When the Homily is about Immunology

The "of God" Clan

To further warrant the rumors of my devolution into a “God loves America at the exclusion of the rest of the world” militant, I have recently begun playing a free game (article of propaganda my cynical friends would say) put out by the US Army, called "America’s Army." It is your basic 1st person shooter, excpet that it can only be played online (where surely ALL of my information is being collected and analyzed by the industrial-military consortium) and you earn "honor" points by winning your games and you lose the points when you do dishonorable things like shoot your teammates. Truly the game does a good job of forcing team play and you can learn abit about First Aid (as you train to me a field medic) in case you ever happen across battlefield injuries...more and more of a potential reality?

Anyway, as with all online games, people form "clans". These are teams or clubs or organizations or whatever you wanna call them that typically sponsor a server for the game and also (I guess?) play against other "clans." Well, one of them is called the "of God" clan because they are all apparently Christians and they all change their log in name to identify themselves as clan members and so you get the likes of "Peace of God", "Fury of God", "Patience of God", etc etc.

And so you join their server in which certain rules are strictly enforced like: no cussing and no shooting corpses (!!!!) and you are treated to an intriguing environment in which you may find yourself blow up by "Love of God’s" grenade, or ripped to pieces by "Mercy of God’s" AK47…all while scripture verses automatically parade through the chatbox window, you know, all the good ones like “For all have sinned….the wages of sin is death…there is a way that seems right to a man….For God so loved the world…” etc. The game is a tool for evangelism….to the gaming community. Interesting to say the least.

While I do not have a great deal of time to play games…I do make the time and I must admit that when I play this game I prefer their server…it is indeed a friendly place, generally. Though once I joked after getting killed that the Psalm verse ("There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end leads to death") was proved particularly true in what just happened to me. The sever ADMIN rebuked me and told me “not to use scripture for my personal pleasure.” Boy did I have to bite my tongue on THAT one…after all I was playing with evangelical Protestants, who (in my humble opinion) have made it a virtual doctrine to do JUST THAT. Anyway….I just asked for clarification and it never came…I guess the game got too exciting.

Generally, I think it odd to force your faith into this game – perhaps even ANY game? But particularly a game in which you are shooting people! I don’t know…maybe I shouldn’t be playing it, maybe I shouldn’t imagine I am killing Chechen Terrorists and freeing innocent Russian children whose Mother’s will offer incense and prayers in my name for the rest of their lives? But…it calls into question the issue of leisure time and what we do with it and how our religious lives fit into it. I do not profess to have the answers on this subject and frankly I suspect that I need to listen to answers rather than try and formulate my own. I am quite adept at making, using, and enjoying leisure time and a lot less so at things such as prayer and worship.

I am fairly quiet about my faith online…maybe because I am embarrassed? Should I, as an Orthodox Christian, be playing this violent game?

Really this isn’t what I intedended this post to be about…and hopefully I have not ruined any false images people (new no doubt) might have had of me. But to lead into the topic I REALLY wanted to write about: a couple nights ago on the game server someone asked: "Has anyone read the whole Bible?"
Next time...


While I do not anticipate joining the clan...how about a little fun in your leisure time: who can come up with the BEST Orthodox "of God" clan member name...the ones more likely to be forbidden will get my vote!

"Uncreated Light of God"
"Brother of God" (since I am James after all)
(I thought about all the potential references to Our Lady and Mother...but could not bring myself to even jokingly submit them...while VERY likely to be banned, it is simply too Holy a thing to refer to myself as...even as a joke.)
"Toll Houses of God"
...there must be some good ones out there...where is that "onion dome" mentality?