Christians and War Themed Board Games

Someone asked me, nonchalantly, about whether someone should play war themes board games. The logic was basically, "War is bad, therefore, should be play board games that glorify war?"

I thought I would give a short little response: 

You pose an interesting moral and ethical question. On one level, if the theme (any theme) bothers you, then, sure, you probably shouldn't play the game. I, personally, can't stand games (or movies) with Zombie themes. I find the whole concept of a Zombie just gross and preposterous :) So, I'd never tell anyone to do something that is against their conscience or they think on some level is just creepy or weird. 

To a bigger question, is war always bad in the sense of it has never has any inherent value? Not being a Pacifist, I don't agree with that assessment. Steps should be taken to try to avoid war, as it's always a tragedy that affects innocent people. That being said, sometimes war is the only option. There is evil in the world, and evil must be opposed. War is seldomly as black and white as that, but on occasion, it actually is. It's regrettable that it does have to occasionally occur, but sometimes force is justified to prevent an even greater evil. I wish the world was not like that, and we all lived in a place and time where such evil never arises, but, alas, we are not in that time and place yet and perhaps never will be. 

This is just my moral and ethical opinion, of course. I do think we jump to armed conflict far too quickly a lot of times, particularly if one factors in the miltary-industrial complex, which is likewise, a real problem. We always have to be sure if we use force that it is a legitimately just usage of force, and is not simply a means to an end, with the ends of someone somewhere making money. 

Now, this leads to the specific question of board games with war themes. On another level, one has to ask what the purpose of board games are in general. Are they just a pointless diversion, i.e. a complete waste of time where we might be doing something more productive with our time and attention? That comes from the old "idle hands are the Devil's workshop" school of thought. I don't advocate that myself, but there is something to be said for completely frivolously silly games that really have nothing of value to offer other than "Hey, here's some frivolous crap with no real strategy, but what the heck? We have an hour to kill." On one level, life is short, do we really have that much time to waste of things of no consequence. I get that. 

I think a lot of games, however, even if they seem a bit silly, do have something practical to offer. I think they can advocate mental health and de-stressing in a world that seems to want to make us anxious or mentally ill. They can also engage the mind, which has merit. Strategy, logical thinking, engaging the imagination...these are all worthwhile benefits of a lot of board games. So, board games do have many utilities other than simple diversions. 

Now, coming back to the war game element, I think we do have to ask ourselves what are we trying to get out of the game? Are we trying to engage our brains? Are we trying to just have a healthy diversion for a while from the toil and trouble of everyday life? Are we trying to learn how strategy works, yes, even in war? If we take the premise that if we don't learn from history, we run the risk of repeating it, I think we can use war games and simulations to learn applicable skills to maybe help prevent future wars?

I always use the scene from the early 1980s movie WarGames with Matthew Broderick, where the WOPR computer plays a game, and basically learns that the only winning move 'is not to play.' Granted, most of us aren't making day to day decisions about whether or not to launch actual weapons of mass destruction, but we can learn lessons like that from war games. And I think that is a worthwhile endeavor. 

Now, conversely, if we are using war games because we are fantasizing about dark things like wanting to eliminate whole populations or we use it as a placebo for actual lust for world domination, I think you would probably not want to play games like that if it's fostering sick or twisted fantasies. There was an early Christian desert father called Abba Moses in the 3rd century who was quoted as saying, "He who studies evil is studied by evil." If in studying a war board game, are we studying something evil because we want to engage such evil, then, maybe we shouldn't play them if something evil starts playing on our minds in the form of mental illness or even something extrinsic or whatever. 

This is an extreme example, but again, morally and ethically, we need to weigh what are motive is and what we hope to get out of such games. Nothing tells more about a person or a civilization than the games they play. So, something to think about.