Posted by Doug [Keflar] on April 04, 1999 at 22:04:49 {th2VaRoznYCuspFhnTUgvhKqcjatLo}:
The WTS has to stick its foot into just about every aspect of its poor member's lives. Including board games! Here's a classic Awake article I remember vividly as a dub. After it came out, several other dub chess players and myself argued for hours about "is it a rule", or "is it just a suggestion?" We finally concluded that there was no difference. We stopped playing chess. We were all MS's and didn't want to have our ranks busted down to rank-and-file again.
*** g73 3/22 14 Chess-What Kind of Game Is It? ***
The Need for Caution
Some chess players have recognized the harm that can result from playing the game. According to The Encyclopaedia Britannica, the religious reformer "John Huss, . . . when in prison, deplored his having played at chess, whereby he had lost time and run the risk of being subject to violent passions."
The extreme fascination of chess can result in its consuming large amounts of one's time and attention to the exclusion of more important matters, apparently a reason Huss regretted having played the game. Also, in playing it there is the danger of "stirring up competition with one another," even developing hostility toward another, something the Bible warns Christians to avoid doing.
Then, too, grown-ups may not consider it proper for children to play with war toys, or at games of a military nature. Is it consistent, then, that they play a game noted to be, in the opinion of some, an "intellectualized equivalent, of the maneuvers enacted by little boys with toy soldiers"? What effect does playing chess really have upon one? Is it a wholesome effect?
Surely chess is a fascinating game. But there are questions regarding it that are good for each one who plays chess to consider.
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This was Watchtower "advice." But underneath that, it was really a tacit statement of WTS "policy." The article was so negatively worded against chess that any idiot could see the WTS was against it. Any dub with "eyes of discernment" knew that. I did. I played poker and craps instead.
Doug