God and videogames

For me, the Christian season of Lent has always been a special holiday. It is been a time of self-improvement and sacrifice, where, for 40 days I take draconian measures to ensure that at least for one ninth of the year, I have lived up to the better angels of my nature. I am not so much an adherent of any given religion as I am an individual who seeks to submit to the will of God, as he sees it. However, my roots are in Catholicism.

Every time we had to do something difficult in our lives, my mother told us to "offer it up to God". That thought led me to the understanding that anything we do in our lives, studying hard, running a marathon, anything at all that requires energy can be turned into a prayer by dedicating the energy of that act to a petition for good. During Ramadan last year, a Muslim restaurateur told me that prayers for him are not petitions. Prayers are a way to establish a relationship with God. Being raised a Christian, my prayers are still worded as requests. So when my children and I used to go for our five-mile run, I would first say, "What will we dedicate our run to?" And then we would choose a cause, perhaps for the victims of some natural disaster. Then we would say, "Dear God, please use the energy and the benefits of this run to help those victims of the earthquake…"

A few weeks ago, I took my two little children to see a production of "Fiddler on the Roof". The play speaks of religious tradition in a Russian town in the early 20th century. The main protagonist is a poor milkman who is constantly conversing with God. His dilemma is to square his children's modern ideas of happiness with his desire to maintain tradition. Each time the tradition is broken, he has an internal argument which fits traditional values against the new. He argues both sides – on one hand… But on the other hand… He always decides, with the help of the Bible, the goddess permitted such deviation in the past until one point one of his daughters decides to marry a Christian. He shouts, "there is no other hand!"

After the show, we went to a restaurant to eat. I was warmed to see two boys with their heads bowed in intense prayer before a meal. Or so I thought. On further inspection, I noticed that the boys weren't praying at all. They were playing electronic videogames on their cell phones. A week later, I attended a conference where the main speaker was an expert on the literature of videogames. He sent me an excerpt from his book. His research indicated that a correlation exists between gameplaying and praying. In the case of videogames, the correlation is a negative one; the more one plays videogames, the less one prays.

Having been exposed to this theory, I felt like the milkman. On one hand, videogames, or at least discussion of videogames, connect my children to their peers. On the other hand, they interact by shooting zombies. On one hand, some videogames expose children to cultural literacy. On the other hand, it also desensitizes them to humanity.

If videogames, with their infinite lives, their amoral value systems, and their mind numbing waste of time, prevent my children from interacting with the family, why do I allow them to play? This is a question with which I'm constantly struggling. I do not know if many of you all face the same problem, however it seems to me that the Xbox 360 is the modern electronic version of a gladiator battle, and a clear indication of society in decline.

When my children turn 14, I tentatively allow them to make their own decisions regarding matters of the spirit. My son observes Lent, but as part of the Lenten season, he does not give a videogames. He deprives himself of sugar and all products which contain sugar. This Lent, I have decided to fast for 13 days, eating nothing and drinking only water. As I write, I am on day eleven of the fast. I decided to "offer up" the fast to the fathers of the world, that God may grant that no matter where we are, we all can go to bed knowing that our children have been fed. To help me through this fast, I allowed myself to play a videogame on my computer. For me, this is a dangerous addiction. I downloaded FreeCiv, a freeware game onto my computer and began to play.

I became obsessed with the game. I spent many hours playing it, and, as my editor will discover as she reads this, the addiction became so bad that I neglected the work I love to do for the sake of the game. I was lured into complacency by a mere amusement.

My son, on the other hand, waits to play until he finishes his work. Lately, I have noticed that he is starting to program his own games, and has forsaken the X-Box almost entirely. For him, the videogames have become a source of creation, rather than a constraint. My son attended the same conference I did, read the professor's paper, and came to a dinner for faculty afterwards, and was able to hold his own in conversation. You can imagine how proud I felt.

A new friend of mine, a Muslim, recently said, "you can't know God unless you know yourself". The words have made a tremendous impact on me, and I've reflected on the idea ever since. Perhaps even videogames can be an avenue for self-discovery. Perhaps God has guided my son on a path to self-knowledge which uses videogames as its vehicle. And perhaps in knowing himself, he will be able to "offer up" his authentic self, and engage in prayer, not in the sense of petition, but in the sense that Muslim restaurateur explained to me, to have a dialog, a relationship with God.

A father's greatest hope is that his son surpasses him.

So, if my son has to shoot a thousand zombies on his path to self-discovery, I will not pull the plug on his games.

As for my own struggles, when this fast is over, I intend to uninstall the game and end my addiction. I will start running again, and hopefully my articles will arrive on time. Finally, I will attend to the better angels of my own nature, and on my own path to self-discovery, I will be able to relate more regularly to you all.

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Frank Domenico Cipriani writes a weekly column in the Riverside Signal called "You Think What You Think And I'll Think What I Know." He is also the founder and CEO of The Gatherer Institute — a not-for-profit public charity dedicated to promoting respect for the environment and empowering individuals to become self-taught and self-sufficient. His most recent book, "Learning Little Hawk's Way of Storytelling", teaches the native art of oral tradition storytelling.