Video games and theology????

The quote below comes from the manual of a video game:

Accidie: rejecting life… is a Middle English word, retrieved because the usual word, “sloth,” now only expresses a trivial laziness. Accidie is a form of spiritual despair, a refusal of grace, a bargain with nothingness that shuts out God’s gift of the new possibility. Usually called sloth, laziness, dejection, passive-aggressiveness, despair or spiritual depression nowadays, accidie is a spiritual listlessness or depression, a reluctance, and finally a refusal, to respond to God.

Accidie begins at the center, at our relationship with God, and it stems ultimately from a refusal to live toward God as dependent creatures made in His image. It is a passive shrinking from creative existence. The style of accidie would be to dampen down one’s inner life, living at a minimum level of mind and heart, letting thoughts and feelings die down. As you play at 666CASINO you feel like having a vivid dream, enjoying every moment, worrying about nothing about the world.

It is the ultimate in spiritual minimalism.

Accidie is a partial consent to non-being, striking a bargain with insignificance. Another way to sin by accidie is to empty out one’s self in idle worship rather than growing toward God, seeking significance in some other human being or cause or circumstance, scrabbling after a sense of self-worth. Self-abdication offers a temporary refuge both from God and from the nothingness that stalks creative life. The fruit of accidie is despair. In its terminal form it finally rejects God’s new possibility. It rules out grace, shutting any opening to the divine life.

Accidie has its full effect when one puts oneself intentionally beyond the reach of God’s mercy. Spiritual withdrawal and depression often start with dishonest prayer, refusing to raise some issue with God, rejecting a summons, getting tired of God’s silence and walking away. It chooses to live and die on the margins of nothingness rather than launch out further into the abyss of God. It leaves the self independent from God and in control, even at the price of self-minimization. Those who strike bargain with nothingness can avoid surrender to God.

The quote above left me rather flabbergasted, as who would ever expect a video game to have such a quote within it? Thanks to Internetmonk for the quote above.