Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Some Things are So Ridiculous, Yet They are Real...




"Dance Praise is the interactive dance game that turns your PC into a dance arcade with top Christian hits. The game includes over 50 songs from Sanctus Real, ZOEgirl, Audio Adrenaline, and more. Each song offers 3 levels of challenging dance steps."



If you don't think there's anything wrong with this nothing I can add will either.

(I found this at PURGATORIO an excellent blog)

7 comments:

Dani Kekoa said...

Is this for really for real?

Oh Boy - what's next?

Unknown said...

I think it's a little bit funny, but I'm curious about what specifically you think it "wrong" about this.

Is it the "Christian" marketing?
Is it the dancing?
Is it the video gaming?

Honestly, this alone I find neither wrong, nor offensive, or even excited.

Now if you want something funny to see, I've heard that my father has done the PS2 version at my parent's house.... I've yet to see it for myself... ;)

R.S. Ladwig said...

Tim-lol
But yeah I guess when I saw the post orignally I was in one of my more exhausted by bad theology kind of moods. So such a sweeping statement as I have in my post may seem a little undue.

However, what I think is "wrong" is that it makes light of what worship is. It makes worshiping God into a game. So it's not the dancing or the video games themselves but the combination between worship and game. This really eliminates any wheightiness in worship...it just seems pretty clear to me that this is out of bounds because it makes worship of God and Christ a cavileer game.

Anonymous said...

I see where you're coming from with worship, but shouldn't worship be fun? It's for God's pleasure after all, right?

Personally, I've enjoyed the "Dance Dance Revolution" games with my wife. However, I really don't like all the hip-hop bump & grind type lyrics with them. I would much prefer to dance to songs that I actually like, which this game includes. What's wrong with dancing to praise & worship music? Isn't this what Michal criticized David for doing?

R.S. Ladwig said...

Hey Jason, you said:

"I see where you're coming from with worship, but shouldn't worship be fun? It's for God's pleasure after all, right?"

Oh I absolutely agree I think worship should be joyful in the believer. Because "In Your presence is fulness of joy and at your right hand are pleasures forevermore" (Ps 16:11). And you know what I really don't have much of a problem with outward bodily expression in worship (dancing). These aren't the issues though.

The issue is that worship is turned into a game we play. Michal was rebuked because she had NO emotion at all to the ark (presence of God) being brought into Jerusalem. She did not respond to the weightiness of this situation correctly she was bitter at David.

Now just because a proper response (and an integral part of worship) is rejoicing that does not mean reverence is wiped out and worship is just a free for all. (There seems to be an extreme of both of these in many churches I have been to. On the one hand people will be so focused on emotional experience that reverence is erased, on the other people are so concerned about reverence that joyful experience is erased). Its not one or the other but both. This game crosses the line of reverence big time I think. Worship is something we play with, a game. Well I don't think the worship of Jehovah is done reverently when we are trying to get high scores and a good work out at the same time.

Worship is to be God centered, not man centered. Our joy is to be a joy in God, not games or physical fitness

R.S. Ladwig said...

I completely agree MQM.

Unknown said...

Worship is anything that we give our focus to, our attention, and find important enough to give a priority to in our lives. It is part of our lifestyle, something we do every day. In most cases, our sinfulness is really a worship of ourselves.

God desires a complete relationship with us, not just a Sunday morning, put on your best clothes, and stand in awe while singing olde english hymns. He wants to be our focus all the time, which we are truly incapable of doing (hence our sinfulness). Therefore God should be present in our gaming just as much as in our conversations, in our thoughts, etc.

The reverence is that we desire God to be our focus, not just an attitude or a method in how we focus on God. We seek his grace and mercy to help our times of unbelief so that we can again be focused on God.

God created us with gifts and the ability to have fun and be recreational, along with being spiritual, functional, etc. So if people find enjoyment in dancing to Christian music and praise, that's awesome! They are indeed worshiping God in that process because God is in the focus. Dancing towards songs of sex, drugs, and self-fulfillment on the other hand is quite the opposite.