Michael Foster and Douglas Wilson engage in a conversation on YouTube about pornography and video games in a way that remains problematic. For one, linking video games to pornography puts a stigma on one that only belongs to the other. Is there something inherently wrong with video games like there is with pornography? The answer is of course no. Another way to look at this equation is to consider that Foster and Wilson are also making pornography something less by equating it to video games. Elsewhere, Foster has had to admit that video games in fact are not in and of themselves wrong and that right use of them is possible. Here in this video he is not so careful, however. After all, great marketing copy masquerading as pastoral advice is never a matter of making careful distinctions. For the extended commentary you’ll have to pay $79 a year on Canon+ via your iPhone.
Just in passing we might note that Foster/Tennant complain in their book about young men using YouTube to fix a car but somehow it’s useful for telling people how to be a man. Remember that Foster/Tennant have written that sonship can’t be gained from YouTube and that spiritual fathers/pastors have to be physically present in the lives of their newfound adopted sons. There is more here to Foster and Wilson’s commentary about masculinity aside from their misguided critique of video games. Technology itself is being disparaged while the authors also take advantage of its capability to spread their message. Why have pastoral conversations on YouTube at all if it can’t be “learned from afar” and “cannot be picked up from YouTube or from blogs or from books”? “Real life discipling” isn’t via YouTube but look at all the videos Foster and Wilson provide in attempting to do that very thing, especially if you spring for the annual Canon+ subscription on your smartphone. Have we forgotten the words of Jesus, “therefore all that they tell you, do and observe, but do not do according to their deeds; for they say things and do not do them” (Matt. 23:3)?
Porn and video games are inextricably linked here in Foster and Wilson’s eyes due to how they both supposedly dissipate masculine strength. The sort of pastoral advice that oscillates between one extreme and the other continues to enforce a postmodern dialectic. Participating in video games on the one hand is effeminate and fake dominion while on the other carefully qualified to be just fine. What exactly constitutes reasonable use and participation in video games Foster and Wilson never really specify or even mention in this short clip while the claim is made that video games produce effeminate men. The ambiguity and blurred lines between the two make for problematic advice and demonstrates how subjective and empty this kind of pastoral counseling remains. If pressed, the abuse of video games remains the target even while Foster and Wilson sloppily indict video games themselves as the producer of something other than masculinity.
What is the scriptural basis, however, for equating video games to pornography in a video like this? Foster and Wilson use a sort of interpretive maximalism to inordinately apply Proverbs 31:3 to video games as yet another example of “do not give your strength to women”. Foster picks up on what he and Tennant argue elsewhere, that somehow “playing video games and “binge watching shows” is “fake dominion”. Isn’t it interesting that binge watching Netflix is also included here? The so-called Metaverse isn’t even a reality but it also gets indiscriminately added. How about the kitchen sink? Should we throw that in also? Why not just say don’t waste your time with activities that aren’t productive rather than making all this about masculinity, dominion, and effeminate behavior? The Scriptures clearly say that believers are to wisely redeem their time as given to us by God (Eph. 5:16). But, this is an admonition Foster and Wilson won’t immediately go to because it is given to the church as a whole and not just men. In other words, the Scriptures that really apply to the abuse of something aren’t invoked because they don’t help Foster and Wilson enforce their problematic understanding of biblical masculinity.
One of the greatest weaknesses of Foster/Tennant’s It’s Good to Be a Man is that it never really defines masculinity. Everywhere the term is used as if the reader knows what the word means. The problem here, of course, is that there are competing definitions for the word across a wide spectrum even among authors that Foster/Tennant utilize and value. Douglas Wilson himself vaguely defines masculinity as a sort of sacrificial responsibility. Leon Podles defines masculinity as a pattern of union and separation. More basic definitions such as what makes a man a man are also everywhere. In all these definitions, echoes of Freud or Jung abound. Sometimes, the noun is treated like a verb. Masculinity is a set of behaviors rather than a state of being. What do Foster/Tennant mean when they use the term? We don’t really know except that they base their ontology of a man off the dominion mandate and the behaviors they identify as part of what Genesis lays out in the creation narrative. So, at best we can only infer that Foster/Tennant mean masculinity is something wrapped in the exercise of power to dominate the world through production, with sex as the engine of dominion in being fruitful and skillful workmanship at the ready to maximize dominion.
The undue emphasis on production, however, could easily be seen as yet another place where postmodernism is in play. Here is another area where Foster/Tennant and Wilson fall short. Is life only a matter of work? Put another way, was the garden in Eden only for working? Wasn’t the garden also something to enjoy? Wasn’t the Lord himself walking in the garden in the cool of the day, signifying both communion and enjoyment with him that should have been had without the Fall (Genesis 3:8)?
