"Success creates opposition."
In the past year and one month, I have been pondering hardship, spiritual attack, and spiritual warfare, and what my teacher said yesterday sums up my experience over the past year and a half quite well: in the spiritual life, success creates opposition - it brings attack. Why is this? Because we're not playing a one-person game. It's a two-person game between the Lord Jesus Christ and Satan. Game theory applies to the Christian life. Our righteous, good decisions don't weigh neutral on the eternal scale; they throw the balance in the Lord's direction, and they also often create opposition and invite it.
Why do many Christians and others "lose" this game, any particular battle, they find themselves in? Because they don't believe they're playing a two-person game, and they aren't anticipating their opponent's actions. This is the art and necessity of spiritual warfare: it requires some game theory; it requires taking into consideration and trying to anticipate your opponent's actions and reactions. Not that we should become preoccupied with studying or thinking about Satan (!), but we also cannot live and act as if we do not have an opponent. We can pray that the Lord protects us and intervenes when we experience hardship, but consider that most of the time, He does not intervene with a lightening bolt from the sky or a thundering voice to scare away our problems or enemies but gives us His Spirit, so that we can fight the particular battle, play the particular game, that we find ourselves in. That is part of His gift and inheritance that He gives to us in making us His children. We have been made in His likeness, to play in His likeness. There is something of benefit to us, and there is glory given to Him, when we fully engage the battles, the games, He sends to us. We become more like Him when we play and think like Him.
Alongside my game theory course material, I continue to reflect on one particular article. When things have gotten a bit patchy over the past year, I have re-read this piece. In the article entitled "The Lord Loves a Good Game" Deacon Douglas McManaman writes:
"...we have to enjoy the battle, stay calm and play with wit, that is, with a shrewd mind. Archbishop Fulton Sheen used to say that discouragement is pride. It's God's world and it is His battle. Our task is to enter into the game, but we're His pieces, on His board, in His hand. Our job is to battle with joy, with peace, and with magnanimity, with charity and humility, and to rely on God, because He alone is in control."
McManaman also considers playing games alongside the Lord Jesus's command that "Unless you change and become as little children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven." For further study, one could meditate on the child-like faith that Jesus Christ describes and how it does not mean having an ignorant, weak, or immature faith as contemporary society would have us think but a strong, courageous, game-playing faith.
On a more biopsychosocial note, I also consider and wonder that the Lord has made us so that the foundation of who we are is formed when we are young, and that when we are young, we perhaps most often learn for the first time how to play many "games" of all kinds; engaging in game-playing, in playing, we know is actually central and a part of human development - for one's brain, muscles, etc. Think about babies, children, adolescents, and young adults - the act of playing is central, integral. Lessons are often taught through games; important work is accomplished through play. There is unanimous agreement that play is an important part of human development process.
The most important game we play is that in our life with the Lord. Our Father loves a good game as McManaman points out. The Lord cheers us on and loves teaching and shaping us through the games He lovingly and intentionally sends to us. Many people, sadly, have been manipulated, broken, and discouraged through the kinds of games that humans often play with other humans and the games that our Opponent plays with us. Our Lord does not play these kinds of games. He sends only those to us that will be for our well-being.
It's a true fact that no one ever taught me how to play volleyball, so to this day, I still can't play it. I have the slightest inkling that I might be missing out every time I attend a certain lakeside Christian training academy and sit on the sidelines (here's a half-hearted side appeal for someone to give me remedial v-ball lessons!). And it's not fun for me because I waddle my way through it. Let not our spiritual life be similar to my experience of v-ball. Let's not rue the spiritual life because we'd rather not take the time or fear to learn how to engage it. I think the Lord would encourage us to not miss out but to engage the games we find ourselves in, confident that He has already won victory for us through His Son Jesus Christ who is our teacher, peaceful as we bask in the Father's provident love for us.
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Sources:
Deacon Douglas McManaman. "The Lord Loves a Good Game." Accessible at: http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/education/ed0407.htm.
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