(A genuine gaming child wrote this blog with some polishing from an adult helper. The adult’s additional thoughts come at the end of the blog post.

The games I play aren’t biblical games. Instead, they are educational and they help me with my hand-eye coordination. You see, I play them because it’s fun. In the game, you have to protect yourself. Also, you are working together with your family and school friends along with church friends to try to win, looting chests, building, and eliminating players.

Enjoyable experiences are not antithetical to a life of faith. In fact, God created the world in a creative and inspiring way. He doesn’t need things to be ordinary or free of recreational fun.

Sometimes, you don’t need internet to play a game. You can play it on your tablet when you’re in the car. When I do this, I feel like it is helpful to keep me from being bored. The games I play on our trips don’t allow you to play with friends because there’s no wi-fi. However, it exercises my hands.

I Could Stop Gaming, But…

It’s joyful to play games. It’s the junk food of your mind. I even watch user-created videos about the games. As I watch them, the videos teach me stuff about it. With these videos, I learn how to be better at the game. I also research and learn how to look for just the right thing that I need to improve. In fact, I have better searching skills now and I have learned to avoid scam accounts that don’t help me.

The guy named John is someone that I just created with AI. He’s not real, and just like that, I have learned to spot AI videos that just recycle old videos from real creators. I look for creators that I have known for a while to be educational and wise about the game.

John Jr. is also a guy I created with AI. There is no guarantee that your videos will have genuine gamers on the screen, but I try my best, and I look for things that are at least very helpful and that tend to have fresh content that is useful.

Our Child Blogger’s Experience

The blogger whose post you just read has a snazzy, out-of-the-box type of sense of humor. He gave me the words one sentence at a time as if I were pulling teeth. He didn’t see how this would have any biblical value. I told him I’d add to it and give it a better faith-based spin if he would just honestly discuss his love of gaming. What you do think? Did we do a decent job? Read a bit more before you decide.

When he agreed to write the blog, he focused mainly on the images and really enjoyed making “cursed” versions of online content. (Cursed doesn’t refer to anything occultic, but rather something that is so weird and uncomfortably similar to what you are aiming to create that it makes you feel odd.) His images of the game characters are similar enough to make you cringe. HIs images of the video creators are also cringe-worthy in their similarity to what he has found out there.

Learning about God

It has been so fun to watch him learn and grow through some of the discussions that gaming brought to us. How can gaming be a good way to learn about God, you might ask? Well, one way we’ve done it has been by describing the difference between how God wants us to live and how the game creates a winner. For example I can describe how eliminating fellow players is never biblically acceptable in the real world. In fact, God wants us to be willing to lay down our lives for a friend.

The way you can get ahead by trading your gifts and the products of your hard work is a good glimpse into a generous mindset. Working together with friends to accomplish a goal is the way God wants us to fulfill our calling in Christ as members of the body of Christ, his church. We’re not supposed to do this mission alone.

However, as the Parable of the 10 Virgins (Matthew 25) shows, we aren’t supposed to be willing to die spiritually in order to help one another win. Yes, I’ll lose my physical life for you in an emergency, but no, I won’t dim my light or give up my spiritual principles for anyone. I won’t give up so many of my daily resources that I can’t fulfill my calling. See the difference?

Heaven is my non-negotiable. I’ll never give up my seat in the presence of my savior for anything. Neither should you.

Games Can Be More

I don’t recommend gaming. But I do like for things to leave the ordinary, vanilla realm and move into the area of fun. Enjoyable experiences are not antithetical to a life of faith. In fact, God created the world in a creative and inspiring way. He doesn’t need things to be ordinary or free of recreational fun. In fact, I recommend using every single experience that you have in life to turn the conversation to Christ. So whether it’s gaming, rebuilding old cars, or drawing, it could include godly conversation. When you rise up, when you lie down, when you walk along the way, speak life to your family. Talk about Biblical principles and use these conversations to reveal more to them about Jesus.