Life as a computer game

I think I learn more in the process of being a mentor than those I am serving. It is incredibly challenging and enriching to listen carefully to another human soul and share in their journey, then to listen carefully to what God might be saying or doing in their life. I see my role primarily as drawing the two into dialogue, the Spirit and the person sitting across from me. I'm a sort of relationship counsellor seeking to strengthen and encourage their relationship rather than inserting myself into it, or making the discussion about me. After the sessions, I continue to dialogue with God about what I have heard and their journey informs my own.

Yesterday, I had a wonderful conversation with a young man. As we talked about things in his life, an analogy came to mind...perhaps from the Spirit. It has stuck with me, haunting me for the last day or so. I found the metaphor of a computer game helped to create useful categories for the young man and for me.

Some computer games can be played in a single player mode or multi-player mode. In single player mode, you are the only sentient being in the whole world. All the other characters in your digital world are computer generated, they are Non-Player Characters, NPC's. NPC's exist only for you to interact with in one way or another, to people your world and make it more interesting in some way. There is little or no actually morality involved in how you interact with them as they are not people, they don't have feelings, they don't really exist, they are only bits of code written for the sole purpose of their relationship to you. 

In multi-player gaming their are other actual people involved. You share the digital world with other real people, player characters, PC's. PC's are also represented digitally, but behind the graphics is an actual person with feelings and desires. They may look exactly like a NPC, but the morality of it seems different. The fact that another real soul is involved makes the interactions more meaningful and interesting as well as less predictable. They are more real. 

As the young man and I talked, we agreed that we often find ourselves playing the game of life as if it is a single player game. We ascribe value to people based on their usefulness to ourselves. We interact with people around us as if they were NPC's performing functions, poplulating our world, but not as real souls. As I have continued to reflect on this, I have realized the strength of my natural tendency to go through my life as if it really were my life, my personal domain, as if others exist only in reference to me. 

The fact is that we live in a multi-player world. We are surrounded not with NPC's but with real people, real souls with their own stories. They are not minor players in our own story, but each person is a lead player in the story that God is writing in and through all our lives. We reduce people to stereotypes and two dimensional sprites and in doing so we treat them as something less than a real person. This depersonalization fundamentally fails to recognize the image of God in each person around us. 

There is something comfortable about a single player game. The rules are more simple and easier to understand. Once you figure out the predictable patterns, you can manipulate the world and master it, control it. Real people are wild cards. They can not be easily manipulated or controlled. No matter how well you understand them, they remain free-agents, unpredictable. They do the unexpected and can wreak havoc on your carefully constructed world. I understand the allure of single player games and enjoy them, but God did not design us, or the world, for single player gaming. He designed us for community and relationship with Him and with others.

We must shake ourselves out of this "single player" mentality! We must choose to live in the real world and recognize the multi-player nature of the world around us. It is a question of perception. We must choose to renew our minds day by day, to recognize the souls around us, across the kitchen table and across the checkout counter. In doing so, we open ourselves up to rich and meaningful interactions with them and with the One who created us all for life with Him and with one another. When we do this, we begin to enter into the real world, to live the eternal kind of life, the abundant life. The Kingdom of God really is within you. 

Swimming and Gliding

With just a flick of his tail he glides so effortlessly through the water! A huge carp lazily swims around in a pool on the edge of our town. He moves with such grace and ease as he weaves through the plants and among the swarm of other fish.  He is clearly in his element, comfortable and confident.

As I watch I feel a tug from deep in my soul, a memory climbing toward my conciousness. The Spirit nudging me toward Him. "In Him we live and move and have our being." As I walk this earth I am in Him. I am right now surround by and lifted up by Him. He is genuinely present with me at all times. When I wave my hand through empty space, I am waving it through and in God. God is ever present and ever personal.

This God who is beyond my understanding, this God who created stars and galaxies, this God who penetrates every fibre of my being, every place in the universe and beyond, makes Himself personally available to me. He speaks to me. He works all things out for my good. He is working in and around me at all times, writing the story of my life, of all our lives.

