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When the Author Enters the Story

My daughter found this great example of what happens when the author enters the story from a children’s book:

‘Am I supposed to know you, boy?’ Auburn Sally asked.

Conner was shocked by the treatment he was receiving from his own characters. He had expected a warm and gracious welcome, but instead the heroine of his story was holding a gun to his head. Without him none of them would even exist! He wondered if this was what an underappreciated parent felt like.

He held his hands up and backed away from the pistol. ‘Okay, time out!’ he said. ‘Everyone just calm down and let me explain! My name is Conner Bailey, and this is my sister, Alex. I know this is hard to believe, but I’m your creator! We are living in a short story I wrote for my eighth-grade English class!

Auburn Sally looked at him with more perplexity than that of all her crew added together. ‘He’s got yellow fever,’ she said. ‘Prepare the plank! We need to get him off the ship at once!’

‘I’m not sick, either!’ Conner said. ‘Fine! If you don’t believe me, I’ll prove it!’

He then proceeds to call out each character by name to prove that he knows them/created them. The response:

…’There’s only one explanation for how a young man we’ve never met before could possibly know so much,’ Auburn Sally said. ‘He’s a warlock! Tie him and his sister up! We’ll burn them at the stake on the next island we find!

–  from Chris Colfer, The Land of Stories: An Author’s Odyssey, pp. 114-116

On Video Games: Incarnation or Disincarnation?

Brian shares a quote and comments:

“Yet computer games remove us from reality and morality. They teach us the attractions of causing pain without recognizing responsibility or consequences.” [Living Into Focus, pp.] 102-103

I would love to discuss the validity and ramifications of this idea more.

Why not? This is my first ever post about video games. Let me know if this line of thought makes sense to anyone other than myself…

The quote above made me think about something I haven’t thought about for a while. For the life of me I cannot remember where I got the idea or why I have even thought of it before. I thought I must have written about it in the past, but my internet searches have come up empty. But I digress. The subject is ‘dis-incarnation.‘ I am sure that the idea (for me) was lifted from some source, but I can’t remember who or what, so I can’t give proper credit.

[Update: Three brief points I would like to clarify: 1) I could have, and perhaps should have, used the word ‘excarnation’ instead of ‘disincarnation.’ If the post gets a significant number of views I will probably change it. 2) Note that nowhere do I make any explicit conclusions about any sort of inherent evil or sinfulness in video games. 3) I am not even remotely thinking about anything other than video games (someone asked me if I intended board games as well: no, I don’t. I wasn’t thinking of anything other than video games in this post).]

I do, however, have this quote:

Human nature, or the condition of having a material body and participating in the change and suffering of the creation, was that from which man had to be delivered, but not that by which he would be delivered (Jaroslav Pelikan, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition, p. 76).

The quote, of course, relates to some form of gnosticism. In context it is actually about Marcionism, but that’s not important for our subject. I am totally removing it from its context to relate it to another subject.

Pelikan’s point was that Marcionism got it wrong. A suffering existence in this world is not simply what we look to be delivered from, it is actually what we are delivered by. This is true on the macro scale as it is through Christ’s suffering that we are redeemed. It is also true, according to the apostle Paul, on the micro scale:

The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him (Rom. 8:16-17).

You can read my take on that specific passage HERE.

Dis-incarnation seeks to take the human existence in general, and suffering in particular, out of the equation. It seeks to spiritualize rather than embody, to mystify rather than to flesh out, to be removed rather than engaged. My question is, Do video games do this? I say ‘yes’ and ‘no.’

In one sense video games are extremely engaging. They demand the attention of the whole person (mind and body). They can, at times, engage every aspect of the soul: mind, will, and affections. They often involve person-to-person interaction as well. Likewise there is a sense in which they directly involve incarnation, as we, via technology, seek to incarnate ourselves into a game. Here comes the rub.

Are we really incarnating ourselves? Is it possible to be incarnate digitally? Is it possible to have an incarnation into a (bodiless) digital body? Conundrum. I immediately object to my own line of reasoning. What about books? Aren’t books a form of incarnation? Aren’t they a form of incarnation (say embodiment if incarnation is too theologically loaded a word) into a non-physical environment of words and story? Don’t video games draw out similar passions and emotional experiences as books? I don’t know if I can answer my own objection. Let’s try.

Let me tell you a story about why I started playing the guitar: South Park was big when I was a teenager. I haven’t watched it in years. But several years ago I caught some reruns on a normal TV station (edited with bleeps!). I happened to catch the episode about Guitar Hero. (Incidentally I had been playing guitar hero). The South Park kids were obsessed with playing the game. In the midst of one of their gaming marathons, one of the dads begins to rock out on a real guitar to show them that he can actually play songs on a real guitar. They are indifferent. They continue with their game (which ends disappointingly!).

I got the message. Why would you play Guitar Hero when you could spend that time actually learning to play the guitar? I went and bought a guitar the next day and made a rash vow (nod to Chesterton) to learn to play it (and get rid of Guitar Hero). And I did. And I’m thankful. It’s not the same, and we all know it. Both Guitar Hero and an actual guitar involve skills. But one is truly incarnate (in the sense of truly embodied, though not divine); the other is dis-incarnate. One is hardwood reality; the other is pure fantasy. One is to gather around the living room and make melodies; the other is to gather around the TV and push buttons. One is tangible yet soulful; the other is neither (at least in the fullest sense).

