Christian in a Paintball World


left - CEP are a Christian based paintball team that now play in the professional division of the PSP



"Isn't it unchristian to shoot people?"

Good question.

I gotta admit I love shooting people. With paint. I'm not bad at it either - not that great, but I've certainly had the odd moment of goodness. Still I gotta get a few things straight here as far as my faith is concerned because people don't really seem to understand what it actually means to be a Christian these days. Anyways it's Easter right so... yeah. Figure it's a good time to put the two together!

Paintball can be a pretty lame sort of a thing at times. Materialism - the love of possessions, hating someone even if it's just on a sports field, the sexualisation of the sport that goes on, the "look at me in my flash gears" vanity, the downright disgusting attitudes. I don't think Jesus would be a fan of any of that, and not just because he's Jesus or whatever - that stuff doesn't annoy me because I'm "religious". It annoys me because the world is pretty messed up and there are so many far better things to do with my time than prance around in my many hundreds of dollars worth of gear looking like an 80s punk at a party with a gun. Getting angry at people who are just having fun, yelling at refs, it's all a colossal waste of time.

You hear it all the time. Starving children in Africa, war in the Middle East, homeless people not a few miles away, etc. Most of us don't give a crap. It's too remote. So how can we justify playing paintball at all? Or anything luxury for that matter?

Let's get straight why I play. It's because I have fun doing it and because I enjoy the friendship and team spirit that goes with it. I like it for the workout, and the challenge of pushing myself. I don't like a lot of the crap that goes with it. I'd be perfectly happy if everyone used rental gear and overalls in a league if we still got to play some really competitive and skilled games and have fun.

And let's get straight why I play even though there are children starving in Africa. It's because we Christians need to be everywhere. We need to be in our society showing people the love of Christ, and giving reasons for the "hope that is within us". We need to be in Africa feeding people (without condition) and we need to be in the paintball world too. We need to be in the Middle East providing humanitarian aid, we need to be in the streets helping out homeless people. We need to be everywhere, not forcing our beliefs or putting conditions on aid, but sharing the gospel and our hope. If people don't like it they don't have to listen, but we have a mandate to share because it's simply too important not to. It's up to people do decide what to do with that.

Anyways where was I... oh yeah. Something about paintball. I guess though that that's the point really. I play paintball because it's fun and because I don't believe as some do that it's a good idea to extract myself from the world just because it can be a bad place. I play because everyone needs to have the opportunity to ask a Christian what they're all about. I play because I think maybe, just maybe, I'm meant to be in this game for a reason bigger than myself.

Comments

  1. AnonymousApril 22, 2011 at 6:12 AM

    Vijil...your the man :)

    <3 Andrew aka xDarkk :)

    ReplyDelete

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