Tag: sports

What Do We Learn From Games?

What life lessons are learned? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I recently did a research paper on the allegedly link between video games and school shootings. My conclusion is it does not exist. That being said, I was thinking about this recently some more. Right now, I am going through Persona 5 Royal and I am left thinking about relationships a lot. In Persona 5, my character gets special abilities the more he builds relationships with people.

I got the bad ending the first time I went through the game because I had built up level, personas, weapons, etc., but I had not built up relationships like that. Now I know I need to do differently. I find that by choosing what I want to say back and see the reaction I get, I am learning more as a man on the spectrum about what other people would think if I said XYZ. I am also looking more at my relationships and thinking about the benefit of building my relationships that exist in the real world.

I have the view that many times, games of all sorts build us up in ways outside of the games. My parents never had to sit down with me and teach me the value of money, but I think in playing games involving money, I learned what it meant to work hard, save up, and buy something I wanted. I knew what it meant to go and find a deal and I knew what it meant to conserve what I had.

While I have said this is largely the case with video games, we know that this happens in other games as well. How many times do we hear something about sports and hear about life lessons learned for on and off the field? As I pondered that, I considered how differently we treat such ideas. The idea given is that video games will teach you how to shoot people easily. Sports will help you build character. Strangely, no one seems to get the idea that football will teach you to tackle someone if they have something you want, even though that is an integral part of the game.

It’s as if sports are to be celebrated because they teach good things while video games are condemned because they teach wicked things.

In reality, it all depends on the person. By and large, school shootings I find do not come from games instilling a love of violence, but because students are angry and no one is helping them when it comes to bullying at schools. A suicide and a school shooting in response to bullying are highly similar events. The suicide is the student taking the anger and pushing it inward on himself. The school shooting is him pushing it outward on the world.

Yet how many athletes do we see that are actually horrible role models for young people? How many times do we see a city when a major sports title and the people go out and loot and ransack the town? Do I blame sports for these? No. I blame human stupidity. These are problems that need to be dealt with, but banning sports is not the answer.

What is best is to realize that there are good and bad things that can be learned in most any situation. In a perfect world, everything would only teach good, but we do not live in that world. The best solution is to have parents start teaching virtue at home. Also, get rid of the idea of self-esteem. It turns us more into narcissists than anything else. More often than not, good families will produce good kids. There are bad kids that come from good families and good kids that come from bad families, but this is a generality.

When that is there, good lessons can be found anywhere. They can be found in a student learning lessons kicking a ball across a field. They can be found in someone like me exploring mental worlds in Persona 5.

And those lessons work on and off the field and on and off the console.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

A Call To Boycott Some Women’s Sports

What is happening in women’s sports? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I’m not a sports fan, but I do pay attention to what is happening in the world and one of the great issues we are dealing with today is transgenderism. A man can today just claim that he is a woman and he is allowed to compete in women’s sports. Fortunately, there are women like Riley Gaines speaking out against this, but we need more.

There was a story of a man winning a women’s event and the women refused to even show up on the podium with him. That’s a good start, but more needs to be done. Women need to really just refuse to compete in these verses if they’re going to allow people who are not women to engage in them.

This is about more than just sports. Many of these women are trying to get scholarships so that they can go on to college, but they are not getting them because someone who is seen as a part of a “marginalized” group is taking them. Click a victim box and you get extra points. These are women who work hard to get where they are and then have to compete against an opponent with an unfair advantage.

Consider this from healthline with running speeds. You can find more of the same at Duke Law. In baseball, a woman is said to have thrown a fastball at 83 MPH. However, compare that to the average speed of a man in college throwing a fastball.

As soon as a pitcher finishes high school, they have most likely attained their highest fastball velocity, even though a few small gains are certainly achievable. The average fastball for these senior-level pitchers is 90 mph, but there will always be a few guys who can light up the radar gun close to 100 mph. At the lower levels of college baseball, there will still be guys in the low to mid-80s. Changeups for this group have to be at around a 15 mph drop, causing the velocity to be close to the higher 70s.

And even if we just went to high school

A high school pitcher can be anywhere from 14 to 18 years of age. This plays a part in figuring out an average fastball velocity, but, keep in mind that the majority of high schools have a Freshmen, Sophomore, and Varsity program to split up the big age gap. Fo the most part, an average varsity high school fastball is between 75-85 mph, even though a lot of good Varsity pitchers will be finding out that they can pitch in the higher 80s and low 90 range. The Freshmen pitchers will generally be throwing at a similar speed to the 13 and 14-year-olds, and the Sophomores will be situated somewhere in the middle. A good changeup for a high school pitcher is a -10 to -15 mph drop, so anywhere from 60-75 mph is usual.

Which means that the fastest woman in the world at pitching can STILL not compete with the AVERAGE man in the sport.