I forget. I live as if I am on my own. I live as if it all depends on me, as if I am alone and vulnerable to the whims of impersonal fate or the chaos of human action. But this is unreality. The reality is that I am surrounded  and cared for by the most powerful and loving Being in existence. He loves me and has demonstrated this love in sacrificial and enormously costly action. I know His love and care from history and from my own life. But still I forget.

I thrash around trying to stay afloat, afraid of drowning in the threatening world around me; when I could relax into His love. I could glide along in His Spirit in the beauty of this world and the knowledge of His care. The circumstances remain the same, but as I stand next to the pool my perception has subtly shifted and the peace that surpasses all understanding comes to me. I am aware of Him and it is good.

God's Terrible Inefficiency

I realized again today how much my perspective is shaped by who I am. I am driven by efficiency and productivity. I am always asking how to improve something or how to derive more from less, how to work smarter not harder. This drive is partially a result of my basic personality type, but has been continuously reinforced by my culture and education.

Today I was bemoaning a particular ineffeciency.  I was telling my wife that the return on my investment in a particular project was inadequate. I was arguing against doing something like it again. She listened to my rant patiently then gently asked a question, "Did you do what God asked you to do?"

"Yes!" I answered, "I did, but God is so terribly inefficient!" Suddenly I realized that Jesus had really mishandled his ministry, had botched his opportunity to make the kind of big impact that he could have made. First, there is a question of timing. He was born in a time and place where his voice could not be heard globally. Certainly, it would have made more sense for him to be born now with ubiquitous global media available to spread his message and broadcast his miracles. There was no recording equipment, no TV, no radio, no internet. He could reach more people in one day with a webpage and a twitter account than he could in 33 years of wandering around preaching to people in person back then. What was He thinking?!

Second, there is a question of social and economic clout. Even if we grant that it was a good idea to be born then, He should have picked a better situation for himself. He was born into a poor peasant family in a backwards province far from the centres of power. He made no effort to use the established systems of influence in government or religious circles. Instead, he recruited a bunch of misfit hicks to follow him around, and wasted his time blessing children and even going so far as to tell people NOT to tell others about what he had done for them. Certainly the lessons of guerilla marketing and viral marketing were lost on him. Again, I have to ask myself, What was He thinking?!

I could totally have done a better job. I could really have helped Jesus to be more efficient and productive. Jesus needed a strategic plan and a marketing team. (Perhaps even a glossy brochure.) He wasted so much of his time talking to people like the woman at the well, or the woman caught in adultery. He should have been focusing on those with more clout. He should have spent more time networking and developing contacts with the decision makers, the influential people. He could have really accomplished so much more! When he died, even the few followers he had were scattered. All power in heaven and earth had been entrusted to him! He used this power to wash feet?! What was He thinking?

As I allowed this train of thinking to flow from my unconscious to my conscious thoughts, it became so clear. God's economy is simply not mine. He chooses to work in ways that appear to be terribly inefficient, and I find that personally frustrating. Often, it seems like He is wasting my time and energy. I want to improve on His plan.

But there is a freedom that comes from seeking to know and do His will. If I choose to live in light of His actual presence and sovereignty, I can actually relax. When I release my imaginary brillance, the fiction of my control, I can find rest for my soul. Isn't this where Job ends up. He wrestles with God (and God commends Him for his honest arguing) but the answer was not what Job expected. God didn't answer the specifics of Job's questions, instead He offered Himself to Job. He reminded Job of His true nature and character. He showed Job His greatness and Job felt appropriately small before Him. Job repented and found rest for His soul.

I am after the peace that surpasses all understanding. It is interesting that prayer is the doorway to this peace. In prayer we acknowledge our smallness and dependency. We come to God and lay our requests before him with a heart of gratitude then the peace of Christ guards our hearts and our minds. We can find our rest in Him and let Him do what really is best. Only He knows what is really best, only He knows the end from the beginning. So, the terrible inefficiency serves a perfect purpose, but only He is capable of working it all together for the good, for my good and the good of His Kingdom.