If that is the case with guitars, how much more so with violence. Here’s the answer to my own objection above. First, if we are incarnating ourselves into video games, then we are guilty of the sin of the characters we embody. Not so with a book, because we do not ’embody’ the characters (generally speaking). No one is going to own up to this idea that we sin in our characters’ sinning. Which means that we have to deny that we are incarnating ourselves into the games. And if that is the case, then we are in the process of dis-incarnation – abandoning our fleshly existence for a digital quasi-reality. Books not only have spines, they have flesh and bones. What about games? Have they moved you to tears? Compelled you to love your neighbor? Caused you to strive to be a better flesh and bones (and soul) human being?

Those are my (very rough) musings. My thoughts need some major refining. I would also add that violent games (especially relating to war) tend to be used to fill some innate need in aggressive males. And I try to remind young guys that there are real battles to be fought in their own lives, even outside of military contexts. Spiritual warfare is a reality. Video games might even be a part of it. Thoughts?

Christian Humanism

St. Francis was becoming more like Christ, and not merely more like Buddha, when he considered the lilies of the field or the fowls of the air; and St. Thomas was becoming more of a Christian, and not merely more of an Aristotelian, when he insisted that God and the image of God had come in contact through matter with a material world. These saints were, in the most exact sense of the term, Humanists; because they were insisting on the immense importance of the human being in the theological scheme of things. But they were not Humanists marching along a path of progress that leads to Modernism and general scepticism; for in their very Humanism they were affirming a dogma now often regarded as the most superstitious Superhumanism. They were strengthening that staggering doctrine of Incarnation, which sceptics find it hardest to believe.

-G.K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas, pp. 16-17

In Humanism man becomes as God. Man is innately good and can solve his own problems through reason. In Christian Humanism, God becomes man; Reason (Logos) takes on flesh in order to set man straight.

Humanism emphasizes progression, as if man were getting better through his own powers. Christian Humanism emphasizes incarnation and condescension; that God must stoop down low in order to lift us up: that he must become dirt in order to lift us to the heavens, thus bringing heaven and earth together – Jacob’s Ladder in the flesh.

The Incarnation: The Whole City is Honored

You know how it is when some great king enters a large city and dwells in one of its houses; because of his dwelling in that single house, the whole city is honored…

– from Athanasius, The Incarnation of the Word of God

…Like the presence of the Olympics honors a country.

In one sense, this is what the incarnation of Jesus Christ means for the world. In one moment, humanity is both affirmed and indicted. Indicted, because God took on flesh for man’s sin. But affirmed for the same reason – God took on flesh for man’s sin. He ‘took on flesh’ and ‘tabernacled among us’ (John 1:14).

In that great act, while not overlooking the ugliness of sin and its curse, God affirms that he has a purpose for his creation. He honors it by dwelling in its midst as a man. There is no higher theology, and there is no higher honor for this world than this: ‘

Veiled in flesh, the Godhead see!
Hail the incarnate Deity!
Pleased as Man with men to dwell,
Jesus our Immanuel!’

We dishonor the incarnation by downplaying the honor of God’s creation – the world and all that dwells therein, for God Himself dwelled therein. And we dishonor the incarnation by overlooking sin, for sin necessitated it.

The Other Transfiguration

Here is the ground of our comfort, that Christ took our form, he transfigured himself to our lowliness. Shall not we labour to be transformed, to be like him, who out of love stooped so low to be like us?…Shall he be conformed to us, and we not be conformed to him?

– Richard Sibbes, Glorious Freedom, pp. 121-122

Before the Mount of Transfiguration, where Jesus revealed his glory, was the incarnation, where he took on flesh. Transfigure is a translation of the Greek verb μεταμορφόω (think metamorphosis). It means to change form. Christ’s transfigured glory would never have been visible to his disciples had he not first been transfigured into flesh. The incarnation is glorious.

If Christ, as Sibbes says, stoops so low that we might see his glory, should we not stretch ourselves to see it? Should we not seek after him and his likeness? It is through conformity to him that we ourselves, by the work of the Spirit, will be transfigured. Sanctification is a process of transfiguration. Glorification will make the work final.

That By Which He Would Be Delivered

Ken Myers shared this quote in a recent talk (HERE). The author is referring to Marcion’s early dualistic Christological heresy, which stands in direct opposition to the truth:

Human nature, or the condition of having a material body and participating in the change and suffering of the creation, was that from which man had to be delivered, but not that by which he would be delivered.

-Jaroslav Pelikan, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition, p. 76

I have noted elsewhere the notion of so-called religious asceticism which is actually worldly. You could call it dualism as well. This quote rings true to that idea. While Christians should yearn for the life of heaven, because it is life in the immediate presence of God, and while they should denounce the works of the sinful nature, we should never think that physical matter is innately bad. We can say with Paul, ‘Who shall deliver me from this body of death?’, but we must not forget that it was God taking on a body and dying that brings life to this dead body.

In other words, when you start to look down on this early existence, the frailness of life, and the persistence of suffering, rather than thinking that these things are somehow evil or unfitting, remember that it was through these very same means that Jesus Christ redeemed you. And so thank God for them. Thank him for the fact that he has given you a body, and that his Son took on a body that your body will not stay in the grave.

We feel the need to be delivered from our flesh, it was a man in the flesh who delivered us. We feel a need to be saved from suffering, but it was suffering that saved us. Take comfort in the gospel.