Choices, Religion and Roleplaying

I have mentioned more than once my hobby of tabletop roleplaying games, and have already used player actions within games to draw comparisons with the differing emphasis on free will in different schools of theology.  I like these posts, because they allow me to combine two things that I end up thinking about a lot; roleplaying and theology.  Yeah, I know.  I’ve never claimed to be one of the Cool Kids...

I’ve run a great many games over the years, and if it isn’t blasphemous to say so, I’ve made very much the same mistakes (or, rather perhaps, choices) as God, with similar results.  Again, it is a question of permitting choice and then living with the results, although this time it is not a question of the player characters within the game world, but of the players.  (Any of my regular roleplay group who read this, this isn’t a criticism of you at all, it’s just my reflections on perceived mistakes I’ve made with regards to the smooth running of games.)

Now, I like to try and give my players as much choice as possible, and I am talking about the players, not their characters.  The problem is that they very often don’t choose what I would consider my preferred, or even the optimal choice. 

A prime example of this is a steampunk game that I ran a few years ago.  The player characters were to be the crew of an airship in an alternative version of the late 19^th century.  My intention was that they would be the crew of a tramp trader of medium speed, and with light weaponry; an all-rounder capable of fighting if need be, but also of acting as a merchant ship, transport or what have you.  Unfortunately, I’d come up with deck plans for several variants of a smallish airship, and decided to let my players choose what type of ship they wanted, from a list of all-rounder, smuggler, merchantman or mercenary warship.  As far as I was concerned, with my mighty omnipotence, the all-rounder was by far the best and most versatile choice.

They chose the warship, with rather more than four times the firepower of the tramp trader, but a very small hold.  As a result, aspects of the plot played out rather differently and in hindsight, not quite how I would have wanted it to go.

More recently, it came round to my turn to run a game again, and again decided to allow my players to make a choice.  This time it was between playing a fantasy game, or completing the historical swashbuckling campaign that we started last year.  At the time I was more or less ambivalent as to which they went with, and they chose the fantasy campaign.  Since then I’ve found myself far more in the mood for swashbuckling than fantasy.  This isn’t really my players’ fault; my moods are notoriously mercurial when it comes to these sorts of things.  However, if left entirely up to me, I may well have gone for swashbuckling.

So a fantasy game then.  Again I gave them a choice (why don’t I learn?) between a complex but detailed set of rules, including a complicated but realistic combat system, and my own home-made system, which is simpler, and which we’d used for the swashbuckling game, and which I have used for multiple different genres of games over several years, with continuous tweaks and adjustments.  Obviously it is perfectly in line with what I want out of a set of RPG rules, but that is purely based on my preferences.  However, I’m wary about forcing it onto other people, and using it for every single game I run.

They chose complex-but-detailed.  Since buying these rules, I’d not had a chance to try them properly, so I was perfectly willing to do so.  However, after two sessions, it’s clear that the combat rules especially, given the large size of our group, are a little bit too much, and I now wish that I hadn’t given them the option.

I’m reasonably sure that my players don’t deliberately choose the option that I don’t favour, since I try not to make my preferences known ahead of time.  The obvious response is not to give them a choice at all, and just enforce my sovereign will, but I don’t wish to do so.  After all, I am running the game as much for their enjoyment than mine, if not more so.  It is true that since I already know all the rules, and already know what the plot is going to be, and how things are likely to unfold, I am in the best position to make these decisions, and not bother consulting my players at all.

It might well be that they would in fact enjoy the game more if I did just autocratically impose my will, certainly I believe that the games would have gone more smoothly, but I want to offer my players choices.  I want to give them choices.  However, because they lack my insider knowledge, they often don’t choose what I would consider to be the best option.

And now: the theological analogy!

On the face of it, the whole free will thing seems like a bit of a mistake.  After all, we lack the knowledge to make the best decisions, at least in the long term.  Unlike me, God does make his preferences known, but then follows it up by saying, “But, y’know, it’s up to you.  Your choice.”

