Day 15: Freewrite 1 (Snipers and You)

This begins day one of my mini-series of freewrites. It'll go a couple days at least.

The following may be found here: more grammatical mistakes than usual, typos, jumps in thought, incoherence, and zanyness. You've been warned.
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Just in case you didn't know, I do occasionally write a day's post ahead of time. While each post is completed at least the day before it goes up, I sometimes write a couple days ahead because I know I won't be able to write that day (like if I'm out of town or something). Today is one of those days. I realize that makes this a sort of untraditional "forty days" of sorts but that is just the way the cookies crumbles. Since this is a blog challenge one of the things I want to do is make sure a post goes up each day. I chose this as a priority over ensuring that I write a single post each day. And thankfully, no legalism required!

But all that is really beside the point, I just figured you might want to know. Didn't want you think I was cheating you out of something.

Bah, there I go, going back and editing my sentences. Free writing is a really difficult thing for me to do. Of course, some editing must be done, but I realize I do way too much of it, even when I'm trying my hardest not to. I think it has to do with my desire for acceptance. This is one of those huge traps that I often fall into in my life. I do things for the sake of earning people's respect and acceptance and no other reason all too often. Instead of merely living for God because of my great love for him and my greatfulness for what he has done, I find myself struggling along, doing Christiany things because some people will think more highly of me as a result. Free writing helps me a little in this regard because I can write stuff like that and now I can't go back and erase it.

Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. (John 8:32, NIV)

But the truth sets us free, so it's good to talk about our struggles. For me, not only does knowing the truth set me free, but stating it also.

Recently I've been playing a game called Team Fortress 2 for the PC. You might have heard of it if your a gamer, but I don't blame you if you haven't. Anyways, it's one of those first person shooter games but this one is cartoony and wacky and a lot of fun. They released a patch which updated the Sniper and the Spy characters (two of my favorites) so I've been playing to check out the new stuff. I enjoy the thrill of friendly competition as we battle to capture the flag, capture points, or simply eliminate the other team.

But the sniper holds a special place. I really enjoy the feeling of sitting there with my scope set on some other player who (for all I know) could be half the world away from me. When you get the perfect shot, they never see it coming. But of course, it's just a video game, so on their next life, they're coming after me.

The only problem is, I've never really been that good at being the sniper. I always run into these players who make me look like a total newbie. They can shoot anything at any distance even if your running at full speed and zig zagging. Me, I have trouble shooting targets that move even a little bit. But still I enjoy stepping into the shoes of the sniper and getting the occasional lucky break. Sometimes I even fool myself into thinking I'm pretty good at this game.

When it comes to God, I think I treat my relationship with him too often like a game of the same sort. I see people who are really good at the whole God thing, they seem to have it all put together and are really on fire for Him. I like to step into their shoes occasionally and try to be one of the Christian legends, and sure I fool myself (and sometimes others) for a period of time, but in the end I end up acting somehow not like a Christian legend and I just end up frustrated.

Thank goodness for the grace of God. Thanks to this grace, I don't have to be a rock star of the Bible to be a child of God. He has chosen to use me, my weaknesses and all. If we could compare it to sniping in team fortress it'd be like this. I'm a terrible sniper for God's army but he still wants me in there, trying my best. He doesn't want me acting like I'm the best player ever because he knows my real skill level. He just wants my heart for the role.

Man, I had no idea I would be comparing playing a sniper in a video game to being a child of God when I woke up this morning. I'm sure I've crossed one of those heathen thresholds at this point.

To be honest, sometimes I think about video games and the time I spend on those and wonder if it's really an OK thing to do. While I don't spent every single moment of my spare time on them like I used to, I wonder how this or that game is improving my relationship with God. But then, I can extrapolate this to all kinds of things I fill my spare time with. Random websites, watching TV, reading books I love, you name it. I'm almost certain that God does not think these things are bad in and of themselves, but I don't fully understand how our hobbies relate to our calling as followers of Christ either.

I was chatting with a friend of mine that I met through one of the games I play online earlier with these thoughts running through my head when he invited me to join up with his group of gaming friends. Their group is a rather large group of online gamers dedicated to excellence in a variety of games. Now I realize I'm losing you if you don't play online games at all, but bear with me. I chose not to immediately join up with this group (this isn't the point) because I think it would suck away my time, but the idea of socializing with other people over a game on the internet seems like it could actually have some straight-up biblical kingdom building qualities. It made me remember that God is working all things for the good of those who love him (Romans 8:28) and that includes our hobbies.

I'm always interested in the idea of using new technology and communication structures to build God's kingdom. The church I go to "gets" the whole web 2.0, social network thing, and I think that is an excellent thing. I'm all for causing a God-invasion of the internet, wouldn't that be awesome? The only problem is I'm not sure where to start. If you've got more ideas than writing a few sentence on a blog every few days, then feel free to send 'em my way.
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Whew! That wasn't so bad. More freewriting tomorrow.