In My Restless Dreams I See That Town...

Sometimes people find it strange that I have a real love for horror.  Poetry, prose, graphic novels, film  television, tabletop games, video games—it doesn't matter, I like them all.  I think folk get surprised because they assume that someone as holy as an ordained minister shouldn't be thinking about dark things.  "After all," they misquote Nietzsche, "Stare not into the abyss, lest the abyss stare into you!"  Actually, what he said was, "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.  And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you."  To be honest, that's exactly the kind of thing that everyone—but particularly ordained ministers—should think about every so often.

Besides, if I told you about a book where one of the main characters went about killing men and collecting their foreskins, wouldn't you assume that I'm talking about a particularly sick horror novel?  Unless, of course, you know more about the story of King David than most people can honestly claim.  Then you'd know I was talking about the Bible.  The truth is, there are some truly horrific things in the Christian tradition. And tales of horror are basically stories about good vs. evil.  So I don't see any harm in an ordained pastor being into that kind of thing.

One of my favorite horror settings is Silent Hill.

Silent Hill started off as a video game in a sub-genre of action/adventure known as survival horror. There's definitely enough story in these games to keep me playing. Of course, there were nights where playing in the dark with the surround sound on discouraged me from sleeping. Again. Ever. But it's all in good fun, right? It's really little environmental things that caught me with the Silent Hill games. Like searching through a decrepit and abandoned public restroom and listening to the main character knock on a stall door-- and being answered, once, with a return knock.

BANG


And knock as much as you like after that, you can't get it to repeat. You just never know when something like that is going to happen. The monsters you fight are almost secondary. Almost. The monsters are seriously disturbing too. Imagine meeting one of these nurses in an abandoned hospital... *shiver*

Silent Hill has done well enough critically to warrant a feature film, now available on DVD. If you aren't into gaming but want to find out what the feel of the story and the environment are, I suggest you rent it. Then watch it with the lights out and the surround sound on.

Go on. I dare you. Find out why anytime I find myself someplace truly creepy, I can't seem to keep from  saying, "Welcome to Silent Hill."  Even when I'm alone.

I once wrote that life is like Silent Hill sometimes.  Granted, that was a particularly difficult time in my own story, but I think that the lessons I learned from playing—and being scared by—the Silent Hill games might still be right on.  So when things get overwhelming, just remember the following things:

Sometimes you're in a dark place.

Sometimes you can't go the way you used to.

Sometimes there are barriers in your way.

Sometimes there's something scary between where you are and where you need to be.

And yet, even though sometimes it may be circuitous, counter-intuitive  hidden, or just plain hellish, there's always a way forward.

Be good to each other,
Rev. Josh
052013

Murder Simulator?

I recently wrote a poem that describes my emotional reaction to the Boston Marathon bombing, and I thought it might be appropriate for the geek blog.  There's some great theological stuff around the Monkeysphere and Jesus' answer to that whole thing—but I think that will be it's own post somewhere down the line.  For now, let's just go with the poem...

The Blood on Boylston Street 

(Written 4/23/13, edited 4/24) 

I have shot and killed my fair share of Raiders.  I have no idea how many Moblin I have put to the sword.  I have jumped on the heads of more Goomba than I can count.  And I have slain Stormtroopers in thousands and Grunts in hundreds of thousands.  They say that I have been taught “to kill efficiently and to love it.”  They say that I am “an extraordinarily effective killer without…  any of the constraints or responsibilities needed to inhibit such a killing capacity.” 

They say I’m desensitized. 

I playfully commented on Facebook, “I don’t know, what’s happening in Boston today?” and the response was “Explosions.”  I mined my news feed for word from friend after friend, “Just letting everyone know I’m alright…”  I clicked the link and watched the raw video of the runners interrupted by a heavy thud and a ball of fire rolling upward into a momentary column.  I clicked again and saw the photograph of the otherwise empty sidewalk strewn with flattened chairs and painted thick with the blood on Boylston Street. 

I wept for people I have never known.

Be good to each other,

Rev. Josh

042513

360 vs AR-15

I mentioned in my previous post that I went to seminary, got my MDiv, and that I am an ordained pastor serving in the Penn Central Conference of the United Church of Christ.  I didn't always live and serve in Pennsylvania, though.  My first two calls were to churches in the same Association of the Connecticut Conference as Newtown, Connecticut.

