Killing For Christ On XBox

I don't know about you, but I usually do not equate camping trips with playing the video game Halo. However many Christian groups conveniently forget about the "Thou Shalt Not Kill" in the bible in order to increase the size of their flock of youthful congregants. Young Christians may not be actually killing people but the game is considered extremely violent by those that play it, especially since it was given a "Mature" rating by the video game powers that be.

From The New York Times:

Martial images in literature or movies popular with religious people are not new. The popular “Left Behind” series of books — it also spawned a video game — dealt with the conflict preceding the second coming of Christ. Playing Halo is “no different than going on a camping trip,” said Kedrick Kenerly, founder of Christian Gamers Online, an Internet site whose central themes are video games and religion. “It’s a way to fellowship.”

Mr. Kenerly said the idea that Halo is inappropriately violent too strictly interpreted the commandment “Thou shalt not kill.” “I’m not walking up to someone with a pistol and shooting them,” he said. “I’m shooting pixels on a screen.”

Mr. Kenerly’s brother, Ken Kenerly, 43, is a pastor who recently started a church in Atlanta and previously started the Family Church in Albuquerque, N.M., where quarterly Halo nights were such a big social event that he had to rent additional big-screen TVs.

Ken Kenerly said he believed that the game could be useful in connecting to young people he once might have reached in more traditional ways, like playing sports. “There aren’t as many kids outdoors as indoors,” he said. “With gamers, how else can you get into their lives?”

Jesus, Mary and Joseph! I wonder what the Messiah would think about this?

I thought that the church was supposed to be a positive influence in kids lives, not actively promoting video game violence. Church groups should be condemning this, not endorsing large groups of kids sitting on couches for hours at a time. I agree with James Tonkowich, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy when he said "If you want to connect with young teenage boys and drag them into church, free alcohol and pornographic movies would do it. My own take is you can do better than that.”

We can definitely do better, thats for sure.