Games

At this coffee shop/church in Indiana I like to hang out in, there are some kids who like to run around playing some game that I don't understand.  It mainly involves hiding behind a couch and running up and down the stairs.  The reason I don't understand it is because the whole game is a series of unspoken and partially understood rules.  Maybe to them, the game doesn't even exist at all.  To them, maybe they're just living the life; running around just because they can.

Alfred Adler is the most under appreciated genius of the world of therapy.  Freud may be the father of psychotherapy, but Adler's theory helped pave the way for every modern psychotherapy after its advent.  Seriously, read up on Adler.  One of Adler's ideas was that people play "games" that they use to get through life.  What this means is that as people go on, they come up with conditions for "winning" and conditions for "losing."  

"If I could get that job my life would be good."

"If I was skinnier I'd be pretty."

"If I say that, this guy will think I'm crazy."

The thing about these games is that if you lose, you've defeated yourself, and if you win you've set yourself up to be defeated later.  That's why Adler said that when clients seek therapy, the therapist must get them to play the "therapy game," which tries to give back what clients have taken from themselves.  Because when you compete with yourself, even if you win you still lose.

In the book of Luke, Jesus sat in on a dinner party for some big shot religious people.  It was a pretty big deal to sit as close as you could to the head of the table; it meant that you were important; that you were someone.  Everyone wanted those seats because if you got one then you were a winner.  But Jesus said to the host, "When you have a dinner party, put those who can't repay you in the best seats, that way you'll be repaid in the resurrection."  When you pass up the good seat, it'll be given to you later.

The problem with the games we play is that when we lose, it only makes us want to win next time.  But when we win these games, nothing is gained.  The whole game is invalid.  But what if, instead of winning, the victory was given to you?  Then the games we play wouldn't cause us anxiety.  They would only bring us life.

There's something holy about a kid who's hiding behind a couch, playing a game that only he can understand.  He's not trying to win.  He's only playing because that's the way he's making sense of his life right then.  He's lost in laughter and anticipation of the kid who's coming up the steps.  I don't know how the game is played, but it doesn't matter.  Win or lose, there is only joy. 

The Story Life

When you think of who you are, what do you think of?

To answer that question, you have to do a few things.  First, you have to think.  This may seem obvious, but it's important to know that each time you establish your own identity, you (and not anyone else) have to come to these conclusions yourself.  Next, you have to bring to mind certain personality traits like; "I'm kind," "I'm generous," or "I'm lazy."

What's tricky about this is that behind each of those personality traits is a story.  It's impossible for someone to just derive from nothing that they are kind or generous or lazy.  We get these ideas from somewhere, and that somewhere is our experience in life.  Essentially, the only reason I know that I'm Matt Culler is because that fact has been reinforced over and over and over and over, etc.  Your life is a story about what you know to be true about you.

If this is true, then we run the risk of problems in our lives when we misunderstand the truth.  Say I've gone for a long time getting A's in all of my classes, but at one point I take a class and fail it.  I see this and feel bad, but understand that this failure is not an intrinsic part of my identity; it's more of the exception than the rule.  But I start telling my friends that I failed a class.  And some other friends see that I got an F, not knowing that I was an A student before.  And my parents start holding that F over my head.  And throughout all this time, it is never mentioned that i got A's in all of my other classes.  Suddenly I care more about that F than those A's; suddenly my idea of myself is that I'm a failure.  Knowing that I am a failure, I start acting like a failure, because that's all I know to be true.  

This happens to us everyday.  Parts of who we are are reinforced by others and ourselves, while other parts of who we are get ignored and eventually forgotten.  If you start saying that you're sick, acting like you're sick, and telling people that you're sick, it's likely that people are going to start treating you like a sick person. 

The important question here is who does God think that you are?  Does this factor into your story at all?  Maybe it does, but the person you think God sees you as is pretty terrible.  Maybe you think God's ashamed of you.  But what if the person who's ashamed of you is you?  What if the idea of yourself as terrible has come from a source other than God?  What if your story life got hijacked midway through?

When you come to conclusions about who you are, whether negative or positive, you're right.  You're constantly constructing this story about you.  While we include information in this story from a bunch of different sources, who you are is up to you in the end.

When you think of who you are, what do you think of?