Gospel.com Blog

Last month here on the blog, Chris asked whether or not Christians can gamble in good conscience. Not addictive gambling, but “casual” gambling—the occasional lottery ticket, friendly wagers, and the like. Many of you offered some great comments on the topic.

Well, at the Pyromanacs blog, Phil Johnson is posting an exhaustive and thoughtful series of essays arguing that gambling is not appropriate for Christians (link goes to the opening post in the series). His posts, and the very lively comments that follow them, approach the issue from a lot of angles that hadn’t even occurred to me. Whether or not you agree with Johnson’s conclusion, it will prompt you to think through all of the spiritual and ethical issues surrounding gambling, and that seems a healthy mental exercise.

Have you walked through the aisles of video games at Best Buy or Gamestop lately? If you have, you’ve seen the bewildering array of game titles lined up on the shelves, their flashy box art promising hours of immersive entertainment.

So how do you, as a parent or discerning gamer, tell the good games from the bad?

There’s no shortage of video game review sites out there eager to share their opinions on the latest titles. But beyond the question of gameplay quality, which games will engage you with wholesome content—and which will fill your TV screen or monitor with virtual ultraviolence and other gratuitous elements? It’s not always clear from the game’s description and rating whether or not it’s appropriate for your family.

If you’re familiar with Al Menconi Ministries, you know that for years, his team of game reviewers have been offering a Christian perspective on the latest video games. Now, it looks like his reviewers have launched their own ministry: Reviews4Parents. They’re a game review ministry that doesn’t hide their Christian approach, and doesn’t apologize for weighing a game’s moral and spiritual elements in their analyses.

They’ve already got a large library of reviews online, including recent hits like Batman: Arkham Asylum and Prototype.

So don’t be left in the dark about video games—see what Reviews4Parents has to say. And if you’ve got any other tips or ideas for weeding out the good from the bad when it comes to video games, feel free to share in the comments below.

Did you watch the Watchmen earlier this year? The much-discussed film version of Alan Moore’s graphic novel came out on DVD recently. As is the case with many new releases, the filmmakers took advantage of the DVD format to release a longer “director’s cut” version of the film. Over at Past the Popcorn, film critic Greg Wright reviews the Watchmen director’s cut.

We haven’t given a shout-out to Past the Popcorn recently, but they continue to host solid discussions of movies and the people who make them. Their extensive interview with the screenwriter of Knowing digs into the spiritual symbolism in that Alex Proyas film; and they keep a close critical eye on new DVD releases as well.

Have you given something up for Lent? We’ve talked a bit about the common practice of choosing something in your life—a habit, a particular type of food, etc.—and voluntarily foregoing it during the weeks leading up to Easter.

Among my own circle of acquaintances, two things seem to come up frequently as things to give up during Lent: unhealthy food (soda, fast food, etc.) and television.

I’ll leave the food topic alone for now (and I should note that not everything people choose to give up for Lent needs to be “bad” or unhealthy); but the practice of giving up TV is something I’ve also seen written about a lot online. (And feel free to substitute another entertainment medium—your iPod, video games, online video, etc.—for “television.”)

Most of us have from time to time had the feeling that we invest too much of our lives in passive entertainment, to the detriment of our spiritual and personal growth. If the idea of going cold-turkey on your TV sounds weirdly intriguing, here are a few resources to help you think it through:

• Revive Our Hearts has a standing 30-day TV-free challenge that encourages Christians to turn off the TV for a month and observe the resulting effects on their personal lives. You can sign up for daily emails and read a number of helpful articles at the challenge website; and they also host a great series of radio shows about bringing your family’s television under control.
• Al Menconi has written extensively about the challenge of keeping TV-watching and passive entertainment balanced healthily in your family life. For starters, read his list of 10 steps to control TV in your home, and see his many articles about how entertainment affects us.

If you read through these resources, you’ll notice something important about them: the point of these efforts is not to arbitrarily cut TV out of your life, or to feel holier-than-thou because you don’t watch American Idol, or to rob your life of fun. It’s not about banning TV in your house forever, or making you feel guilty for watching your favorite show. It’s about becoming more aware of the way you use your time throughout each day and week.

