Speaking Out

How do you, as a pacifist Mennonite, justify playing a violent game like Halo? was the question I got through the telephone one lazy afternoon. I stopped for a moment, nervously chuckling. “Um, well, you see. …”

Halo 101: After the editor of With (where this article originally appeared in the Winter 2007/08 issue) hung up, I knew she expected me to write a small explanation or apology—I can’t remember which—on how some pacifist Mennonites justify playing Halo.

Prepare to be disappointed.

First, let me give you a little background. Halo was released back in 2001 for the Xbox video game console. Since then, it has been released for PCs as well. It is rated M for mature, a rating similar to R for a movie, because of “blood and gore” and “violence.”

The game revolves around a super-soldier named Master Chief whose goal is to stop an alien force, the Covenant, from destroying all humans.

During most of the game, you find yourself looking from the perspective of Master Chief. So if he is holding a weapon, you see his back and his hands holding it, and an aiming scope in the center of the screen.

You are expected to beat the game by depositing small fragments of lead—propelled at a high rate of speed—into the bodies of your enemies until the entrance and residence of these fragments impede the normal operation of any of their primary biological processes.

In short, you shoot the aliens until they die.

This immediately poses a problem, as you are put on the forefront of a war, spearheading an effort to rain destruction upon an alien race that wants to do the same to you.

No room for Anabaptists: Mennonites have taken a stance of peace when two groups create war with one another, but that is not possible in Halo. Nowhere does it allow you participate in peace negotiations or write up a truce.

Kill the aliens: In the single-player mode, killing your enemies is the only way to reach the end. While you are never pitted against other humans, you’ll find yourself up against a variety of aliens, from half your size to three times as big, even zombie-like creatures, each with colorful blood.

The single-player game is very difficult to justify for a Mennonite. And it should be. Many people like to breeze over it with such phrases as, “It’s just a game,” and, “It’s not real.” But I can’t.

Granted, I love playing Halo, and looking from the outside in I can see how easy it would be to call us Halo-playing Mennonites hypocrites. But in this case, the word is justified. How can we say we dislike war when we are participating in digital battles ourselves? While it’s not outright hypocrisy—that would be declaring you’re a pacifist but jumping at the chance to go to war—it is a form of it.

A kinder, gentler Halo: In the multiplayer-game mode, you and up to 15 of your friends can shoot it out in a variety of matches, the two main ones being Deathmatch (where you see who can score the most kills in a set amount of time) and Capture the Flag. The main problem here is that instead of aiming your gun at computer-controlled opponents you’re gunning for an enemy that is controlled by your buddy sitting next to you.

But I view it as a competition between friends, much like a game of basketball or football. Like those sports, it’s a place to show off what skills you love to brag about. And like those games, if you’re not a team player you’ll end up losing.

No big deal?

The thing is, to a lot of youth this moral dilemma isn’t really a big deal at all. When I posed the question that I was asked to some of my friends, they all did the same thing I did. They chuckled.

Many of them simply admitted they hadn’t really thought of it or that it’s not that big of a deal. And I believe them. To us, this stuff really isn’t that big of a deal.
Should it be?

To me, at least, if I really want to belong to the Mennonite church, and if I really want to live by its beliefs, I need to at least think it over, talk it out with a variety of people and, most importantly, pray about it.

Will it end with me giving up Halo and its ilk? I don’t know yet. Will I be weighing the morals that a game is impressing on me from now on?
Oh yes.

Travis Duerksen is a member of Alexanderwohl Mennonite Church, Goessel, Kan., and a student at Hesston (Kan.) College.