It happens every time my son plays video games -- he dies. It's something he does a
lot. And so does my daughter. It's a routine part of what they do in these games.
David loads in the software for The Greatest Adventure of the World's Greatest
Crusader Who Developed Superhuman Powers When He Fell into a Huge Vat of Ice Cream,
and suddenly THE GREAT ADVENTURE HAS BEGUN! With deft maneuvers of the joy stick, David
makes Arnold the Adventurer run past giant lizards, leap over giant whirlpools, climb up
giant mountains and push through video stores infested with Teen-age Mutant Turtle games.
While Arnold the Adventurer exercises off all those ice cream calories he collected at
the start of his Greatest Adventure, David sits like a zombie, all but his wrist
muscles atrophying.
And then it happens. Arnold the Adventurer slips in the mud just as a laser-blasting
pterodoctyl swoops in.
"I died again," David says.
Is this healthy? I mean, think of all the kids across our country playing video games
and saying, "I died again." What does death mean to them? Or what if some
tormented lad wants to commit suicide? Will he think life can be started over like a game?
In the days of yore before video games became affordable, when we found our
entertainment by running and leaping and climbing while not seated in a chair with a
joystick attached to our hands, kids never talked so much about dying.
Of course, when folks of my generation were kids, we did have death in our games. One
time when my husband was still unmarried and about two feet shorter, he gave his GI Joe a
thrilling parachute jump -- without the parachute -- straight down 12 floors. Ralph never
did find all the pieces.
And there was the time I generously gave my pet chameleon a sunbath out on the patio --
and came back later to discover he had turned crispy.
Ralph did not say, "I jumped without a parachute and died in a zillion
pieces." And I did not say, "I baked myself till I was as tough as shoe
leather." Why do kids today identify so closely with the characters on the other end
of the joy stick cord?
I wonder what God thinks of all this. Surely He'd rather hear our children say, "I
lived well today." Come to think of it, who among us grown-ups ever says something
like that?
Our words reveal our inner lives. If we swear using God's name, for example, our words
tell a story about the kind of relationship we have with God. On the other hand, a
different tale is told by this:
"Honey, let's turn off that video game and make our own adventure outdoors in the
lovely spring air."
"Wait! Don't turn it off yet. Let me die first."
Actually, God does like the words "let me die," because Jesus often said we
have to die to ourselves to be born again into a relationship with Him. However, I doubt
that that's what my son, David, has in mind when, with joystick in hand, he exclaims,
"No, I won't help my sister until I die!"
To David the Adventurer, life begins anew with the touch of a little red button on the
joystick. O Death, where is thy sting?
The sting is in the price of all those video games.
