I have cool friends.

Today a friend gave me some food for thought. At FHE we were playing one of those group guessing games like Mafia, and when it came to Peter's turn, he quietly declined. It was pretty clear he was being a "conscientious objector", but nobody asked him why and we kept on playing. Well, he walked out of the room for a while--gathering his courage, I suppose--and came back in and 'wondered aloud' (in a very humble, euphemistic Mormon sort of way) whether we could so whimsically play a game like this if the subject was something like unwed pregnancy, instead of murder.

We hadn't thought anything of it, of course, which may have been his point. Of course it was entirely good-natured--the game could just as easily have been about throwing pies or something equally apropos to the silliness of the game--but we were blowing each other away with shotguns and hand grenades and disintegrator rays, trying playfully to think up more and more over-the-top methods of killing each other.

I'm still not sure whether it was such a big deal (the evening came to a cold, awkward stop after he spoke up), but it's definitely something to think about. I couldn't see Jesus playing our game. Maybe it's because we've all been raised so far away from any real violence... we've only ever seen murder in the context of obviously-contrived entertainment, so that's how we see it. Sex, on the other hand, is something that is very much a part of our world; and certainly closer to our real contemplations than killing anybody. We've seen (at least in the lives of others) that it is extremely serious business. So maybe we're a little more careful how we speak of it.

I think it's probably cultural, too... if I had been playing the game with a bunch of guys, I would be more inclined to laugh off Peter's comments, but the idea of pretending to maim and kill women, now that I think about it, is viscerally distasteful to me. Why? Because violence among boys was rather encouraged when I was growing up... you stick up for yourself, don't be afraid of a fight, etc.; but you never, never, ever hit a girl. (That rule made absolutely no sense to me around about 4th grade when the girls were bigger than us and generally started the fights.)

I admired him for saying what he did, even if I'm still trying to decide what I think of it. He went about it in a very gentle, non-judgmental way... just encouraging us to think. We were having a lot of fun, it must have been a hard thing to do.

--Kevin