This Blog

Welcome!

If you're reading this, you've most likely clicked on the link I provided on Facebook. If you've found this some other way, great!

This post is here to explain the purposes and content of this blog.

League of Legends is an online multiplayer computer game made by Riot Games, a company based in Los Angeles California. It has one of the highest player bases of any online game, and even has a competitive "eSports" scene. But that's enough information about that, if you want to know more about the game and how it works, read my post on it or watch this video.

Recently, I realized that I was playing this game too much, and it among other things was interfering with my life goals. I still enjoy playing it, but in moderation. Having taken a step back from it, however, I realized many things about the game that I either never saw before, or only vaguely understood, when I played for simple amusement.

League of Legends, like many other mundane things in life, is much more than a video game. Or rather, it CAN BE much more than a video game, if you have the eyes to see.

It's life. It's an extolling of virtue and condemnation of vice. It's purgatory. It's the Church militant.
And because of all of this and more, at times it's quite a lot like Jesus Himself!

Those are quite weighty topics, and you may be thinking "How can something like a video game, especially one that wasn't intended to be Christian, be all those things?"

It's because, of the many things man is, he is a moral and religious creature. As St. Paul said to the philosophers in Athens, approvingly quoting a heathen author, "In Him we live and move and have our being," (Acts 17:28 ESV), so man declares the glory of his Creator even when he may deny His existence!

The ancient Greeks taught that Athena was born from the head of Zeus, and they so grasped imperfectly the truth that Jesus Christ, the Word (and Wisdom!) of God, was "born of the Father before all ages." In this way, the developers at Riot Games can (even unwittingly and imperfectly) express the truths of the Catholic Faith through their very popular and well made video game.

The material for posts on this blog will be taken either from the in-game lore, or the various gameplay mechanics and concepts (more concrete examples will be provided as they are written):

• Vice, virtue, and Christian living in the stories of various characters and lore-related concepts:

                  - Vengefulness in Miss Fortune, Vayne, Graves, Kalista etc.

                  - Humility in Poppy, Tristana, Lee Sin, etc.

                  - The "Institute of War" and the Old Testament

• Vice, virtue, and Christian living in the competitive aspects of the game itself.

                 - The Seven Deadly Sins and the "Laning Phase"

                 - The concept of "Map Awareness" and the Golden Rule

                 - Humility vs. Pride in the "Marksman (Attack Damage Carry)" role.

• More abstract, allegorical theological concepts taken from the same:

                - The Ranked Ladder as a symbol of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven.

                - Winning and losing games as an image of the Church Militant

                - The concept of a "Carry" and how it relates to Christ, Mary, and the Church.

                       

As a last word, I also have a profound interest in Theology, and am even studying for a bachelor's degree in Theology from a Baptist institution, Anderson University! In order to stay sane, I need something fun to do with theology in between all the more tedious reading and school work.

So, even if no one reads this, it will be accomplishing a good task. But for anyone who does, I pray you are edified by what you read.

God's will be done!