Online gaming has brought a whole new life to the role-playing games I knew growing up.
Back in the early 1980s, Dungeons and Dragons had an air of mystique and a reputation of leading unsuspecting teens into the world of the demonic. But the little exposure I had of the game made me question the viability of chaotic characters. And then my also limited exposure to The Call of Cthulhu mythos game play, with a humorous game master, was a fun addition to my college years.
But this approach to life as a vast game intrigues me. In fact, it provides a lens through which to view reality that I find quite helpful. I give a nod to the use of D&D in TV shows like Community and Stranger Things for sparking the following thoughts. But even more so, a mash-up of thoughts arising from biblical studies and the book The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker have caused me to think about how essential the imagination is for understanding the world and our place in it.
In The Art of Gathering, Parker suggests that every time we bring together a group of people we are actually inviting them into a different world operating by different rules.
For example, when students enter a classroom, they sit in chairs behind desks and are supposed to be silent while the teacher up front talks to them, only speaking when they’ve raised their hands and been called upon. This is actually very strange behavior. In fact, it’s so strange that many kids have a tough time playing by these rules. The wiggles in their bodies and the words in their mouths just can’t be restrained, even though they know the rules of the world of the classroom. But they try to restrain themselves and accept the consequences if caught.
Similarly, people sit in pews in churches, standing and sitting at the appropriate times, singing songs and reciting prayers on cue, and listening to a person lecture for a certain amount of time that is shorter or longer depending upon the rules of each particular congregation.
In a soccer match, fans sit in assigned seats and precisely 11 players from each team take the field, only one of which is allowed the use of hands to touch the ball. Each team wears a distinct color and often their fans wear the same colors, some in the same exact jerseys as the players on the filed, even though they themselves would never be allowed on the pitch. Other rules govern the game, some of which (like offsides) are arcane and questionable. But without these rules, the game would not be the game.
All games are determined by their rules. Without rules, there is no game.
But according to Parker, each game or gathering is itself a world. And each of us plays a role in the worlds we find ourselves in. And truth be told, we move from world to world to world numerous times in a single day, switching from one world with its set of rules to another without thinking twice about it. Our imaginations are so keen, we can envision each of these worlds and slip between them without a hiccup.
Now let’s insert biblical studies into the equation.
Eugene Peterson told me, “The word ‘biblical’ doesn’t describe a book, it describes a world.” I haven’t been the same since.
This isn’t a new idea with books in general. David McCord’s oft-quoted “Books fall open, you fall in” is the first line in a poem which suggests books enable us to “reach world on world through door on door.” So if books in general open up worlds to us to explore, then the Good Book opens us up not just to the Greatest Story Every Told, but to the biggest and best world we could ever inhabit.
The world the Bible describes is a world filled with God. Reading the Bible is like walking through a wardrobe into Narnia: There’s so much more inside the Bible than could expected by the seeing the it closed up and on the shelf. This world is vast and engaging. And the rules it operates by are different than the rules of the so-called “real” world — they are better rules for a better world and a better experience of God and life and stuff (which is an excellent name for a blog).
Let’s take a brief aside to consider the so-called “real” world. If our lives are comprised of numerous smaller worlds, then which one of them is the real one? Is the world of work the real one? Home life? Gatherings with friends? Political news? Social media? Celebrity-dominated happenings? Vacations? Whatever world I engage with is a world. They’re all “real” in their own way. And yet every one of them fails to be the “real” world in some way because none of them have the space for the rest of them.
The only world that accounts for every other world is this biblical world. It draws in every other world and establishes a single coherent way of making sense of them all even while clashing with the rules every other one operates by. And that clash is a head-on collision in some cases.
The Phillipian world was dominated by the Roman world. They relished being citizens of Rome, something few in the empire could boast. And in that Roman world, Caesar claimed the titles Lord and Savior. Against this, the biblical world asserts, “But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Phil 3:20, see also Phil. 2:9-11). Talk about worlds colliding! Add to this that the word Christ means the one who has been anointed king of the world (i.e. emperor of all) and the Phillipians found themselves faced with a decision: Which world will they live in? Will the biblical world shrink to be smaller than the Roman world or the other way around? Which one will encompass the other? Which set of rules and roles with establish what’s really real?
In the “real” world of competition and confusion surrounding race and economics and sex/gender, the biblical world posits peace and unity for those who have been baptized into this world by being baptized into Christ: “So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:26-28). Consider how this overturns so many ways we think about ourselves and deal with one another in the world of our culture.
There’s more to this biblical world than this. But I won’t draw the whole picture here. Instead I’ll move on to our roles within it.
In most alternative worlds or RPGs (roll playing games), we are reduced by our roles. The roles we play are smaller than we are ourselves.
A person with hands isn’t allowed to use them in soccer. An amazing dancer isn’t allowed to dance freely in a classroom. In order to operate within each of these worlds, we accept truncated roles, limiting ourselves. On a soccer field, I’m a player and that’s it. In a classroom, I’m a student and that’s it.
Within the biblical world, we become our true selves, our full selves. We become our image of God selves. The so-called “real” world can’t let us be so, since it has no place for God or images of God. But this is who we are in the biblical world.
Now, the biblical world does call on us to limit ourselves voluntarily in some ways but always does so in order for us to live the fullest and best lives, the lives we were created to live in the first place.
We limit our possession of things to those we have acquired, refusing to steal. We limit our sexuality to the covenant of marriage, refusing adultery or other forms of sexual immorality. We limit our worship to God alone, refusing a whole host of false gods both ancient and modern. We limit our words to those that are true and wholesome and constructive, refusing to speak false words and death-dealing words. And so on.
These constraints are the rules of the biblical world which open us up to the best life possible, a life much larger than any imagined in any other world, even those “real” worlds that abandon the constraints mentioned above or elsewhere in the Scriptures.
So open up the Scriptures and enter into the biblical world. It is vast! And in its God-shaped spaciousness, you’ll find yourself loving and living the eternal life, the life of heaven begun even here and now. World without end.
(Featured image credit: Nine Dots Studio)