Fantasy and RP

------------------- Fantasy§0 §0 &§0 §0 Role-Playing§0 §0------------------- §0 §0A Christian Response§0 §0 §0 §0 §0 §0 §0 §0 -†-

Fantasy has become a driving force behind our society today. So is all fantasy bad? Not at all. Whether it is good or bad is primarily dependent upon the source and object of the fantasy. Also, there remains the question ..

of how much fantasy is good-at what point does interest become obsession? §0 §0 §0role§0 §0 §0n. 1. A part or character taken by an actor.§0 §0 §02. Any assumed character or function.

All Christians are encouraged in the Bible to be involved in role playing as role playing is ultimately the fine art of imitation. It appears that God has created all mankind in such a way that we are, or should be, imitators.

When God created man he wanted us to imitate Him. From the old to the new testament God tells us to "be holy, because I am holy." (Leviticus 11:44,45; 1 Peter 1:16). This is the highest role that God wants man to play in life.

But our Creator didn't stop with telling us to imitate Him. God directed the apostle Paul to tell his readers to imitate him; as he imitated Christ (1 Corinthians 4:16; 11:1; Philippians 3:17; 4:9).

Elsewhere God even implies that we imitate some of His animal creations, like the ant (Proverbs 6:6).

With God ordaining this type of role playing for our betterment and knowing that we need to study, learn and research the roles we are to play, He not surprisingly left us guidelines.

Our highest form of study is to mediate on God's Word "day and night, so that {we} may be careful to do everything written in it."

(Joshua 1:8) and in a broader sense, we are told to restrict our study to "whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable.

if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things." (Philippians 4:8 - We can have an open mind; but not an empty mind).

These truths are the basis of God's ordained role playing and give us our standard by which to test all roles we seek in life.

All players of the popular FRP's (ie. D&D, Advanced D&D, Arduin Grimoire, RuneQuest, etc.) will tell you that violence, murder, mayhem, rape, magic and supernatural could be the key words used to describe the majority of the games.

At best some of the characters may be aligned as "good" or "lawful" (often meaning that they employ sanitized or more rule-bound methods of carrying out the same things that "evil" or "chaotic" players do).

Priest can be evil, neutral or "good" serving any deity (sometimes fictional, but often based in historical or pagan mythology and worship).

Role playing went wrong in the Garden of Eden. There Adam and Eve, who were created to imitate God, were seduced into believing that they could be God (Genesis 3:4). The penalty for this destructive role playing was death.

Every FRP player who has gone off the deep-end, resulting in murder, rape, suicide, etc. and some that don't get that far, have been a result of going beyond imitating their character, to believing they could be their character.

Obviously this extreme is wrong.§0 §0 §0God's people, while headed to the promised land, were instructed to "not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the (pagan) nations there."

(Deuteronomy 18:9) Knowing mankind's penchant for needing to know why, God spells out some of the practices these nations were involved in.

Verses 10 and 11 list everything from human sacrifice, divination and sorcery, to witchcraft, casting of spells and communicating with (demonic) spirits or the dead.

The Lord clearly says that "anyone who does these things is detestable" (verse 12) to Him. Ultimately anyone who rebels against God, by not following His commands,