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.