Well, after a one-week hiatus, TWIJ is back and better than ever. The last two weeks, Jesus has been conspicuously absent from both American Idol AND Oprah, but we won’t hold it against them. Another big story that Jesus was absent from was the MASSIVE release of Grand Theft Auto IV. For those of you who have been living under a rock that was under another really big rock that was surrounded by a really high pop-culture-reflecting fence, GTA has been a staple of the gaming culture since 1997 when Rockstar Games released the first edition of the current four (not including expansion packs.) The latest release sold 6 million copies worldwide in its first week, grossing over $500 million (which was even more impressive than Iron Man’s $100 million take!), and the series as a whole has sold over 70 million copies.

 While we TWIJers hold no judgment on the players of said game (we have played it ourselves briefly and were not noticeably damaged emotionally other than the usual pain of our gaming suckitude), and we recognize the valid argument that violence-based games are the oldest form of human entertainment and are often cathartic in nature, we have to side with Mothers Against Drunk Driving and a host of other organizations (many of whom we don’t often agree with) that GTA might not be the healthiest indicator of where our society is in terms of Jesus-friendly ideals. That idea is based mostly on our belief that OFJ (Our Friend Jesus) generally frowns upon the following, which play a significant role in GTA IV: murder, drunkenness (including while driving), prostitution, and stealing.

As much as we hate to borrow an illustration (or anything else, for that matter) from Glen Beck, we will relay the parallel he drew in a recent episode between games like GTA and the military’s infantry training (which we know something about). It goes like this: In WWI, there was an alarmingly high percentage of soldiers who, when faced with the first opportunity to shoot an actual person, refused to pull the trigger. The Army, which prefers its killers to be of the cold-hearted, unflinching variety, realized that if they made the targets used in rifle target practice to have human silhouettes, the percentage of trigger-happiness went up dramatically. This led to even more realistic simulations created by the Pentagon to further desensitize the average G.I. Joe - simulations that were so successful that the percentage of soldiers who refused to pull their triggers on their first opportunity went from 85% in WWII to 45% in the Korean War, to less than 10% in Vietnam. Currently, that number is less than 1%.

Do video games kill people? Of course not. Messed up kids kill people, and all KINDS of things contribute to the emotional state required to kill another person. But you have to think that OFJ would not be a huge fan of a game that is at such a polar opposite from what He was all about: love.

Bonus TWIJ Notes
Here are the top three things we were doing while on our hiatus:

1. Watching our favorite part-time worship leader Jason Castro get the boot on Idol. He seemed more relieved to go than any previous contestant this year saying, “I’ve been telling people I was as happy last night as I was when I found out I made the top 24. This whole time, I’ve had a blast, and I was trying, but it’s just really been hard.”
2. Trying not to let E’s Chelsea Lately be our newest guilty pleasure. (We are failing.)
3. Being one of the 5% of the population that DIDN’T see Iron Man this weekend, which we hear is one kickass good time.

And we’re spent. See you next week.

You can also find this blentry loitering outside our favorite music site: Patrol.