Every virtual square inch

As we head into September, the fall college sports scene is in full swing. Kickoffs, spikes, and yellow cards have long been features of the season. But a new brand of competition has been growing on campuses across the country, and Christian colleges and universities are no exception. Instead of footballs and running shoes, the equipment for these competitors include video cards, RAM, and mouse pads. As reported recently in WORLD, esports, short for “electronic sports,” are becoming a staple at more and more schools.

Critics of esports, whether professional or collegiate, often point to tropes surrounding video games. They are antisocial, promote violence, and foster anxiety and depression. And while it is true that esports can be occasions for all kinds of negative behaviors, in this they are similar to all other human endeavors. Taunting, for instance, is a penalty in college football because it happens so frequently. Is there anything more violent than an aggressive safety tracking a wide receiver with arms outstretched for a pass over the middle?

And while our digital lives represent threats to authentic sociality and integrated lives, it is also true that being part of digital communities can ameliorate some of those trends as new forms of engagement and relationship develop in virtual space. Esports are team sports, and they can offer ways of connecting to others in a college environment that can seem alienating and isolating, particularly to so many young Americans who have been acculturated to interacting with others only as mediated through screens.

Christians should be clear-eyed and cognizant of the real dangers of digital technology, including gaming livestreams and esports. One of the significant threats of our age is an overriding sense of fatalism, that some kind of doom is unavoidable given the trends in our culture. But that kind of pessimism is self-fulfilling when it leads to withdrawal rather than faithful engagement.

My teenage son once told me, half-jokingly, that the only jobs that would be available to him in the future would be professional gamer and YouTube streamer. These amount to the same thing, I suppose, but anyone who has seen children prefer to watch someone else play video games rather than play the games themselves has observed the power of engaging as passive spectators. In this there is a significant possibility for esports to become more of a mainstream spectator sport (it already is in some parts of the world, just as soccer is more popular globally than it is in the United States).

Esports can certainly be an all-consuming idol, just as more traditional sports can be. There are Christian schools, for instance, with multiple football teams, and there are legitimate questions whether such activities are truly within the scope of an institution of Christian higher education. But not all schools need to have the same curriculum, mission, or serve the same communities. Competition and perseverance, whether in the real-world stadium or a virtual arena, are important elements of growth and development into maturity. All good things can be abused, and esports will be no exception.

The Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper famously sought to validate cultural engagement by Christians by invoking the lordship of Jesus Christ over “every square inch.” But Christ’s lordship extends over every digital square inch as well, and Christians are called to follow him in our virtual lives online as much as we are to be his disciples in our everyday lives. “In the end it comes down to this,” said Kuyper, “we do not walk away from our own circle of human involvement and our occupation, but we remain in the order and location to which God has appointed us in life. In that calling and in that vocation we do not bury our talents but, using every means possible, we make the most of them.”

Brad Hickey, director of gaming at Dordt University, wrote his doctoral dissertation on competitive gaming from a Kuyperian perspective. “If we say that every square inch is God’s, then we have to include digital pathways and virtual worlds as well,” says Hickey.

Christian esports should often look quite different from secular esports competitors, just as Christian athletes have a distinctive approach relative to worldly standards of fame and pride. But if Christians can be salt and light in the real world, then they can certainly fulfill that calling in the digital realm too. In this way esports on Christian college campuses presents a novel opportunity for Christian discipleship, one that will only become more salient over time as video games and virtual worlds become more immersive and popular. Esports are one way that Christian schools can help prepare the next generation of Christians to faithfully follow Christ in everything—including video games.