It’s an experiment you can try any time of the year, not just during Lent. How about it?

Today, a couple of quick updates from the COMIX35 ministry! COMIX35 is a Christian comics ministry that publishes and distributes evangelistic comics around the world. They also do a lot to identify and recruit promising comic artists from within the Christian community.

They’ve got updates on two comics contests that they’re running:

• They’ve launched the Christian Comics Competition for U.S. Prison Inmates as a way of identifying talented Christian artists in the US prison system. The first phase of the competition asks prison chaplains to recommend inmates who “exhibit exceptional talent in the areas of drawing and storytelling.” The three candidates who make it to the end of the contest will help produce a short comic for inmates and at-risk youth.
• The deadline for the Manga Messiah video competition has been extended to March 4 to give all “amateur and professional video producers, YouTubers, and GodTubers around the world” a chance to get their entries in. The competition webpage has full details on the contest, as well as free music tracks you can use with your video.

Take a look at these contests, and while you’re there, get to know COMIX35’s unique comics evangelism ministry!

Your best bet for family entertainment on DVD this week is a collection of Big Idea’s new made-for-TV episodes of 3-2-1 Penguins! The collection is titled Save the Planets! and features three of the most recent episodes aired on NBC and Qubo. Says Greg Wright, “If you’re a fan… have no fear. If anything, the pace is quicker, the jokes come faster, and the laughs follow right behind. Honestly, this is some of the funniest stuff I’ve seen on DVD in a long, long time.”

Also new on DVD this week:

• The Genius Club
• Reprise
• The Promotion
• Then She Found Me
• Married Life
• Outsourced
• Hidden Secrets

Visit the DVD releases page at Past the Popcorn for details on these and other titles.

We’ve mentioned Al Menconi Ministries in the past as a good place to go to for game and music reviews from a Christian perspective. Here’s a quick roundup of some of this month’s reviews. First, on the game front:

• The latest Turok game for the XBox 360
• Rainbow Six Vegas 2, the ninth (!) installment in the Rainbow Six series
• Mario Kart Wii, the ever-popular Mario racing game

And on the music side of things:

• Capital Lights’ This is an Outage
• Amy Courts’ These Cold and Rusted Lungs
• Seventh Day Slumber’s Rescatame

Beyond reviewing specific games, Al Menconi writes a lot about the challenge of understanding pop culture and developing Biblical standards for the cultural artifacts we read, watch, and listen to. Take a look through his frequently-updated essay archives—there’s a lot of great advice there, especially for parents who want to help their kids live moral lives in a faith-challenging culture.

We’re talking about culture this week, and thinking about one of the most basic and important questions that Christians ask today: how do we engage and challenge our culture with the Gospel of Christ? Society around us is saturated with false and destructive ideas, memes, and values; how do Christians bring the Gospel message to bear in such an environment? (more…)

Al Menconi Ministries has put together a nice video introducing their media ministry and talking about the importance of making wise entertainment choices for your family. You might already know about Al’s ministry—we’ve noted the site’s many essays about entertainment topics and video game reviews—this video does a good job of introducing Al and his discerning approach to entertainment:

As you can see, Al Menconi Ministries isn’t about telling you what you can and cannot watch; they’d rather help your learn to make entertainment choices that are right for your family and in line with the Bible’s moral teachings.

Are you a gamer, or the parent of a gamer, who looks at the vast array of video games on store shelves and wonders which ones are worth playing? There are countless video game reviews available around the internet, but it’s tougher to find reviews that talk about the moral aspects of popular games.

Al Menconi Ministries has a team of game reviewers who don’t just ask if a game is fun to play—they also ask if it’s a morally good way to spend your time. In April alone, they’ve reviewed nine games, including:

• Turning Point: Fall of Liberty
• Super Smash Bros. Brawl
• Need for Speed: Pro Street
• Lost: Via Domus

…and many more. If you’re worried about the type of moral content you or your kids will run into in the latest games, AMM’s reviews are worth checking out. Take a look at their grading criteria and browse their large archive of reviews (over 300 reviews, going back to 2002!).