As if this isn’t enough, there is even the story of a man who identifies as a woman who slammed a female opponent in the face with a volleyball at a tournament resulting in serious injuries. The girl has severe head and neck injuries. Unfortunately, even this isn’t enough to stop the insanity.

And of course, let’s not forget women being forced to change in dressing rooms and shower with people who are males. All a man needs to say in some cases is that he identifies as a woman and he can march right into the women’s locker rooms. I can’t imagine any reason why a guy would just want to suddenly claim he’s a woman….

None of this is meant to belittle women at all and it’s sad that that even needs to be stated. This is just the way reality is. Men by nature due to their chemistry and genetic make-up are more athletically inclined than women are. Women have their own strengths as well.

Peter Kreeft has said that men are superior at being men and women are superior at being women. Unfortunately, now it’s getting to the point where men are superior at being women as well. (And this in an age where we constantly hear about the patriarchy.) It’s a mistake to assume that because two things are different one is superior and the other inferior.

So what can women do? First off, if men show up at your events, don’t even compete. Walk away. Boycott the event. The more you give in, the more it will keep going.

Parents who are concerned about your daughters’ futures? Go and join a school board. State your claim immediately. There are more of us than there are on the other side I am certain. This is something we should learn from the Bud Light controversy.

Does this matter for Christianity? Yes. We are a religion of reality. We believe that being a man and being a woman means something. We believe that men and women are unique categories of humanity and there is no other. We also hold that the family is the basic building block of society.

I anticipate in a few years, there are going to be a lot of lawsuits suing people over being manipulated into sex-change surgeries. Until then, we must uphold reality. Is this a strong stance? Yes, but just giving in consistently has shown to be a failure.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

The Use Of Entertainment

Why is it that we enjoy what we enjoy? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Last night, in the midst of some gaming and watching some shows on YouTube, I returned to thinking about my life here in New Orleans. I have thought about how our country used to be much more Christian than it is now and yet New Orleans is now known as a hotbed of crime, drugs, and well, we all know what really goes on at Mardi Gras, which should sadly be a Christian celebration. What has happened to this great city and how can we change it?

Then I thought about how it has been said before by G.K. Chesterton that fairy tales don’t exist to tell us that dragons exist. Children already know that. Fairy tales exist to tell children that dragons can be beaten.

Let’s start this with a subject I don’t care for that much. Sports. For the most part, the idea of watching sports should be that someone goes and watches these people on the field and then decides that they want to be like that person and is willing to work out and practice the game too. Now for some, this is impossible and they can remember what they used to do or dream about what they might do in eternity someday. I think of those with severe disabilities or those who due to an older age cannot play like they used to.

Completely antithetical is the picture of someone who sits down on a couch to watch a game and goes through a whole box of Oreos at the same time. This is not to say you have to be a fitness king, but if you do care about sports, you should care about your own physical condition. Sports should get you out of yourself.

With fantasy, it is the same, whether we are talking about old Greek plays, novels like the Lord of the Rings, TV shows and movies, or video games. All of these are meant to give us heroes to emulate and people that we are to look and say “I can overcome what’s in my life as well.” With sports movies, we often have the story of the underdog, such as movies like Rocky or Rudy, where we know that the team or player we want to win will be the hero in the end because they never give up.

In the world of gaming, we have the same going on. A player playing a game can see a boss villain they have to fight that is gargantuan compared to them. In reality, most of us if we saw such a villain would not bother to really try even but start realizing that our time has come. In fantasy, it is the opposite. You are even more certain that you can win and you try again and again and again. The size of the enemy doesn’t make it impossible. It just makes the victory all the greater.

So it is also with every challenge that we face today. The Greeks told their plays I suspect in the hopes of spurring other young Greek men on to greatness. Hebrews tells us a list of heroes of the faith in an effort to say “Be like these people.” Today, we tell stories of people, real and fictional, in an effort to inspire greatness in us.

That should be the purpose of what we do today. If we are captivated by the battle of good and evil on the screen or in literature, we had sure better be fighting it in our own lives. If we believe that the villain can be overcome no matter what, we need to live accordingly as well. It could be tempting to say “That’s fiction, not reality”, but as Chesterton again said, “Truth is stranger than fiction, for we have made fiction to suit ourselves.” In fiction, the characters normally aren’t aware of a supreme deity watching over the story entirely. In reality, we should be, and that should change everything.

Enjoy the story, but also use it. If you care about sports, care about your own physical condition. If you care about the battle of good and evil, be ready to fight it yourself.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

In Defense of Adult Gamers

What about adults playing video games? Let’s plunge into the video games and find out.

Yesterday, I was watching a Matt Walsh video about a video game. I was curious since it was about Scooby-Doo and something happening with Velma. Anyway, Velma is a character in a game called Multiversus and 34 players filed a complaint about Velma calling a police car.