So please understand that what I am about to say isn't a knee-jerk reaction to yet another slanderous shot at one of my favorite pastimes.  Furthermore, please know that this isn't the first thing I thought about the whole tragic mess, let alone the last.

The truth is, the Bible flip-flops quite a bit on the subject of killing.  Especially in the Hebrew Scriptures.  The  Sixth Commandment seems pretty straightforward, "You shall not kill." (Exodus 20:13)  Then again, some translations say "You shall not murder."  So, there's that.  Then there's the whole debacle where Saul didn't kill enough people and livestock.  (I Samuel 15)  But then again, David is harshly punished for stealing his neighbor's wife and arranging to have him killed.  (2 Samuel 11-12:23)  And so on and so forth.  So what should I, as a good Christian, believe about killing?  Well, as far as the law goes, I use the interpretive lens that Jesus gave us:

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ He said to him, ‘ “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’(Matthew 22:34-40)

In other words, all of what the law instructs us and everything the prophets told us can be summed up in those two laws.  Or, as I learned it at Silver Lake, if we just do three things—love God, love your neighbor, and love yourself—then you'll have a great week!  (or life, even!)  Saul failed to love God.  David failed to love his neighbor.  I'm still not sure what that means for people like Arnaud Amalric who clearly believed that God wanted him to kill the Cathars.  Except that I should note that he's most famous for allegedly saying, "Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius."  (Kill them all. For the Lord knoweth them that are His.)  Or as it is often misquoted, "Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out."

Personally, I believe that what violence accomplishes best is creating more violence and that the best way to break the cycle is to simply stop.  Just stop.  On the other hand, I can't in good conscience say that the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 were wrong to rush the cockpit.

Which finally brings me to the National Rifle Association and their reaction to the Newtown mass shooting.




I'm honestly not sure how I feel about the idea of protecting schools with armed guards.  I'm certainly more in favor of trained people (like the police, Secret Service, and other law enforcement personnel that Wayne Lapierre references in his address) than I am private armed citizens taking it upon themselves to protect our schools.  I'm certainly not at all sure that armed guards would actually do anything to dissuade the people that he's referring to when he says, "...our society is populated by an unknown number of genuine monsters.  People that are so deranged, so evil, so possessed by voices and driven by demons, that no sane person can ever possibly comprehend them."  And I'm quite sure that armed guards are not, if you'll excuse the phrase, a magic bullet.  Just ask Jefferson County Sheriff's Deputy, Neil Gardner.  Just ask anyone stationed at Fort Hood on November 5th, 2009.

I believe that there is no magic bullet.  No one clear answer.  Maybe part of the answer is armed guards.  I don't know.  Maybe part of the answer is restricting access to guns that can fire 5 bullets a second.  And yes, I have read the Constitution.  So if you can prove that you're a member of a well regulated militia, we can talk more about your right to own an assault rifle.

So, I probably wouldn't even be writing this if it Lapierre hadn't gone off on video games—I won't even dignify the slam on popular music with a response, after all, that's so twenty years ago.  But blaming video games for violent behavior has become standard response, despite Lapierre's claim that the media is working to hide the idea.

I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt.  Maybe he really believes that video games are the root cause of human violence.  Unfortunately for him, the claim has no basis in fact.  According to the FBI's 2011 Uniform Crime Reports, violent crime has gone down over the past 10 years.  Video game use has gone up in the same amount of time.  If video games caused violent crime, wouldn't violent crime have gone up in that amount of time?

Ok, so, that's just the piddly research I could do over the course of an afternoon.  What does the Journal of Pediatrics say?  Oh.  It finds no support for a causal link between playing video games and violent behavior.  Well, what about Criminal Justice and Behavior?  Oh.  Playing violent video games isn't a significant risk for future violent criminal acts.  Well, what does the United States Supreme Court say?  Oh.   "Psychological studies purporting to show a connection between exposure to violent video games and harmful effects on children do not prove that such exposure causes minors to act aggressively."

Please hear me.  This a more important issue than just irritating nearly every 35 year old in the country.  The fact that it is simply untrue that video games are the root problem here means that bringing it up is worse than dishonest.  It's unhelpful rhetoric serving no other purpose than to rile people up. It's a cheap pop and it has no place in the discussion of something as sad and holy and important as the memory of those who have died and the mourning of those that were left behind.

Be good to each other,
Rev. Josh
011413