A Random Monii

“War, it ain’t nothing but a heartbreaker
War, friend only to the undertaker
Peace, love and understanding
Tell me, is there no place for them today
They say we must fight to keep our freedom
But Lord knows there’s got to be a better way” - War, EDWIN STARR

My sister has do to an essay in school on the topic of “[Insert Religion Here]: War and Peace”. She chose Christianity because our family is Christian and she thought it would be easiest to do it from her own perspective. It got me thinking on the whole concept of war.

I must admit that I’m enthralled by the idea of war. I even admitted recently that if it weren’t for the harsh physical training and the danger, I’d be thrilled to go and join an army. Living with people, forming a unit under harsh conditions, fighting against A Common Enemy. Conflict is central to the human race, and a war is as much conflict as we can come up with. As a writer the idea intrigues me endlessly.

The gaming industry seems to have an addiction to World War II games- Medal Of Honor, Call Of Duty, Soldiers: Heroes of WWII and Battlefield 1942 come to mind (check out Wikipedia’s “World War II Video Games” page by clicking here. That’s a lot of games). That’s excluding the massive sway counter-terrorist games have held in the last 5 years- Counterstrike and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six, anyone?

And the gaming industry bosses and me aren’t the only ones- the word is hooked on war. Aside from the obvious War In Iraq, the sole reason I am glad I’m living in South Africa (as we aren’t touched directly by the whole messy business), war is reflected everywhere. It always has been, from the start of time. Your grandfather’s generation played with toy soldiers and your generation plays with virtual soldiers. Or real soldiers.

But is war morally right? Let’s see what the internet says.

Christians seem to be divided in half on this issue. Various parties believe that war can be justified in certain circumstances (The Just War Theory), such as terrorism. The Just War theory believes that war should not involve inocents, and if innocents are getting hurt then people with ‘legitimate authority’ should step in to stop it. It is our Christian responsibility to make sure that innocents do not suffer. As a side note, this includes attacks on unarmed civilian buildings. I’m looking at you, Iraq War.

On the other hand, many bloggers out there believe that war shouldn’t happen for any excuse. They use Bible readings such as Matthew 26:47-53, Romans 12:9-21 and Matthew 5:38-48 to justify this stance, stating that Jesus never condoned violence and neither should his followers. See this article from the National Catholic Reporter, and this article from the Collegian, Missisuri Baptist University.

What do I think? Why would anyone want to hurt anyone else, especially physically? It’s not the ‘Christian’ thing to do, and it’s certainly not the Monii thing to do. Virtual violence, along with many other things we end up doing in games, is good for entertainment and stress relief- but that doesn’t mean that it’s right to do these things for real.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 18th, 2007 at 10:33 pm and is filed under Thinking, Gaming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.