A Defense of Immorality

by Martin Haller 

I try to be an open minded, accepting, tolerant person. It is therefore, with much chagrin that I read John Michel's article, which promoted the kind of close-minded religious fantacism that truly frightens me. Had it come from the mouth of a Jew, or a Muslim or a Buddhist, I would have been equally shocked and offended, but it just so happened to come from a mouth of a Christian. So please don't take this as a knock on Christianity. It's more an attack on seclusion.

To hear Mr. Michel explain it, morality is Christianity, and Christianity is morality. RPGs have no business promoting anything other than Christian morality. ("I am wholly in favor of religion in videogames as long as it is dealt with in a moral, christian light," and "if this sort of atmosphere cannot be portrayed without offending people, then religion can be left out entirely.") As I understood those two thoughts, it would be outrageous for a game to portray Hinduism in a positive light, but right and proper for them to praise Christ. If I am alone in seeing the frightening attitude here, then I guess I'm just crazy.

Maybe I'm one of the decadent, immoral people of this new society, but I think that stories that deal with real life issues can still be "strong, moral stories." Violence, hatred, racism: All these things reside in our world, and need to be dealt with, not ostrich-like, but by facing them head-on. The more we seek to ignore these problems, and shift the blame and responsibility to a divine power, the worse they will become.

Maybe I played Final Fantasy 7 and didn't take the message to be "go out and sleep with any consenting individual [you] feel like." Frankly, the only message I got from the game was a very Green Peace, anti-pollution one. Certainly, with a mix of True-Love-is-Eternal and Be-Yourself. But then again, maybe underneath that, the only real reason I played the game was because it implied Cloud had sex with Tifa. Yeah, that's why I played it! And also, because it let me cut Sephiroth into a million pieces that shot out green light! In fact, after playing the game, the first thing I did was rush to the store, buy a mammoth sword, and attack my arch-nemesis. No. Actually, I didn't.

But enough of my rambling diatribe. I feel like making a point here. Mr. Michel believes that any text dealing with violence, lust, whores, torments, and death must be evil. But what if such a text also dealt with things like men sleeping with animals, or decapitation, or mass killing of children?* Why then, we'd call it the Bible. Which Mr. Michel asserts is the source of all morality. So why is it that the Bible can speak of God destroying whole cities, of Him slaying first-born children, of Jesus pardoning a whore, or Salome seducing and demanding death? If this can deal with such dark things, and still provide a strong moral code, why can't other things? I'll leave that one for you to answer, John.

* The references above are to a section of Leviticus that states "Thou shalt not lie with a beast as thou wouldst with a woman," Salome demanding the head of St. John the Baptist, and Yaweh (God) indescriminately slaying the first-born children of Egyt as the last of the Plagues. See, even heathens like me know the Bible.