wisdom, folly, scripture, games and human nature, a Driscoll rant gets me thinking

http://blog.marshillchurch.org/2011/03/04/video-games-arent-sinful-theyre-just-stupid/

http://theresurgence.com/2010/06/19/9-leadership-lessons-from-baseball-series-recap


As ever Driscoll has made a public statement about something he considers stupid that guys shouldn't do and is a sign of what is wrong with the an unspecified but apparently very large demographic of the contemporary American male. He has been more charitable this time and has not said that video games are sinful but considers them stupid, enterprises in vicariously attaining victories that don't matter.

Now I could choose to agree with this statement because i am not a huge gamer but I also don't find most board games or sports to be of any value. After all, the apostle Paul wrote to Timothy that physical training is of some value but godliness has value in all things. This means that the Christian can take leave of sports and athletic activities such as baseball or wrestling (the real kind not the WWF kind). As Driscoll might put it, "See, I've got a verse". He did it for why women should have long hair and that means I can do it for why sports events are a waste of time. :)

But one thing that I believe could explain is why this rant against video games can virtually ONLY be "taken out of context" is because Driscoll has apparently forgotten that while you can "say" that video games aren't sinful, just stupid, there is a whole idiom in the biblical literature which translates as the distinction between wisdom and folly. How many Christians are just going to remember or know in reading wisdom literature that the "folly" described in the wisdom literature is closer to moral evil than simple ignorance? How easily can we keep track of the distinction between something being "stupid" and not sinful when the wisdom literature, of which Driscoll is very fond, lays out the contrast between righteousness and sin in terms that in the English language carry the force of choosing between wisdom and foolishness.

To the extent that other bloggers are already taking issue with what Driscoll said about video games being stupid I don't have a dog in that fight. The only video games I really got into are flight simulators because I wanted to be a pilot but my vision is too poor to even drive. To any Driscoll fan out there saying that Driscoll's five minute soundbite of an hour long sermon needs to be listened to in context I suggest that if Driscoll wants to say that something is not sinful but is stupid he needs to remember the constraints of the English language and the wisdom/folly idiom in Proverbs. The reason he may come off as needlessly ripping on video gamers is not merely because he can come across as actually doing that in a soundbite provided by his own church but also because with millenia of the wisdom/folly distinction in wisdom literature it's hard to maintain the language categories we have inherited through biblical literature by saying there is something that is stupid but not actual folly.

Why is this a problem? Well ... because a lot hinges on what victories "don't matter" and why they don't matter. Driscoll says video games are stupid but for some reason baseball, surely one of the most collosal time-wasting enterprises invented by Americans since the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, is full of victories that do matter. So much so that Driscoll has a nine part series on "nine leadership lessons from baseball that are important for any organization, especially a church."

If the baseball victories matter so much Driscoll is willing to make a nine part series on lessons church leaders can learn from baseball why couldn't he do the same thing about video games? Why does Driscoll put his pet time-wasting entertainment in the category of something that imparts wisdom from which pastors should learn while the entertainment of others falls into the category of "stupid" to such a degree that Driscoll has to actually say he doesn't consider it a sin even though he thinks it's stupid just in case someone might say he considers video game playing to be sinful? Could that be because he knows which pastors and deacons played Resident Evil 4 or had a costume party with a theme built entirely around video games? I'm not just making that up, I went to that party as Frogger. I also had a great time. Was that stupid? Well, if Driscoll thinks so I doubt he's going to say so to pastors and deacons who have played a vital role in the growth and health of the church Driscoll founded with his wife (and a couple of other pastors who

Some great battle leaders, they would historically have their men row to the shore of a place they wanted to investigate and conquer, and then the good generals would light the boats on fire. “There are two options, men: forward or death.” That has to be the attitude that we have. That has to be the attitude we have ’cause the default mode of the human heart is selfishness, laziness, quitting. And some of you are here and you’ve already quit. Don’t.

So the attitude we have to have is "forward or death" or that the attitude we have to have is that if we're "generals" we burn the boats of the soldiers we send out to scout out new places for the general to conquer so that they have no choice but to scout out the land we want to conquer? I know the two aren't mutually exclusive and he probably means option 1 but option 2 is how it actually reads on the page. One of the things I learned as a communications major (and I think he was a communication majors, too) is that the space between what you meant to say and what you actually said is where misunderstanding and problems arise.

And here's where I have a misunderstanding, perhaps. Now if the default mode of the human heart is selfishness, laziness and quitting what, exactly, was happening when all those people got together to build a tower at Babel in Genesis 11?

But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The LORD said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

Ah, yes, definitely a case from the scriptures that proves that the default position of the human heart's selfishness manifested in laziness and quitting. They were just so eager to be lazy and quit that God didn't see any need to go down and confuse human language at all. Didn't Driscoll preach through Genesis six years ago? Did he forget that the default mode of the human heart described in Scripture may be selfish but isn't characterized by just laziness and quitting. Didn't the Lord Himself tell Saul it is hard to kick against the goads? Did Pharoah display his laziness by just rolling over and let Israel go?

I'm not a huge fan of video games or board games or sports but I agree with the observation about vicarious victory but I'm not sure I can agree, given even a cursory survey of the scriptures, about the default setting of the human heart as a workaholic legacy-building pastor of a megachurch calls it. I'm particularly not sure I should just go along with it when he defines the default setting of humanity as having moral failures he doesn't consider himself to have. I am not sure I can go along with it when he says video games are stupid but draws leadership lessons from baseball. It's good to work toward a legacy but while we work toward whatever we hope our legacy shall be our real legacy and inheritance is Christ Himself and the Kingdom we are part of.

If something is stupid how do we distinguish it from what the Bible calls folly? As the scriptures themselves attest, there is a way that APPEARS to be wise but its end is death. As Tim Keller put it in a sermon there are many decisions we can make that are not immoral and not unconsidered and are not sin but that are, nonetheless, still not wise. I grant that if wisdom were easily obtained the scriptures would not warn us of how much work it is to acquire it, let alone to warn us that there are people who are convinced they already have wisdom who don't have it. Doesn't God choose to use the foolishness of preaching to bring the message of Christ the King to humanity? If the stupidness of God is wiser than the smartness of humanity would that be why I've met at least one guy at Mars Hill who actually came to Christ through playing video games?