For the part about the politics, I thoroughly agree. However, I did notice when he said that the problem was really adults playing a video game about Scooby-Doo. At the end, he did make another short statement about adult gamers. I thought about some things I could say on Facebook, but my thoughts got so long I figured a blog post was better.

At the start, Walsh says he has been hard on the adult gaming community in the past. He does say it’s not a community just because you share an interest, but I disagree on that point at the start. Friendships often do start with common interests. Just today on campus I managed to start a Facebook group at our seminary for gaming. It can include board, card, video, tabletop, mobile, or collectible card games.

Walsh also does say in moderation it’s fine. He thinks a Scooby-Doo game is ridiculous, but in moderation, it’s fine. It’s worth pointing out for those who don’t know that Multiversus contains Scooby-Doo characters, but it is not a Scooby-Doo game. It contains other characters from the WB universe.

On moderation, I agree, and I think that applies to everything. As a conservative Christian, that even includes ministry work. If you are so involved in ministry that you neglect your family, for instance, you need to take a step back. People have to work to provide, but if you are married to your job more than your spouse, you have a problem. Even Ecclesiastes says too much study will make you tired and Aquinas argued that we need to play to refresh ourselves.

Walsh says the rejoinder he gets from gamers is “You watch football don’t you?” He does say it’s a little bit different, but doesn’t explain how it is. Now on my end, I could say watching 22 grown men go and tear each other up over a pointy-shaped object called a ball seems ridiculous to me. That’s also fine. We don’t have to have the same interests.

Yet some differences I want to point out on my end is that watching a sport is really a very passive activity. When you’re playing a game, you have to be engaged and you have to use your mind. Of course, you can be thinking in a football game, but there is nothing in the game that depends on your thinking. An Einstein and an idiot can both watch the game and think all they want about it and it won’t change the game a bit.

Also, many sporting events have some real-life consequences. I know a number of people who are intense pain later in life because they played football early on. The most danger you could be in from gaming would likely be some Carpal-Tunnel Syndrome. Also, I know that in many cases, when a team wins a major sporting event, like the Super Bowl, there’s a lot of rioting that happens in the town. Now I could be mistaken in this, but I have yet to hear of a town that was destroyed because someone or a team won the Pokemon World Championships or some other Esport event.

I would also agree that if you enjoy sports though, enjoy it in moderation. However, with sports, I notice that you can have a third of a nightly news broadcast dedicated to sports and news programs on the radio for hours dedicated to sports. I honestly wonder what can be said. That’s my ignorance speaking there. For games, we have an immense library of them we can talk about.

Walsh explains more that he doesn’t like the term community because it makes it a lifestyle that your world revolves around. I don’t know anyone who refers to the gaming community who thinks such a thing. I’m sure for the overwhelming majority of us that if we knew someone whose life did revolve around video games, we’d tell them to get help.

He also says our lives should not revolve around entertainment. Properly understood, I can agree, but I’m hesitant since one of my main emphases in understanding my Christian faith has been the joy of God and enjoying the world He has made. There are too many who have guilted Christians just because they enjoy something.

There is also something else about gaming. Gaming can be very intellectually engaging, especially in RPGs, since a story is told. You can base a philosophy course easily on video games. Right now for a class, I’m working on a paper on the themes of redemption and resurrection in Final Fantasy IV. As a kid playing this game just for fun, I never would have noticed this, but as an adult, I see it all over the game.

Gaming is also not an expensive hobby for the most part. The most expensive is probably buying a new console when it comes out. For us, you can buy several games at a cheap price and enjoy them thoroughly for hours. If you have hard copies, you can trade with friends.

For me also, as an Aspie, this allows me to connect with people. My mind works well with games and my former DivorceCare leader told my folks even that my gaming has an impact on my going to seminary. I have been playing games about fighting the battle of good vs evil all my life and I want to go out and have adventures where I am actually taking on evil. Peter Kreeft has said apologetics is the closest you come to saving the world.

In the evenings here, if the weather is nice, I go out walking and I have Pokemon Go at the same time. I get to see some of my fellow students and greet them and they greet me. It has been a joy to be on campus barely even a month and already students know me.

Also, many of our interests today come from things that resonated in our childhood. When the new Batman movie came out, who did I see it with? My nearly 70 year-old Dad. These movies aren’t just being made for kids. Adults love the superhero movies. For my Dad and I, it’s a connection as he grew up with these heroes and I can explain the new ones that I grew up watching in cartoons. I suspect if I get to have a kid someday, I will introduce him to the games I played as a kid.

In closing, I really keep thinking of something my therapist once told me. “An idol is always what someone else is doing.” I also think about how C.S. Lewis said that as an adult, he read fairy tales in the open. When he became an adult, he put away childish things, including the fear of being childish. I highly encourage people to lead multi-faceted lives and honor Christ with all they do, and that includes your hobbies and gaming. All that I do, I do seriously. When it’s time to study, I do, and when it’s time to play, I play seriously as well.

