The Infinite Game
There have always been people in my life who thought I was a little weird.
They took one look at my life decisions and the types of things that consumed my thoughts and they would look at me with a bit of confusion inaudibly asking me, “why would you waste your life on that God stuff?”
But truth be told, I was thinking the same thing about them. I thought they were the weird ones. How could they make the trades that they had chosen? How could they NOT be obsessed with what I thought were the most important things in life?
It finally struck me why we couldn’t understand each other. We were playing life as a very different game.
They saw life as finite and I saw it as infinite. That one distinction changes everything about how you play.
Living a finite game is living from a worldview that sees this life as all there is. It goes hand in hand with a belief that there is no God or at least not one worth living your life for and the big questions of life are unknowable.
So all that is left is living for the moment trying to get as much stuff as we can or trying to muster up as many positive emotions and experiences as we can. As Paul put it, “let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die”. When I see from their worldview their behavior isn’t weird it makes perfect sense.
And maybe those people wouldn’t think I was weird if they saw through my worldview.
How would you live your life differently if you knew that in the end, it wasn't a blackout but rather you would stand in front of your creator and give an account for your life? What if you knew the choices you made, especially those involving God, had infinite effects.
All of a sudden, the cars, the ego, all the stuff you thought was important wouldn’t seem so important at all anymore in light of eternity.
In fact, like Paul you would say I count all that rubbish, or like solemnly “it was a chasing after the wind” I should have spent my life pursuing God.
I believe the evidence leans strongly in favor of this world view and I’m not going to try to prove it to you in the next 90 seconds but I do want to ask you this:
Have you ever even taken the time To really seek the truth or seek God with your whole heart?
Have you even put out any effort at all? Have you been open to hearing or do you just shut down the conversation?
God says anyone who seeks will find, “knock and the door will be opened to you”.
“You will seek him and find him when you seek him with your whole heart.”
What that means is, if he shows you he is God will you follow him? Why would he show himself to you when he knows you wouldn’t submit to him even if he did?
God gave us free will for a reason he isn’t going to force himself on you.
Come to him from the humility that if he is the creator, regardless of if you like it or not you will follow him and then just pay attention you might start to notice some strange things happen around you.
Don’t be scared of what you might find
Coffee and veggie juice.
I am addicted to caffeine and I fully believe I would not be able to make it through a 15-hour workday without it. People have tried to tell me to switch to vegetable juice but I couldn’t shut my ears off more when they talk because
I can’t even imagine trying to live my life without caffeine. It's my crutch and I don’t believe for a second that veggie juice could give me the enthusiasm for life that coffee does.
Some of you reading this think about God in this same way. You are listening to me thinking about that thing you live for that you would have to change if God was real so you refuse to even consider the possibility.
You think to yourself my life in the grind is boring or stressful or painful and the only joy or relief I muster is through XYZ, and now you're gonna tell me my life is going to be even more boring or painful? I don’t think so.
But what if instead of a random acquaintance with an opinion, I went to the doctor and he ran blood tests and found that I have actually had a birth disorder that caused a vitamin deficiency I had been living my entire life thinking what I experienced was normal but in truth, I had only 5% of the energy available to me.
If I took the vegetable juice it would correct that deficiency so that I wouldn’t even need or want the coffee. I would actually be experiencing an energy boost 95% higher than the coffee ever gave me.
Now all of a sudden I might see the situation differently. The green juice in my mind's eye would no longer be the dreaded enemy that comes to take away the best thing I have to get me through life; it would actually be the real deal, the fullness of what I was trying to cheaply get from the coffee.
Now I checked and I don’t have a vitamin deficiency so all my friends watching this don’t use this video as a license to lecture me about coffee. BUT…
The point I am trying to make is that your relationship with God is the same way.
You may have never opened your ears to even hear the thing that could save your life because you're too scared you’ll find out you have to give up the thing or things that literally get you through life.
But I am here to tell you you won’t even want those things anymore, you won’t desire the crutch cause your legs will be healed. You won’t need cheap love when you experience perfect love, you won’t need cheap ego boosts when you are living out the purpose you were created for.
Your life will be so radically changed for the better that I promise you won’t be even thinking about those things. You may think you could never live without your precious 5% once you experience the other 95% your perspective will change. You can't do it in your own power or energies, but God will give you his very own power.
Jesus compares life with God to a pearl or treasure worth more than your wildest dreams can imagine. When we find something amazing worth more than we have, we would be willing to sell everything we own to get it.
The cost…
People are so focused on what they might lose that they fail to see what they may lose. No that’s not a typo, Jesus says what does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul. Don’t be so caught up with concern over losing something finite that you lose out on an infinite treasure.
”Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
- Mathew 6:19
Jesus said;
“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
But don’t fail to see the full picture that in exchange those who follow him will inherit eternal life not just in the life to come but right here and now.
There is a picture on the internet that you have probably seen that is meant to represent this exchange. I despise this picture more than anything. It’s of a little girl with her favorite teddy bear and the dad asking for it cause he’s gonna give her a bigger one. What kid would want that exchange we all know the little teddy bear has way more sentimental value to the little girl. This picture would make more sense if the little girl was about to eat a piece of poisonous dog poo and the dad was like no no please give me that and I’ll take you to IHOP instead.
This exchange is a no-brainer to any rational being. God is saying yes this is going to hurt your ego cause you're no longer gonna call all the shots, but what I want you to give me is all of your jealousy, unforgiveness, hatred, narcissistic ways that lead to pain, death, and ultimately hell.
and in exchange…
I am going to give you purpose, true love, true fulfillment, the forgiveness of sins, and eternal life.
If you walked up to a homeless person and said hey here is a million dollars a mansion and new clothes and they said no thanks I could never give up my pee-stained rags they mean so much to me. You wouldn’t say wow there’s a rational decision you would assume he was out of his mind. There are only three reasons he would turn it down and it’s the same three reasons we turn down God.
We don’t really believe him.
We are out of our minds or like Jesus said “blind” we aren't able to distinguish rubbish from worth. We’ve lived in the rubbish so long we can’t imagine life another way or imagine how much better it may be.
Or our stubborn pride.
Jesus says whoever drinks my water will never thirst again.
He is the only thing that can satisfy the human soul. We were created to be satisfied by God alone; this is why we feel empty without him.
So seek after God, be open to learning, and be ready to follow him wherever he leads and you might just find the life you’ve been searching and longing for all along.
In my next blog, we will jump more into the concept of where emptiness comes from and how you can fill it.