In the early 1990s, video games were entering what I suppose we could call their second generation. Compared with what children play today, they were technologically primitive. But at our house, they were cutting-edge.
Our oldest daughter, Allison, asked for a Nintendo for Christmas—the one with Super Mario Brothers.
Christmas morning, the Nintendo was connected to our enormous twenty-five-inch console television. For those of you under forty, a console television was roughly the size of a small refrigerator, weighed slightly more than a Methodist church, and once you put it in the den, it stayed there until the Second Coming.
And Allison started playing Mario.
She was good at it. More importantly, she was persistent. If Mario needed to jump over something, she learned exactly when to jump. If there was a hidden passage, she found it. If there was some secret way through a level, she kept working until she discovered it.
She accumulated experience. She advanced through levels. She got better and better.
Every once in a while, she would let her younger brother Andrew play.
The rule was simple: You can play until you lose all your lives.
Andrew’s turn did not take long.
Bless his heart.
Mario would start running. Mario would hit something. Mario would die. A few moments later, Andrew would hand the controller back to Allison.
She tried to teach him.
“Jump here.”
“Don’t go that way.”
“Wait until that thing moves.”
“Push this button.”
None of it helped.
Then school started back. One afternoon Andrew got home before Allison. I told him, “Andrew, I’ve been working on a project for you.”
While the children had been at school, Dad had been playing Mario. This was not recreation. This was serious parental research. And while I played, I recorded the television onto our VCR—another ancient piece of technology. I had about thirty minutes of Mario being played reasonably well on videotape.
I told Andrew, “When Allison gets home, I’m going to play this tape. You sit on the floor with the controller and pretend you’re playing.”
Andrew immediately understood the spiritual gift God had given him for irritating his sister.
“Move the controller. Lean from side to side. Grunt occasionally. Act frustrated. Do everything Allison does.”
So when Allison came home, there sat her little brother in front of the television playing Mario. And he was magnificent. He sailed through places he could not get through the night before. He made impossible jumps. He advanced from level to level.
Finally Allison asked, “How did you learn to do that so fast?”
We had her. We absolutely had her. Until Andrew started giggling. He put the controller down, turned around, and grinned at his sister— and Mario kept playing.
“ANDREW!”
For a few wonderful minutes, Andrew looked like a gamer. He held the controller. He made all the right movements. He sat in the right place. He knew when to grunt. There was only one problem. He wasn’t actually playing the game.
I wonder sometimes whether that little scene from our den is a pretty good picture of what can happen in the Christian life. We learn how to hold the controller. We know when to stand and when to sit. We know the hymns. We know the prayers. We know when to say “Amen.” We know how Christians are supposed to look and sound. We can become very good at appearing to be disciples.
But Jesus never called us simply to look like disciples. He called us to follow him. To forgive when forgiveness is difficult. To love people we would rather avoid. To serve when serving is inconvenient. To trust when life is uncertain. To give generously. To pray honestly. To live differently because Christ is alive within us.
Faith is not something we merely watch somebody else do. It cannot be prerecorded for us by our parents, grandparents, preacher, or church. Eventually, we have to play. Every once in a while, perhaps all of us need to put down the controller and ask a hard but necessary question:
Am I really living this life of faith, or have I just gotten very good at going through the motions?