Mass murders

It was a different time with vastly different ways of looking at things. In the late 1930s a radio program premiered called “The Shadow”. The tag question for the series was, "who knows what evil lurks in the heart of man"?  Our understanding of life these days is convoluted.  The question of evil is rarely a topic of conversation. Yet evil has so many manifestations all around us: violence, hatred, racism, abuse and the list goes on.

Three significant mass shootings happened in the past few days (crowding off the pages the relatively minor shooting in Southaven, Mississippi). The responses to how to handle such manifestations of evil are fully in play in the media and on social media.

What will probably not make those reports is the only true solution: heart change. The powerful intervention by the Creator of the human heart, whose self-sacrificial death has made available the power of God for heart change, is the only hope for the evil that confronts us.  The love of Christ constrains us and we possess a power that is able to love every victim of every race from every country and to love those whose brokenness pulled the trigger.  The only power sufficient to deal with the horror that is being revealed is not found in a ballot box or legislative action: it is via the activity of a life changing and living Christ who works through his disciples.

Interaction with culture: Red Dead Redemption 2

Having some free time during the holidays,  I decided to enter the world of video games.  Maybe I should say re-enter since I was an early participant back in the day, but have not played anything since Tiger Woods golf at least 7 years ago.  Hearing a comment about fishing in Red Dead Redemption 2, I decided to make it my entry foray into the world of gaming.  I was amazed and appalled; intrigued and saddened; finally, disillusioned and bored.

RDR2 is a beautiful creation graphically.  It is an amazing recreation of the American West that takes the user to a variety of places in life of Arthur Morgan, (the character assigned by the game for the user.  Arthur has had a sad life, growing up in a gang of outlaws).  He has no real moral code nor, for that matter, does the game itself.  Here are the biggest negatives from a traditional Christian position:

• The game is based on immorality: theft, robbery and killing.  
• The language is out of popular culture and the type of cursing utilized regularly disparages God.
• Christianity and the church are vilified.  The preacher in camp is a thoroughgoing hypocrite, who is regularly drunk and participative in questionable activity.   A comment is clearly made when robbing a graveyard at a church that churches have been robbing poor people for a very long time.  Arthur makes clear that he has no faith nor interest in the subject.
• ALL Southern culture is vilified.  Southerners are seen only as ignorant, dishonest and deserving of being robbed.  

After a while, all the horse riding and silly tasks (drench the tobacco field with moonshine) make RDR2 pretty boring.  

I would recommend that parents only allow older teenagers to play the game and use the anti-Christian bias as a platform for relevant conversation about the clash of cultures that young people of today are in, whether they are aware of the clash or not.