Re: My life of gaming: A closing chapter
Bryant, thank you for your post. As I said in my first post, I sort of had the door to God opened for me by mormon missionaries. I did not turn out mormon, however, because I believe the bible to be the complete and inspired word of God. I have studied the mormon religion in a lot of depth and have come to the conclusion that there are just too many contradictions and doctrinal changes over the years for it to mesh with scripture. However, I really like how your focus is on what Jesus did for us, and not on Joseph Smith and his writings as I've seen in a lot of missionaries, that is awesome. I appreciate your post very much and my intent is not to offend, only to explain my situation as truthfully as I can.
Given that I have all eternity to spend with God, the only thing I'm worried about on this earth is doing what he tells me to. That includes getting the good news out to anyone and everyone I possibly can. If that's an addiction, I am guilty. I consider it to be no more so addictive than putting a majority of your effort into a marriage, or a developing friendship. I notice that everyone keeps pointing to religion as the addiction, but not friendship or relationship as the addiction. It seems like an odd concept to consider addictive. You never hear anyone say, "hey man, you are way too addicted to your friends. I think you need to cool it a little." Or, "I think you need to see a councellor, you are way too addicted to your wife." Since God is both my friend, and my metaphorical groom, I consider these both to be apt analogies.
About games, I will say that there are more ways to have fun than playing games. I agree with Assault Freak. Having said that, because of my history with gaming, I probably learned more from my various times through muds, RPGs, other online games and research paths that games lead me to about various subjects than I have from anywhere else. In no way am I saying that games are bad, an ymore than I would say that money, sports, sex or alcohol are bad. For certain people, they just end up being idles. Gaming happens to be my idle, my man-made god, and thus, I am removing it from my life so that it does not interfere in my friendship with the only god there is. I still read, hang out with my wife and friends, attend social functions not always related to church, even watch cartoons. More so, in fact, now that my life is not colored by a perspective of gaming. When can I play next? I wish this was over so I could get back to gaming. I'll do my housework after this level. I'm not planning to hole up in a monestary anytime soon, nor would I encourage anyone to do so. I never felt like doing most of the things I just listed above, it was all games, games, games. Sometimes I would split my focus between games and, say, reading a book, or maybe having a conversation, but I found that splitting my focus between two activities is really devoting my time to neither .
Thank you all for this awesome discussion. I appreciate all the input that has been given so far on this subject.
_______________________________________________ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
