Of Games and God (Part VIII): The Gaming World and the Christian Community

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When I started this series on the theology of video games back in April, one of my colleagues who is both a great pastor and also an avid gamer, contacted me. The idea of exploring the theology of gaming intrigued him, he said, because video games have played such a significant role in his own life and spiritual formation.

He is involved in a church-planting work in Manitoba called “The Hearth," which seeks to be a “Holy Sanctuary for the Nerds, the Geeks, the Misfits and the Outcasts.” One of the initiatives of The Hearth is an event called “Geekdom House,” where participants gather to watch shows from the sci-fi, fantasy, and/or anime genres (anything with a strong, traditionally nerdy fandom will do) and then discuss its spiritual, religious, or theological significance. Another initiative is called “Limit Break,” which provides a safe and inclusive community “where nerd and geek hobbies and culture can thrive.” Limit Break seeks to provide mentorship for youth and adults who love video games and board games, in particular, and bills itself as “a community for people who feel otherwise isolated and are looking for a place not only to grow but to directly and intentionally help others grow, in their physical, emotional and spiritual lives.”

At the heart of a ministry like The Hearth is an awareness that human beings are hard-wired for intimate community, and that video games (among other “geekdoms”) feed our need for community in a unique way. It may be because video gaming is such a participatory activity, one that engages us so holistically as we are doing it, that we long to shared the experience with others. It may be because the worlds that video games create are so complete and fully realized, that they invite players to identify strongly with their particular game of choice. It might just be that the games themselves are so fun. Whatever the reason, many video games have strong followings—"fandoms," is the popular term—and these fandoms tend to generate strong communities of identification around their specific games.

This is true of the games I most enjoy playing. The various Minecraft communities I’ve encountered, for instance, or the various Youtubers who post their advice and theories around Skyrim, are good examples of this. I am a neophyte when it comes to online gaming communities, though. My brother has met people from around the world playing World of Warcraft online. My cousin has traveled across the country to met up in person with friends that he made through online gaming. This spring, when the Covid-19 lockdown made an in-person Easter gathering impossible, our family met up on my son’s Minecraft server and had a “virtual Easter dinner,” which we enjoyed together as our Minecraft avatars.

In each of these examples we see it, that gaming creates community.

There are lessons that the church could take from these gaming communities, as it considers its own life together. In a video game fandom, for instance, the game alone is the thing that holds the community together. The only thing you need to participate is the game itself. Similarly, gaming communities exist primarily online, where most of the usual markers that normally differentiate people, like age, gender, social status, and so on, are not as obvious or significant. In this regard, video game communities have the potential to create a kind of “leveled space,” where the only requirement for belonging is a shared love for the game itself.

This is, or at least it should be, what the church is like, with the all-important caveat that the thing that creates our “leveled space,” is not a game but a person, the crucified and resurrected Jesus Christ; but like a gaming fandom, the church that really has him at the centre would say that the only requirement for belonging is a shared love of Him. Sadly, many churches add a whole slew of additional requirements for belonging. Some of these are intentional, like insisting that ours will be a teetotaler church, or ours will be a pre-trib-post-mil-dispensationalist church—and those who don’t agree don’t belong. Others are unintentional, like when we subtly communicate that if you want to be part of this group you have to belong to a certain tax-bracket, or you have to dress a particular way, or what have you. It may be human nature to do this. It certainly comes naturally to us. But whatever else it is, it is not the New Testament’s vision of the Church. In Galatians 3:28, the Apostle Paul said it like this, that in the Christian community, there is no longer Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male and female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus.

I don’t know enough about video gaming to say how well the communities that grow up around particular games reflect this kind of open inclusivity. I have spoken to some gamers who were so passionate about their game of choice that they looked down their noses with superiority towards other games, other gaming consoles, and other gaming communities. It is possible to identify so strongly with the thing that holds our community together that we instinctively begin to “out-group” those who don’t share our commitment.

In this too, however, gaming communities have something profound to teach us, by showing us how truly unique the Christian community really is. Even gaming communities, in the end, are human creations, formed around a shared passion for a human endeavor. The fact that they are so appealing shows us how deeply the human heart really is wired for authentic community. At the same time though, they remind us that, unlike any community that humans have ever formed, the church is not created or held together by human beings, by their interests, their enthusiasms, or their intentions.

The church is a divine community, created only by the power of the Holy Spirit, through the work of Christ alone, to the glory of God the Father. As such, membership in this community, belonging and inclusion and participation, does not depend on any of the gate-keeping markers that human beings use to decide who is in and who is out. It depends solely on the invitation of God himself, which he extends to all in the person of Jesus Christ, and which he guarantees to us in the seal of his Holy Spirit. Here there is no Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free; neither is there Minecrafters nor Fortniters, Xboxers nor Nintendo Switchers, gamers nor nongamers, for we are all one, no matter where we are coming from or who we are, we all belong together in Christ.

Video games can sharpen our appetite for this kind of inclusive community, I think, and teach us how deeply we long for it and how badly we need it; but not even gaming communities can provide what God offers us in Jesus, an invitation to take our place in the Body of Christ, where belonging depends solely on the fact that we’ve been called together by him, and every godly passion, commitment, joy and activity that brings him glory has a place.

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