God has given us many tasks that are both a duty and a blessing. God blesses us to be able to fulfill His will/desire for our lives. This involves bearing the image of God to the world around us. Video games take me away from those types of thoughts and fill my mind with a different image, an image of my own making.

Hebrews 12 begins with these words,

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.

This verse has a great truth for us to consider. When assessing our lives as Christians, we usually look for ways we break laws or rules in the Bible. But often sin is just as much disobedience to positive commands and instructions. I am commanded to make disciples, love my neighbor, and love my brother or sister in the Lord. Consider the many “one-another” commands in the NT alone and you have a long list describing God’s will for your life. Yes, the Bible is full of restrictions, but it is just as full of instructions. And those are just as important to the Lord. We need to follow both.

Sometimes the Christian life feels stunted. We want to grow, but we don’t make much progress. We feel like we are just spinning our wheels but getting nowhere in our sanctification. Often this is because of open or clearly visible sin in our life. We transgress a restriction in Scripture (“thou shalt not . . .”) or we don’t obey an instruction in Scripture (“thou shalt . . .”). We know exactly what we are dealing with in these situations. The issue  is obedience.

But other times the issue may seem rather gray. Is this *thing* in my life a sin or is it ok? Situations can seem difficult to distinguish for various reasons. And if we love the *thing* in question, that only intensifies the grayness of the issue. We find that we lack resolve precisely because we seem to lack a “thou shalt” to push us in that direction.

What About Weights?

This is where the book of Hebrews can help us. I am thankful that this verse adds the category of “weights” to my decision-making list. A weight is something that holds you back, but might not be sinful (and often isn’t). In the author of Hebrews’ mind, it might have been the context of running. As a runner (which I am not, though I have been told as much) you want to take any weights away so you can run more easily. Sometimes runners will run with a vest that has weights as part of their training. This adds difficulty and thus strengthens them. Then on the day of the race, they shed the weight vest and are able to run further and faster.

So, what is this weight that so easily entangles young men? Is this another post about porn? While that is a weight that does in fact entangle men, I am not talking about that. Porn has many thou-shalt-nots in the Bible. No, I am talking about something more sinister. It eats time and doesn’t often alarm the conscience. It offers relaxation but delivers tension. And after the fact it usually adds a scoop of shame to the shoulders of the one entangled in its trap. What is it that I am talking about?

Video Games Weigh More Than You Think

As a former gamer who played nearly 8 hours a day in my late teens, and even played a few hours a day in my early married life, I see the weight of video games in a very clear light. They are one of the most difficult practices to deal with because they don’t seem to trip the alarms of our conscience like other sins or weights. Let me offer a few thoughts about how they weigh down our walk with the Lord.

Video Games Consume Time

Usually, a gamer doesn’t intend to play very long. A quick session before some chores is meant to last only a quarter hour but ends much later. A gaming session with the guys before catching up on homework goes late into the evening, pushing homework late into the night. Even phone games take more time than most realize. Since quitting phone games, my eBook consumption has gone through the roof. Those few minutes here and there really start to add up.

Video Games Appear Neutral or Benign

When you get a diagnosis for a tumor, you want it to be a benign tumor. That means the tumor isn’t a threat and can be easily removed or ignored. Video games don’t all possess nudity or extreme violence, but many do. While violence in real life would never be tolerated, in video games is can be par for the course. Sometimes the central aspect of the game is pretending to commit sin (consider an older game like Grand Theft Auto where the main character is a criminal).

Read More