostly fantasy (Dungeons and Dragons), and first
person shooter games like “Call of Duty” and “Battlefield 2142.” I became
trapped in a cycle of staying up late and all weekend playing games,
drinking, and smoking pot. I was not alone and had a pseudo support group
once I was able to connect to other people living online as well. They were
all doing the same thing for the most part.
I was just coasting along
at this point. I was not getting ahead in my career. My marriage was
failing, and most importantly, I had no relationship with Jesus. It was not
until I lost my marriage and job that I saw what a time commitment gaming
required. I wondered where I would be today if I had spent that time on
other things. Instead of amassing 1,500 hours playing “Bethesda's Oblivion,”
I could have read any number of books, learned a language, who knows? That
amounts to about 3 hours a night for a year and half. On weekends it was
much more. It was just time thrown away! I had a good time with absolutely
nothing to show for it. This is time that I will never get back. Satan stole
it from me and I allowed it to happen.
I have so much more time
available to me now. I hope that parents out there who have little children
will come to realize that while games are used as a babysitter, these games
are handicapping them. Children are actually regressing in intelligence.
I had a chance to work in
a client’s house which homeschooled their children. During my time in the
home I witnessed the following: The son who was about 15 had certain
projects to do for school. Well, when his parents were not supervising him,
he would use the “alt-tab” command to cycle between his game and school
work. It was comical at first because as I would walk by and he would
“alt-tab” to the school work thinking I was his mother. It was obvious that
he was breaking a rule imposed by the parents but the urge to play was so
strong that he could not help it. After about three weeks of this walking
past him, I could see that his nerves were shot and he was exhausted from
constantly thinking he might be busted. I began to feel sorry for this boy
and prayed for him because I could see the bondage he was in. He could not
stop playing; it was always pulling him back. I could also tell that when it
came time for him to do a chore such as cutting the grass or helping grandma
down the street, he was grumpy about it. He would hang his head, put on some
headphones and race through the chore just to get back in the game seat. I
am sure he was happy to see us finish our job so he could sneak the gaming
with impunity.
I also noticed that he
could not do his chores without headphones on. This is something I have seen
more than once in other people, and it tells me that there are thoughts that
they don't want to face. They would rather zone out in music than face their
inner man. Any amount of silence and they begin to squirm.
My advice to parents is
this. Educate yourself on what your children are doing and what they are
listening to. The Internet is available almost everywhere these days. Learn
how to use the parental controls on the TV. Limiting exposure will push them
towards more worthwhile pastimes like sports and education, and of course,
introduce them to Jesus!