Overall, I agree with Walsh and much of what he says. None of this is meant to be antagonistic. It’s just explaining what myself and my fellow gamers do and how we enjoy our lives. I hope many of them would agree with what I said, at least about games as they might not agree on politics.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Deeper Waters Podcast: 6/8/2019

What’s coming up? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I love games. I always have. I remember seeing something under the TV coming home from school as a small child and being told that that was our Colecovision and finding out how it works. I was hooked from that moment on. To this day, I still get excited with the prospect of playing a game of traditional Ladybug.

I am also an apologetics nerd now. While I love games, I never got into sports really, except perhaps for some Braves baseball. With that, it’s only if my father-in-law wants to take me to a game or if they go to the World Series. Sports never really interested me, including football. The only reason I watch the Super Bowl is because I want to see the commercials.

But I do know that there are some people who do enjoy sports and I am appreciative when some people come out and write for them and use their interest to get them into the truth of Christianity. Football is often thought to be our nation’s most popular sport and while I don’t understand why, I have to accept the reality. Yet what can I do to get some who are not Christians and like football to accept the truth of Christianity?

To do that, you need someone who understands both football and Christianity. With a ministry I work with, someone did tell about a book that did such a thing and they wanted to send it to me. I warned them that I don’t care for football at all and I might not be the best, but they assured me I’d be able to follow it. For the most part, they were right, and so I have invited them to come on to discuss football and Christianity. His name is Jason Jolin.

So who is he?

According to his bio:

Jason Jolin got an Master’s in business administration and a certificate of Advanced Graduate Studies in Accounting. He also has a B.S. in Business Administration with a concentration in Finance and Computer Information and a minor in psychology. In 2012, he got a M.A. in Christian Apologetics from Biola.

We’ll be discussing how football and apologetics can interact. Jolin’s book is a story involving a game and what can be learned. It is a book that is easy to read and the average layman will be able to understand it. Even though I am someone who doesn’t understand or even like football, I did find myself enjoying the story to some extent. I suppose it could be that I can enjoy a movie like Rudy or Coach Carter even if I don’t care for the sport.

I hope you’ll be watching for the next episode of the Deeper Waters Podcast. Please go and leave a review on iTunes and remember that everything that we do here is done by the support of people like you and we could certainly use your support. Please consider becoming a supporter of the Deeper Waters Podcast.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Everyday Glory

What do I think of Gerald McDermott’s book published by Baker Academic? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

What does the world tell us about God? Quite a lot actually. In this book, Gerald McDermott seeks to open our eyes up to the realities that are all around us. We have lived in a world long enough where we take the world around us for granted and don’t really consider the revelation of God that is there.

As much as I am Protestant, this is also our problem. We, and I think rightly, say that Scripture is the final authority, but too often we make it the only authority. Thus, why do we need to look at the rest of the world to learn something about God? Why study natural theology at all?

McDermott urges us to avoid this way of thinking. The world is not an accident. God made it the way that He did for a reason. If we want to truly learn about God, we can learn about Him from the things He has made and ask why He has made things the way that He has.

To be fair, He does have a chapter on the Bible itself, but He encourages us to look for Christ everywhere in the Bible. Reading a chapter like this can help you to approach the Bible with new eyes.

From there, McDermott takes us to many other areas of the world around us. What can we learn from science? In this chapter, you’ll probably find many of the things you find in books that talk about scientific apologetics. Still, those who like that will be helped.

Animals are another aspect that are covered in the book. In this chapter, McDermott focuses on two specific animals. Those would be birds and dogs. Both of these are talked about in Scripture, and it’s interesting that dogs are talked about in a negative light.

Sexuality is another aspect that is discussed. What is it about sex that has captured our wonder so much? As I said on a recent podcast I did, we live in a world where we have all manner of new technologies and such to keep us entertained. What still holds our fascination? What God made back in the very beginning. Nothing can still compete with sex.

Sports are also included. Sports are a non-necessary part of reality and they are creations by us, but yet they also come with a number of rules and teach us a number of values. I found myself wondering in this chapter if the same could apply to video games, which I think it could, or even movies and things like that.

There’s also a section on other religions. It would be a mistake to think they get everything wrong. What can we learn from other religions? How are they similar? How are they different?

This isn’t every chapter, but it is some of them. There’s also an appendix dealing with the views of Barth and Luther on natural theology. McDermott makes a fine defense for his position.

I think this is a very helpful book to read. Reading this can help you look at Scripture and the rest of the world differently. It’s a way of analyzing reality to see the fingerprints of the creator in everything.

In Christ,
Nick Peters