And then we choose the wrong thing.  But at least we did choose.  We are not puppets or automatons, we are responsible for our own actions.  I’ve seen atheists say that religion is an abdication of responsibility onto God and/or the devil.  I consider the opposite to be true.  We believe that not only do we have a genuine choice, outside the constraints of the hormones and electric impulses that modern neurology tells us are all that make up our minds and wills.  Not only that, but we believe that those choices have consequences that are not only real but eternal.

We have been given the choice, and we have been given the rule book.  We don’t know the plot yet, but I believe God to be the kind of GM who would rather let his players make choices than have the smoothest possible game.

Costs and Benefits

I have always done my best to keep this blog relatively light-hearted, even when attempting to deal with fairly serious subjects, but for today’s post, I'm afraid that I'm going to indulge myself and have a little bit of a rant about a subject that makes me rather cross.

Apparently, the Church of England is concerned about its cathedrals, or more specifically, about their finances.  Of 38 cathedrals who responded to a survey, 26 said that they were worried or very worried about their future.  Increasingly, to cover costs, they are being hired out as venues for concerts, lectures and banquets.  Now, I don’t have a problem with this.  I’m all in favour of using churches (and as far as I am concerned, a cathedral is nothing more than a big church) as social places, and to serve the community in which they are situated.  8 cathedrals charge people to enter (which is another thing that makes me Very Cross, but isn’t what I want to focus on now).

What angers me are the costs themselves.  According to the article, some have running costs of £4000 per day.  That £1,460,000 per year, per cathedral.  Blackburn cathedral is about to complete a redevelopment that cost £8,000,000.  In 2015, the C of E gave £8,300,000 to cathedrals to help with running costs.  In a world in which millions of people are starving, homeless, displaced by war and persecution, suffering from easily cured diseases and lacking the barest essentials, often even in the midst of ‘developed’ countries, those figures strike me as obscene.

I should explain at this point that I am from a Low Church background.  Methodism has no cathedrals (at least in the UK), and I am Low Church even for a Methodist.  I have no personal attachment to vast, ornate church buildings or trappings of rite or ritual.  A hall with chairs for the congregation and a lectern for the preacher are all I require for a church building (and a small kitchen for making the post-service cup of tea, obviously).  A nice big cross at the front and an organ/piano/keyboard are desirable, but not essential.  I enjoy visiting cathedrals; they are breath-taking buildings, awe-inspiring and beautiful, but as far as I am concerned, they are a nice-to-have. 

I am a firm believer in the idea that a Church is its people, not its building, and as soon as a building becomes a drain on, or even the focus of, a church’s time and efforts, it has become a sort of idolatry.  I fully accept that as large, prominent and highly visible symbols of Christianity, they can potentially be extremely valuable for the mission of the church, and many people find the ornate trappings and awe-inspiring spaces valuable, maybe even vital, in helping them connect with God.  However, if the Church of England is having to think of ways to scrabble together enough money to fund its cathedrals, instead of being able to think of ways to use its cathedrals to fund its ministry, then they have become a hindrance to be cast off rather than an asset to be kept.

There are several organisations dedicated to the preservation of historic buildings, and I am glad of it.  The Church is not, or rather should not, be one of them.  Jesus had much to say about what we should do to help others.  I cannot think of anything he said about the importance of maintaining buildings.  If the Church of England has £8,000,000 burning a hole in its pocket, it is grotesque that they spend it on shoring up mediaeval edifices rather than on building the Kingdom of God.  It is my opinion (and after all, that is all that it is) that if their cathedrals are not easily paying for themselves, then the Anglicans should sell them; to English Heritage and its sister organisation, to the National Trust, or directly to the nation, and put that money to what I would consider Christian uses.

This applies equally to the many ancient churches that the Anglican Church has which, although they don’t have the tremendous running costs of a cathedral are nonetheless a severe drain on the Anglican Churches resources, especially with congregation sizes and donations decreasing every year.  I would not be the first to call them a millstone around the C of E’s neck, and again if asked, I would advise without hesitation to get rid of them and buy or build something more modest and more affordable.

But then, for reasons wholly unknown to me, the Archbishop has not yet asked for my opinion.  Maybe he’ll read this post and be persuaded?

