I’m going to be honest with you and say that I’m using this source about a new Dungeons and Dragons movie to talk about something else. I honestly don’t really care about a new Dungeons and Dragons film, but you can read the Source here if you do. I’ll go ahead and spoil it and say that Warner Brother seems really interested in it, for some odd reason.

The reason why I am bringing this up is I am using it as an excuse to talk about something: how the church can be…off. Yeah, I have been a Christian for over 25 years, but it has been very recently that I haven’t questioned God or Jesus, but the supposed values of Christians. I’m going to bring up the issue of Dungeons and Dragons, which I have not heard hardly anything about in the past decade.

If you are not family with Dungeons and Dragons, it is a role-playing game that allows players to imagine themselves as characters in a fantasy universe. There has to be a Dungeon Master who sets the scene so the characters can have some direction, and this Dungeon Master has to adapt to whatever the characters do.

I was told when I went to church in the nineties that this game is some kind of gateway drug into satanism. I believe that most of this is related to cases of suicide, and it was found that some victims play Dungeons and Dragons. There was even an after-school special called Mazes and Monsters where a player of the title game (an obvious rip-off of the popular role-playing game) became insane after playing the game. It actually starred Tom Hanks in one of his first roles, and I remember watching it and not thinking it had some agenda.

However, the church somehow adopted an agenda in the eighties and nineties, saying these RPGs were just evil. I admit that I joined in this mindset, and one of the first short stories that I ever wrote was anti-RPG propaganda. I have reversed my point of views, and my logic in the theme of this story is mistaken.

The truth is that these RPG games are no more harmful than sports. Yes, the characters use magic and kill enemies, but honestly, it isn’t real. Yes, there are probably people who have gotten into them in an unhealthy manner, but I can’t think of anything that can’t be abused. I’ll go ahead and segue into how I feel about Christianity.

Recently, I have seen how some Christian views are mistaken, and their attempts to save people have resulted in people just feeling bad about themselves. Two decades ago, it was considered not Christian to play these role-playing games, but a recent search on Google has shown practically nothing about it. Also, World of Warcraft became huge, and I never heard any Christian organization condemn it. Maybe they did, but who knows why I didn’t hear about it.

The church did the same thing with Harry Potter, and I never hear about that anymore. I think it is good that the church has changed, and I hope it gets more-Christ-like, really. That is, a bit more acceptable of things like RPGs, that don’t harm anyone. I understand about spreading the Word, and wanting to stop sin, but these RPGs don’t fall under that category.