The Bible says “Six days you shall labor and do all your work” not work constantly and never stop. The Bible also indicates in Deut 14:26 that after tithing obligations are taken care of a man can buy whatever he likes in feasting before the Lord including “strong drink”–yet another thing that can lead to a ruined life if abused. Wine itself is made especially to gladden the heart of man (Psalm 104:15). In fact, even the Sabbath rest of the Lord’s Day in each week is not the only time when leisure is in play especially in a society where work itself is not the grueling thing it has been in the past due to the ever-expanding influence of the gospel in our society both through technology and the outworking of Christian culture.
What Reformed churches need to spend more time on here is developing a theology of leisure. Notice what Foster and Wilson are criticizing here, what’s in view while doing so, and what they don’t. Video games are equated to pornography while whiskey is on the table between them. So, there has to be some implicit theology of leisure and enjoyment in play on the part of Wilson and Foster yet they’re selective about what they enjoy. What about something like football? Football is practically another religion in the lives of many men yet it receives absolutely no attention in Foster/Tennant’s book on what it means to be a man. Neither does baseball, basketball, golf, cricket, soccer, hiking, fishing, or camping. Why not? Well, for one, football and other activities like it are seen as masculine affairs. Whiskey is something they would say men enjoy. Video games and the use of technology, however, are not typically seen in those categories and they’re new to our society. So, video games become an easy target in violating the sacrosanct ideas of masculinity that they value in fine Luddite fashion. Further, football is seen as real while video games are virtual or fake. But, as I’ve commented before on Foster/Tennant’s book this dichotomy is false as everything in this world is both real and physically situated.
The other problem here is that Foster/Tennant are only concerned to deal with masculinity as it pertains to productivity and do not in fact treat leisure or play–enjoying God forever (Westminster Shorter Catechism Q/A 1)–in their book. Curiously, a lack of focus on enjoying God forever also means a flattened and reductive view of sex that misses its enjoyable qualities in favor of producing children and seeing it as the engine of dominion. That’s also why we see Foster/Tennant and Wilson minimize the problem of pornography among men but maximize the negative potential of abusing video games in their book and this video. Foster/Tennant even state on their ‘It’s Good to Be a Man’ website that pornography use isn’t adultery in the confessional sense of ‘actual adultery’ that would result in divorce, because after all ‘it’s just pixels’. Someone tell Jesus (Matthew 5:27–28)! The only way to arrive at that conclusion is to focus on the nature of sex as a productive physical activity in marriage to exercise dominion and to continue to embrace a false dichotomy between what is real and what remains for them a virtual fantasy. The problem is that Foster/Tennant’s definition of sex remains reductive and as a result has implications far beyond merely thinking about how to be fruitful and multiply. This, of course, has clear implications for women also in terms of how their own consideration of something like unfaithfulness in pornography is ignored or minimized in favor of enforcing artificial distinctions between the real and virtual that Foster/Tennant maintain without basis.
Like the Ginsu steak knives however, there is more here in the special pleading Foster and Wilson offer and what they ignore with video games more specifically. Video games are played by both men and women in significant numbers. The notion that video games are the sole province of young men with time to waste is inaccurate, as 41.5 percent of video games are played by women and 58.5 percent by men. So, the further claim that video games are inherently masculine is also suspect. Recent studies have shown that video games can increase your attention span, improve intelligence, increase the ability to make decisions and problem-solving, and even improve memory and learning. In a knowledge-based economy, these are important skills to develop while the physical skill of digging a ditch is likely less helpful from an earning perspective (though there is something to be said for the lacking supply of tradesmen). Video games can also be a creative force in observing and creating new connections between different tasks and problem-solving. In other words, participation in technological endeavors more broadly enforces the creative nature of men and women made in the image of God to excel and adapt to present circumstances.
And, skill with video games is applicable to a wide range of important careers in technology and other spaces. Learning how to interact with AI and other automated algorithms in game play gives an important perspective to dealing with technology in other areas of life. The church overall needs to work on things like data literacy and technological capabilities from infancy forward because society’s increased rate of innovation means rightly dividing the word of truth going forward is going to mean fluency in all things technological. Tomorrow’s apologists for the faith are going to be technologists, not textual critics or marketing hacks. But, Foster and Wilson only reductively consider video games as a societal problem and then proceed to do armchair analysis of social, political, and psychological factors in concluding that masculinity is something governments condemn as Pharaoh did in killing male children. Perhaps in another post I’ll demonstrate how they don’t even get that societal diagnosis right but hopefully I’ve provided enough food for thought here in considering what they have to say and how far it remains from the truth of the matter.
Next Review:
The Anti-Technological Stance of It’s Good to Be a Man
No Fatherhood, No Manhood – Part 1
No Fatherhood, No Manhood – Part 2
No Gravitas, No Manhood – Part 1
No Gravitas, No Manhood – Part 2
How Porn & Video Games Hijack Manhood
Two for One Day – How to Bear the Weight/Manhood Through Mission