Thursday, 23 April 2009

• Revelife Revisited - Genocide Quiz: Part III Question of Relevance to Christianity

  Mr. Maple's post from September 8, 2008 is being revisited for its relevance to Brant Hansen's recent post "Why Halo 3 is Needed to Make the Gospel Relevant (or Maybe Not)."
  
  

   by mr maple
  

  
  

  
  Faithful readers of the NY Times may remember this shocking title: "Thou Shalt Not Kill, Except in a Popular Video Game at Church." The article described the growing trend of church youth groups in using Halo (a popular first-person shooter video game) to draw the tough crowd of teenage boys into the church:
  
  

  Far from being defensive, church leaders who support Halo — despite its “thou shalt kill” credo — celebrate it as a modern and sometimes singularly effective tool. It is crucial, they say, to reach the elusive audience of boys and young men.
  
  Witness the basement on a recent Sunday at the Colorado Community Church in the Englewood area of Denver, where Tim Foster, 12, and Chris Graham, 14, sat in front of three TVs, locked in violent virtual combat as they navigated on-screen characters through lethal gun bursts. Tim explained the game’s allure: “It’s just fun blowing people up.”
  
  Once they come for the games, Gregg Barbour, the youth minister of the church said, they will stay for his Christian message. “We want to make it hard for teenagers to go to hell,” Mr. Barbour wrote in a letter to parents at the church.
  

  
  I will say outright that I do enjoy playing violent video games (though the thought of killing people in real life makes me nauseous); to say otherwise would be hypocritical and self-deceiving.  However, I cannot say that I am proud of it (I'm trying to stop) and I will definitely say that the church should not endorse it either.  Before I say anything about the benefits of "culturally relevant" means of outreach, I must mention another article from that day that caught my eye.
  

  
  

  
  This one, titled "A Priest Methodically Reveals Ukranian Jews' Fate", described one priest's journey in uncovering the truth behind the relatively obscure Holocaust of Ukranian Jews:
  
  

  Knocking on doors, unannounced, Father Desbois, 52, seeks to unlock the memories of Ukrainian villagers the way he might take confessions one by one in church.
  
  “At first, sometimes, people don’t believe I’m a priest,” said Father Desbois in an interview this week. “I have to use simple words and listen to these horrors — without any judgment. I cannot react to the horrors that pour out. If I react, the stories will stop.”
  
  Over four years, Father Desbois has videotaped more than 700 interviews with witnesses and bystanders and has identified more than 600 common graves of Jews, most of them previously unknown. He also has gathered material evidence of the execution of Jews from 1941 to 1944, the “Holocaust of bullets” as it is called.
  
  Often his subjects ask Father Desbois to stay for a meal and to pray, as if to somehow bless their acts of remembrance. He does not judge those who were assigned to carry out tasks for the Nazis, and Holocaust scholars say that is one reason he is so effective.
  

  
  Father Desbois' actions go completely against the grain of what we would consider "cultural relevance."  Few want to remember the grisly affairs of the Holocaust.  In fact, much of modern media is designed to insulate its viewers from similarly ghastly crimes that are commonplace in many areas of the world; the genocide quiz was designed to highlight our own ignorance and rather casual approach to atrocities of unbelievable scope and scale.  When we do remember, we would prefer to think that the Holocaust is an event relegated to the past and that those who seek to dig it up are masochists who thrive on shame and suffering.  But a single priest, working quietly and without fanfare, managed to unearth and display for the public eye the dirty secrets in humanity's closet: mass graves that bear grim testimony to our perverted penchant for using death as a means of gain.
  
  One common thread in posts by critics of Christians and Revelife is our self-absorption with a sort of sub-culture of Christianity: our tendency to pick apart the most exquisite details of our faith and its relevance to the world around us.  And the criticism is true, even if the saying of it is unpopular.  We love sitting behind the protective shield of our computer screens to debate the value of teaching evolution in schools, abortion, the morality of movies, the intricacies of the Christian dating scene, various differences in theology.  While these discussions have their place in modern Christian living, they reveal for those who believe in the same radical faith of Christ and the Bible a large and savage neglect of the weightier matters of the law: the abuse and perversion of justice, the responsibility to love and forgive our neighbors, the sanctity of community and security.
  
  Several commenters to the first post in this series mused, "I wonder how they're going to tie this all in to Christianity."  It is a shame to Christians to think that Christianity's relevance to genocide needs to be explained.  What elements of Scripture and Christianity do not scream in tortured response to the crime of genocide?  If we who call ourselves followers of Christ do not flinch or cringe with sorrow at the mention of humanity's greatest crime, then what familiarity can we claim to the heart of God himself - the God who wept at the tomb of Lazarus, that fiercely defends the cause of the orphan and the widow, that flares with anger at the death of innocents?  It is precisely in this arena that Christians should speak the loudest and with the most passion, conviction, and eloquence.  It is here that the raw power of God's grace ought to shine and transform the most; where Christians should feel completely comfortable speaking, debating, and acting on behalf of those who are mute and powerless.
  
  In the depths of our own hearts, our churches, and our congregations, what will our perspective of cultural relevance be?  In contrast to the question, "What does this world want from the church?" perhaps we should be asking, "What does this world need from the church?"  There is a simple answer to that: "To do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God." (Micah 6:8)  The most powerful testimonies that a Christian possesses are grace and truth.  One is scarce because of our innate, competitive desire to obtain every selfish advantage; the other is scarce because of our unwillingness to come face-to-face with the real and present condition of our humanity.
  
  In the specialized context of genocide, there is abundant opportunity for Christians to demonstrate their true relevance to the world as agents of grace and truth and as advocates of justice, mercy, and humility.  This does not even begin to delve into other areas of grotesque and blatant human sin: child slavery, sex trafficking, and poverty.  Here, in areas where our responsibilities are most clear and profound, we are the most silent.  Is that silence a moral failure?  Why is a Christian voice in these areas considered new and profound instead of expected as the norm?  What is it that keeps us from speaking up more, from acting with greater purposefulness and grace, from being more educated and aware?
  

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