and yes. that pic is incredibly disturbing.

4. I find the picture very creepy!

“This ranks among one of the most shocking and misguided statements I have read in recent memory.
Tell me, would YOU like to die doing something worse than useless? I personally would much prefer to face my Savior if I had been executed in a Communist country for preaching the gospel.
And it sounded alarmingly like you were advocating suicide.”

How did you get advocating suicide from “It was his time to die,” God knows when we are going to die, and it might be when we decide to go crazy playing video games or when we just happen to be over sea’s on a mission, but its not what we were doing in the moment of our death that is going to matter, it’s going to be the life we had led up to that point, And to answer your question. I want to stand before my lord with a life that has been *his* not my own, for longer than a quick mission trip to another country, I want my life to be a mission, whether here or over sea’s.

Passing a judgment like advocating suicide was a bit too hasty, and would advise getting to know someone or at least holding back the comment until you can speak to them privately, before making such judgments.

My point was, that he made a choice, a bad, one, but a choice, God gave us free will as a gift, we should use it but WISELY but being imperfect humans, we don’t always make the right choices. We should always strive to, but we don’t always live up to it. This gentleman, made a choice that might not have been a good one, but does that make him a bad person? I think Christ will still accept him with open arms if he feels so inclined, I don’t think our God is a God that will tell someone that he cant love them because they played video games for so long and that could have been doing better things with their time. If you watch movies all day and your parents come home and see that, do they still love you? Yes! They do! Because it’s not just that moment that they base their love upon, its a life time, so you made a bad choice, buck up and move on!

Is it possible for everything we do in the day, to be constructive, like writing a book, or creating a work of art, making a song? You can try, but even if you do all of those things in a day, how are they going to further your walk with Christ? IF witnessing to someone through a video game can do that, then who are any of us to stop Gods hand in the situation?!
We can look at technology and say “Wow! God you instilled that idea in someones head, gave them the strength, wisdom and patience to follow your plan, whether they knew you or not! You really are amazing! Thank you!” Or we can look at how people are misusing it and doing terrible things with it!
In some cases its a matter of how you wish to view it, is the glass half empty, or is it half full? We can look up free devotions and sermons, resources for problems that you might need help on in life, getting help from other believers on faith issues ( I am assuming like this site) keeping in contact with friends, school projects for us home schoolers, or, we can look at pornography, video games, computer games that aren’t all that wonderful. Again, its a choice.

I do acknowledge that yes, it has a strong pull on the attention span, and is hard to pull away from, nothing is forcing us to be there doing it either. But so many other things are hard to pull away from as well, I get engulfed in a book and can’t pull myself out, I can be a stronger person about it and set the book down or I can’t. it’s a choice, a hard one sometimes, but a choice. That is where the beauty of Gods grace and mercy come into play, he is there when we make good choices and bad ones too. And will forgive us if we chose wrong. I am not telling everyone to go out and sin away because you have a safety net. I am saying when you are trying to walk the road and you stumble, Gods there to wipe you off and get you going again. Because we can’t do it ourselves.

If everyone had the opportunity to go to a Communist country when they felt like sharing it would be an entirely different world but, we can’t all do that some because of physical reason, and many other things that can hinder a person. But you can still have that fire, the drive to share with everyone, and that is when people here in our towns also need to hear the gospel just as much as those people in Communist countries, if not more. Everything we need to share with people has been given to us.

From experience, if you start talking to a non-believer about Christ with a holier-than-thou attitude, they immediately tune you out of just walk away. But if you have had the chance to talk to them and gotten to know them, learned how they feel about certain things, then they are more likely to listen to you when you bring it up and respect your opinion. I do understand that we don’t always have the privilege to do that, but it tends to be more successful. I am also a big believer in using your daily life to show people Christ, we are supposed to be a living example. To me that is the best way to show someone the heart of Christ when you let it shine from your actions, and your words. So if you don’t like video games for what ever reasons and you have friends who like to play them, you go over to their house or ask if you play them, various different scenarios that could come up! And would you look at that!! You can share your beliefs! With out making them feel like you are rattling off the do’s and don’ts of the world. If you start throwing out judgments and telling people everything they are doing wrong, you will get nowhere! And if you do then it could be from guilt, which our faith is never meant to be a guilt trip! We could just use the resources that are are around us!! God has a purpose for *everything*

Try this…

http://www.dare2share.org/culturecommission/archives/

It talks about using songs, movies, and yes, even video games to bring up Christ.

I love the no video games in the house rule! I love it, love it, love it!! My parents have the same rule and when I have children, it will be the same for my house. They drive me nuts! If I go to a friends house who has them and then starts playing them, I want to break the T.V. into itty bitty tiny little bits!
People, when playing them can be unresponsive and sometimes just major jerks, I have some friends who aren’t that way, they play for a few minutes and if they are needed they nicely put down the controller and go where they are needed, like I said Youth Pastor and Pastor play them! But again, they have the *choice* to respond well or not. We all have the choice to have a bad attitude when we wake up and snap at people if we didn’t get enough sleep the night before, or we can bite our tongue and deal with it. Because we have the CHOICE!

And I have one last question, would this be a different discussion if it was a Christian video game? If it was “labeled” a “Christian” video game? Would you view it differently? Would it be as big of a waste of time?

P.S. I don’t think lipstick is toxic!! Gotta admit, it looks good enough to eat! ;P