Religion Up Close

I apologise for the length of time I’ve taken in getting another post out.  I was away for Christmas, and then we were moving house, and have been living like benighted savages, hunting with stone-tipped spears, avoiding sabre-toothed tigers and living with no internet access whatsoever.  However, the internet has been restored to us, and we have thus returned to the folds of civilisation.  This being so, I hope that you had a very happy Christmas, and I would like to wish you a happy and prosperous new year, belated those these wishes may be.

So much for the preamble and excuses and pleasantries.  What I actually want to write about in this post is a vague realisation that I had before Christmas.  I’ve sort of mentioned it before, I think, but I believe it bears closer examination.

It is this:  When atheists and antitheists attack religion, what they very often attack is this vast, nebulous, faceless, monolithic entity called Religion.  It looks a lot like militant Islam crossed with the worst excesses of American right-wing fundamentalism, and is an oppressive, repressive, greedy, grasping, diabolical entity responsible for jihads, pogroms, inquisitions and persecutions.  It is a vast weight on history, dragging people down and back and allowing the evil to rule the ignorant through fear and superstition.

And do you know what?  Standing at the distance that they are, that is certainly what it does look like, in a certain light.  But then, from a distance, a mountain can appear to be a vast, barren rock.  From high above, a rain forest can appear to be a single, homogenous blob of green that could be swamp or jungle or even just a vast expanse of moss.  A beach appears to be an empty stretch of dry sand.  Seen from a distance, such things appear almost lifeless.  You have to get up close, or even get inside and underneath them, before you realise that they are full of life.

I frequently read the tirades of online atheists, and wonder whether they’ve actually spent any time around ‘everyday’ theists, the kind that inhabit their local parish church and run the coffee morning or the jumble sale or hand out the hymn books.  You get the impression that if they have ever met a theist in the flesh, it’s been a door-to-door Witness or a slightly spittle-flecked street preacher.  They rage not against the vicar or the minister or the church steward or the chap sitting at the back of the church with a newspaper when it’s open for people to wander about in during the week.  Their bile is reserved for Religion.  If they think about those people at all, it is only as cogs of the vast homogenous oppressive machine of Religion.

And this is it, when one looks back at the past from the distance of centuries one sees the inquisitions and witch hunts and jihads writ large in the pages of history.  You look at the newspapers and websites today and you see ISIS and the Taliban and Westboro Baptist Church, and church sex abuse scandals.  What you do not see, what was not considered history-worthy, what is not considered newsworthy, are the hundreds and thousands and millions of small acts of kindness and charity and generosity and mercy and humility and self-sacrifice, of hope, faith and love that are the result of individuals’ religious beliefs.

But in order to see these things, you have to get up close.  You need to put down the telescope and actually walk up to the mountain, and talk to the people living on its slopes, to understand what life is like there.  Unfortunately, to do such a thing is not only daunting, I suspect that many would think it unnecessary.  They don’t need to talk to religious people to see that Religion is evil, any more than they need to dig up the crabs and worms to know that a beach is lifeless, or walk beneath the trees to see the many animals living in the forest.

“Oh, of course there are some good religious folk,” some may concede, but Religion should still be banned.  What they fail to realise is that there is no such thing as Religion.  Only religious people.  I’ve said in a previous post that there’s no such thing as Christianity, but that goes double for Religion.  They rage against a thing which does not exist, and ignore the people that actually make up what they think they oppose.

And of course these footsoldiers and factory floor workers aren’t perfect.  Many, maybe even most of us are hypocrites and recidivists, wrapped up in our own holiness and how much better we are than others, by sheer dint of being us.  But that doesn’t mean that those acts of goodness that I mentioned aren’t being performed and a billion ways, in a billion places, every single day.

A machine is just the aggregate of its parts.  A society is just the aggregate of its members.  A religion is just the aggregate of its people, and their actions and their beliefs and their opinions.  There is no such thing as Religion, there is only us, and as a result we each have the responsibility to make sure that what we are adding to that aggregate is something positive and worthwhile, even if the people who think that they oppose us never see it.