LIFE IS NOT A GAME

Authored by Gary Jones

There is a good reason why in our nature we invent foreign adversaries in order to hide our true condition. Our pretence we think will protect us from the reality of admitting our problems are our problems. If we play this avoidance game, we are cheating ourselves out of appreciating what God is doing with us, in the midst of our problems.

God created this life according to His plan and for His Sovereign purpose. It should never be characterized as a game or a drama to be played or as a rehearsal for something else. These tongues in cheek flippant commits are indicative of those who do not take The Scriptures very seriously. The Scripture state clearly that God’s purpose for all of this heaven and earth effort is to create a family that is devoted to Him only [Romans 8:29]. The price God had to pay to make this family possible was to sacrifice His Son [Romans 8:3]. We need to honor God’s plan and take everything He did and is doing very seriously. The nature God has given us at our birth is totally corrupt and opposite from the nature God requires in His children. This life is the factory where the raw material is transformed into an acceptable product that is then resurrected into a member of His eternal family. During this temporal life, there exists in our nature, a helpless and pathetic ambition to contribute to the regeneration of our corrupt spirit, but God’s Spirit accomplishes this task all by Himself.

For example, this human nature avoids personal blame by telling horror stories, by blaming some one else, by being constantly discontented, being selfish, being fearful, and have a tendency to procrastinate. The reason these things are found in everyone is because these characteristic are all a part of our basic design; God made us this way. We are all born with certain anatomical configurations, skeleton, blood, skin, heart, brain, etc. Hardly anyone questions the assumption that our physical morphology has its origin in our created design. Even the evolutionist believes there is a rhyme and reason in the way we are put together. We may have different opinions about the origin of creation, but nearly everyone believes we are put together the way we are according to some consistent design template. The thought that we have a spiritual nature, or a soul, that is just as complex and is just as consistent as our physical makeup is controversial.

We also have emotional characteristics such as a persistent discontentment. The leap to a position that believes that this innate nature is also a part of God’s design is met with resistance. Such a leap as this is discounted in most quarters as being unscientific. After all, there exists today an enormous inventory of literature published, researched, and promoted on various observations pertaining to human behavior. The theme of these publications orbit around the theory that we are the product of both inherited and environmental influences, the nurture and nature theories, and that these are the causative agents explaining our behavior. We all know that we struggle inside of ourselves with a desire to know how and when to do the right thing, and we have regrets about our past wrong actions. If we could only know beforehand the difference between right and wrong, or more importantly, if we could have the strength to do the right thing then we could avoid so many of our problems. We seek relief from this internal struggle in a number of ways. We usually settle on some type of escape or philosophy in incremental and progressive stages. These stages or phases change from time to time, but there is, surprisingly a pattern that can be proposed in such a search. The pattern can be categorized into four attitudes that are applied in series or in parallel. (1) “I know I want it now!” This is our irrational component crying in our emotional voice. (2) “I know I need it now!” This is our quasi-rational and mostly irrational perception of our current condition complicated by our expectations. This attitude is easily influenced by propaganda. (3) “I know I can get it now!” This is deemed a rational position based upon mostly erroneous information. The fourth category is: (4) “I know I will get it now!” This is a condition of an internal misconception of personal power.

In this world, it is unpopular to blame God for giving us our innate nature that produces such behavior. If our nature is contributable to His design then who else can be blame. We tend to blame God for unfairness, disease, tsunamis, volcanoes, floods, and the like, but we hesitate to blame God for the way people act. Why is this? We tend to blame the environment or something we call evil. In order to avoid this unthinkable conclusion, we have invented alternative agents that are more compatible with our sensitivities. A popular scapegoat is the creative being Satan, or some generic force called evil that is give supernatural powers, or other people who are demonically possessed, or just a benign influence we call human nature. The most avoided source to blame for our problems is our own personal sinful nature. Our problems, it is usually alleged, must be external in origin because we are created in God’s image, which could not have had a malevolent influence. This claim is taken out of The Scriptural context in order to frame the argument away from any unpleasant thoughts. Just maybe our problem is internal, in ourselves, by design! The sophisticated argument made by most mental health practitioners is that human behavior is an environmental product. The popular view, from whatever the origin, is opposed to the unpopular alternative of considering that God is responsible for the design and management of this world and this life, as we know it.

The only known authority we can reliably reference in examining the root of our behavior is The Scriptures. The Scriptures makes it plain that this document has been written with words that represent the very thoughts of God, provided to us for the purpose of teaching, rebuking, correcting and training us so we may know and believe the truth [2 Timothy 2:14]. These words can be encouraging and disheartening. These words can be enlightening and puzzling. The words given are too often brutally frank and others are like sweet poetry. The scope and the depth of the presentation seem, at times, infinitely inexhaustible and, at other times, they seem so simple.

A study of The Scriptures is emphatically recommended because such a study will naturally lead all who are so inclined on a journey that causes the seeker to explore their:

(1) Internal condition, which The Spirit personally monitors and manages. We will begin to see how our innate discontentment wants to rule our thinking and our attitude.

(2) Outside influences that cause us to believe all sorts of things. Some of these things are partially true and many other things are simply false. We will begin to recognize the extent of the false teaching that has penetrated our culture.

(3) Our basic beliefs should be carefully contrasted to The Scriptures guidance and pronounces. It will become clear that we have been deceived by most of the mainstream teachings. We will be able to evaluate the popular fads in our churches and start to understand The Spirit’s wisdom in His leadership.

(4) We will discover and begin to appreciate our designed limitations and begin to see how this fits into God’s plan, which generates a growing appreciation of His wisdom in designing us the way He did. A new perception about obedience will begin to develop.

These changes wrought through the leadership of The Spirit and a study of The Scriptures will lead us into a new peaceful enjoyment in God’s planned purpose for our lives. Some contribution to such a transformation in thinking and attitude is the intention of this article. It is important that we are always trying to understand that we are being conformed to God’s predetermined pattern whether we like it or not. If God is in control and doing the conforming then the believer is being changed into the image of the Son; if this is happening then the believer should be aware and be glad, as much as possible, of how and why God is working in the believer’s life. The believer’s journey can be joyous, peaceful, and full of love, but The Spirit must first do His work in His way and in His time. He plans to make every change for our good even when we find the change painful and contrary to the desires of our sinful nature. Becoming familiar with the personalities and stories told to us in the Bible can be a tremendous help during our transformation period. Reviewing the promises and asking The Spirit for insight into God’s word will expedite our transformation. We need to look into our thoughts, look at the influences all around us and outside of us. We need to hone and purge our old belief structure to fit the messages given in The Scriptures, and we need to experience the process of The Spirit’s transforming work. We must always remember that our real enemy in all of this is our own discontentment, which leads us into all of our wanderings and remember the defeat of this enemy, our sinful nature --- is The Spirit’s objective and plan. The Spirit’s fruit is a glimpse of our reward [Galatians 5:22, 23].