Kevin Schut, Of Games and God: A Christian Exploration of Video Games

Brazo Press, 2013.

Summary: A consideration of video games within a loose framework of the Reformed understanding of general grace and creation modified by a post-modern strain of epistemological humility/coolness/antinomianism.

The book is likely best summarized by Schut’s: “So, taking all the stuff we’ve just discussed, here’s what I think” (67). “But to my way of thinking. . .” (122). “I get the feeling from some Christian reviews and essays that there can only be one right way for a follower of Christ to think about an issue. I’m not at all convinced this is the case when we talk about something like, say, gender in video games. In any case, even if there is a right and wrong interpretation of a video game, I believe strongly in the notion of grace—if we get something wrong, it is covered” (176).

In other words, Dr. Schut’s understanding of theology allows him to play games along these lines: “The chain-mail bikini is very revealing. In Fantasy RPG artwork, a shapely woman warrior stereotypically wears her armor like a beer commercial model. She either leaves her glorious torso exposed to slashing swords of enemies. . .(see the unavoidable image on p. 94)—or wears a skintight, suffocating suit of armor. . . (93)

[Under the image] “The princess Amelie, sporting a variation on the chain-mail bikini. A better title for this game would probably be King’s Bounty: Poorly Armored Princess. To be fair, this really is a fun game, even if the skin shown (mostly in this game-opening image) is totally gratuitous” (94)

The book contains some fairly high level philosophical analysis: Video games are media. As a medium video games have attributes similar to other medium—narrative, use of symbols for communication, rules. But video games also allow the possibility of creating an interactive experience that includes immersion in the activity and play. Video games as media are neither good nor evil, but like “all media is broken” (43).The content of the games is also neither good nor evil because “[v]ideo games are a site where we create meaning” (26).

And this leads to statements like “for one person, the knife evokes the fear of an attack, and for the next, the joy of cooking. So does the image of the knife suggest violence or tastiness? Video-game worlds are phenomenally complex, requiring a lot of interpretation” (58-59)

And the conclusion: “What I believe is that for Christians, all things are permissible, but not all things are beneficial. What this means in practice is constant self-monitoring, conversation , and engagement. Do bloodthirsty games encourage me to be bloodthirsty? Am I less sympathetic to the oppressed after playing video games? Am I buying into attitudes and ideologies that I should not, attitudes that glorify destructive acts, inflicting pain, and causing death” (71)?

There are also simply confusing statements: “I can guarantee that humanity became something different after the invention of the chair” (80). And, “I keep waiting for a video game, for instance, that explores the theological concept of grace—a kind of experimental anticompetive game” (48). It’s not readily apparent how “humanity became something different” with or without chairs or how the unmerited favor of God (i.e. grace) could be experimental and anticompetive.

Detriments/Benefits: Dr. Schut has given us an academically informed discussion on video games and expressed his opinion from a generally Christian worldview.

His bibliography is helpful and his discussion of education and the dangers of fanboyism are edifying.

The difficulty is that he has not made a serious attempt to think through what God’s opinion is of imagined violence, sensuality, erotic images, or even the differences between rest and play or entertainment and thought experiments.

There is overlap between Schut’s Christian intuitions and Scripture, but he seems to be more reflexive than biblically grounded. God makes clear statements against imagined violence (Prov. 3:31, 16:27; Ps. 11:5), imagined eroticism (Matt. 5:28), and enjoying wickedness (Ps. 34:6) as sin, but a reader will have to turn elsewhere to attempt to discern if they are pleasing God by playing Red Dead Redemption or Grand Theft Auto for the purpose of entertainment. Schut’s only moral concern seems to be that playing with “chainmail bikini” clad babes leads to adultery and not that it leads to lust.

Schut carefully and correctly argues that video games cannot be evil in themselves. This is firmly supported by Scripture (Rom. 14:14). And he points out that it is possible to imagine scenarios whereby a Christian can interact with the content of say Grand Theft Auto without necessarily sinning and supports this with 1 Corinthians 6:12. But because Schut makes no distinction between entertainment and thought experiments, there is no defense of pretending to pillage, murder, for the fun of it. The way of the wicked is described as joining those “who rejoice in doing evil and delight in the perverseness of evil” (Prov. 2:14). If we rejoice in imagining sin, we are sinning.

Besides the biblical element, there are two more components. The first is that the meaning of the symbols is decided by the user of the game, instead of an interaction between the game designers and the player. Communication is when one person communicates ideas to another person. The game designers of Wi Fit and King’s Bounty are purposely creating different communicative events. For instance Wi Fit purposely limits the eroticism in the avatars.  The designers of the King’s Bounty expect players to enjoy the eroticism of the symbols, but for a Christian to “look with lustful intent” (Matt. 5:28) is sin. In other words to experience the King’s Bounty as intended by the designers is sin.

We find something similar in his argument about a knife above. Everyone readily admits that a knife can be used for good and evil. But how does the “symbol of knife” being used to stab zombies or slash prostitutes communicate “tastiness?” The meaning of a symbol is created by a context; for an event of communication to occur between the designers and the player there must be an agreement as to the meaning of knife within the rules of the video game. A player who attempts to play Red Dead Redemption by a personal symbol code of say Gatling guns functioning as ice-cream scoops and pistols as watermelons is not playing the game and has not communicated with the designers.

Schut has confused the fact that in a communication event within a medium there can be different moral intents and uses with communication itself. Jesus illustrates this for us clearly in (Matt. 22): the intent of Caesar stamping a coin with a blasphemous inscription on both sides and his own image was idolatry. Jesus’ permission to use such a coin did not suggest that he was giving a different meaning to the words or symbols that Caesar was using. Idolatry remains a sin, but one can use the coin without participating in the message as long as they don’t use it in the way intended by the creator. Schut teaches that using Grand Theft Auto as a sermon illustration and using it to pretend to steal cars and to lust is the same moral action, but this is not the teaching of Jesus.

The second issue is Schut’s understanding that media is broken. This functions as an undefended presupposition inside his system and allows if not requires moral compromise by Christians to engage with media. Christians cannot expect wholesome and good things from any medium because the media must carry perversity. But the Bible teaches that the broken thing is not our technology or communication mediums, but the human heart (Mark 7:18-23).

The human heart that rejoices over pretending to rip out a symbolic spinal column of a symbol of a man created in the image of God is sinning. The human heart that enjoys slashing symbols communicating prostitute with a symbol communicating chainsaw is sinning. Lusting after an erotic symbol of a woman who is not your wife according to Jesus is the same as committing adultery with her.