It’s deplorable when we cannot admit how we fail.

Over the last several weeks I’ve slowly absorbed a plethora of opinions about how video games do or don’t contribute to violent acts. None of these arguments are new (and honestly none of them are even really substantial one way or another) but none the less they volley back in forth throughout society because we always need a scapegoat for evil.

As people, we understand good. We can see how we are a part of a larger community that professes to care for others and support the common goodwill of all. However, humans, at least in the West, seem to have an extremely difficult time owning up to the fact that we foster a cultural mentality which is riddled with judgmental ego-centrism. Like Dante’s Inferno, we predominantly seem focused on clutching to each other simply for the sake of satiating our own hunger.

However, this was not how we were created to be and as such, self righteousness is not the natural way in which we respond to each other. Rather, it is a learned trait and as such it can be unlearned. We can again come to understand how to create authentic community. We can learn how to uplift others and bless them through our individual spectrum of gifts in humility. Yet in order to do this we must stop hijacking segments of society which are not the core issues to our problem. Video games, the church, schools: all of these things have beautiful and hideous sides to them but they are merely tools which reflect the people who wield them.

If we truly want to live in a world that is beautiful then we have to take individual and communal responsibility for the ways in which we sacrifice the community for the sake of ourselves. When we finally learn to put others first then perhaps we will be able to mature beyond the need of a simple scapegoat, and as a result we may finally learn what it means to truly live life.