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B.I.B.L.E.:
or the Games Christians Play1
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Armand Kruger, MA
Overview:
Games are serious, response-able,
created and they describe the ways Christians live in their
worlds. Mastering Christian Games. Beatitudes: describing
the Games Christians should be playing?
A Story:2
A father was approached by
his small son, who told him proudly, "I know what the
Bible means!"
His father smiled and replied,
"What do you mean, you "know" what the Bible
means?"
The son replied, "I do
know!"
"Okay," said his
father, "So, Son, what does the Bible mean?"
"That's easy, Daddy.......,
it stands for "Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth."
And I am tempted to say "read
Games for Mastering Fear, and this story, and I then rest
my case. But, introducing the concept of "Games"
into the vocabulary when discussing Christianity is where
the sticky piece lie. "Games" conjure up a complex
equivalence that might not fit the issues of being Christian,
since games are things you do for leisure, or the "fun"
you're having when you don't do serious things, or when you
enjoy something. But, consider this very novel way of thinking
about Christianity if you add to your existing vocabulary
about states, and frames, and the role of languiging your
operational realities, the thinking that goes with Games?3
What are Christian Games?
Think of Games as the way we
are interfacing with the world. Hall and Bodenhamer qualifies
the use of the term "games" as "describing
the actions and transactions that we engage in with ourselves
and others as 'Games,'" I am speaking metaphorically.
If we viewed our everyday actions in the world and our transactions
(interactions) with others as a "Game," as sets
of moves and plays, what Games do we play, for what payoff,
how do we score, who are we playing against?"4
"A Game simply refers to a set of actions and interactions
that allow you to structure your energies so that you can
achieve some desired objective. That's why we play Games.
We want to accomplish something; we want to "win"
at something, express our skills, show off or discover our
knowledge and abilities, relate to someone in a certain way,
and/or simply enjoy the process of living and expending our
energies."
Christian Games are the Games
we Christians play when we obey and execute the two commandments
of glorifying God and loving our neighbor as ourselves. "Games"
therefore expands our thinking about Christianity into the
realm of seriously considering how we are "response-able".
In teaching the NS-technique
called "the Power Zone" the method is to assist
the person in becoming aware how we think and change our thinking
about some content of experience. The outcome of the exercise
is to create an awareness and deliberate competence in "managing
our thinking". The ownership lies in the ability to think,
as well as the ability to question/judge (against a set of
internal standards) our thinking, and the ability to redefine
our thinking and therefore the very fabric of the reality
we co-create and live in. Our power zone describes the ownership
of our response-ability to, and in, the world. The aspect
of this response in the world can be usefully described
by the "Games"-- terminology reintroduced by Hall
and Bodenhamer.
Christian Frames of Reference:
"Life itself is a matter
of Games - the Games we play with people, situations, and
ideas. All of our Games are driven by Frames".5
For the Christian our ultimate frames are the Biblical Frames.6
The Games we play, or don't play enough of, or shouldn't play
are described for us in the B.I.B.L.E.! If we do not have
God as our frame, and loving our neighbor as the foreground
in the frame when we are angry with somebody, we will play
the next best Game we are capable of. When we allow ourselves
the fear of timidity, and play the Game of "Excuse me
for being alive" we are playing a Game that is definitely
not endorsed by our manual of Frames called the Bible! When
we play "poor me, the victim" we are likewise missing
the mark of the instructions and the promises of playing of
playing the Games described by God for His children. All the
"not's" above imply that as Christians we can, and
have a reference for, continually running quality checks7
on the frames and Games we do. The risk is that we get so
involved with how the Games are being played and it's rules
for doing it perfectly, that the rules and structures of the
Game becomes more important than the actual playing of
the Game.
One very special feature of
the Games Christian people play is the perpetual background
to the game: as human beings we are fallible, but the "winning"
of the Game is a foregone conclusion if we play it to the
rules of the B.I.B.L.E. This puts a particular slant to the
way Christians can play our Games: there is promise and power
in the Word about our Games, which, "if we leave home
without it" brings to bear all kinds of not-good states
and frames into our Games. Then we become like everybody else
with all their fear Games, and failure Games, and idol-for-real
Games. We are still accountable for the Games we play, since
we are accountable for the Frames we create and endorse.8
Our response-ability starts with us and flows from our thoughts
and emotions, the fabric of our maps with which we encounter
(experience, act on and interact with) the realities outside
of our skins. "A Game is only the Game that it is because
of some Frame....This means that there is rhyme and reason
to the Games we play. They do not occur as accidents or as
mere happen-stance events. Unique and personal understandings
govern our Games."9
Mastering Christian Games
Games have a structure and
a set of rules, like the sports games we play, which gives
the Games their predictable content and pre-dispositional
behaviors. Because the Frames contain the thoughts and emotions
they do, people play the Games which reflects the content
of that reality which they have entered. Because the event
is "like that" they permit themselves "that"
experience, and "that" range of behaviors and "that"
language. Mastering the Games one play and the Games played
on one, starts with asking some very basic questions.10
These questions helps one to become aware of the structure
and process of the Game being played (and don't be surprised
if the rules for the "good" Games and "not-good
Games are the same, it is the content that differs).
- If you had to give the Game
a name, what would you call it? To the extend that the name
represents the Game, what is the name implying about the
game in general; a birds-eye view of the Game?
- What is the governing idea
of the Game? What is the outcome/intention/function/payoff/etc.
(which is essentially what the Game is about)? Why play
the Game in the first place?
- What are the rules of the
Game? What are the do's and don't's of the Game?
- What gets you into the Game?
What are the triggers and cues to which you (and others)
respond and then just slide into the Game? Like Yogi Bear
in the movie Jungle Book, when he gets into the rhythm of
music and sighs "I am gone, totally gone!", what
gets you into the rhythm of the Game?
- As the Game runs, how do
you contribute to the Game? What thoughts and emotions do
you privately entertain, and what behaviors and language
"in the world" intensifies or sustains the Game?
- If you wanted to change
the Game, what would be your preferred Game? What qualities
and Biblical standards would this Game have to involve for
it to be "better" than the previous Game? What
would the governing idea be in this Game?
- How would you contribute
to it's realization, both for yourself and the participants
which will play with you? What thoughts, emotions, language
and behaviors would be the preferred Game, as far as it
is dependent on you?
The Beatitudes
Briefly, it appears to me that
we have a epistemological chain of thoughts which might have
implications not only for our thinking as to what it means
to be Christian, but also implications for counseling.
As our thoughts and emotions
are the royal roads to our states, our Games (actions and
interactions) are the realization of our states in the world.
The B.I.B.L.E., and specifically the beatitudes, are our maps
for how to be in the world, against the highest frame of loving
God and our neighbor as ourselves. Our walk with our eyes
on the Trinity, and decidedly our interfacing with the Holy
Spirit, creates in us the states described as the "fruit
of the Spirit". In the passive verb of "having"
we are on the merciful receiving end of getting from the Holy
Spirit.
For the active verb (do; put
on, put off) there is the power zone, the source of our thoughts
and emotions determined by our frames-of-reference, and specifically
our highest frames.11 It is
the domain of Game mastery, the kind of Games which truly
reflect the in-working of the Saving Work of our belief in
Jesus Christ, the arena of our perseverance and running of
the race with the forward sight of our hope. It is the place
in my life where I am constantly confronted with the answer
to the question, "What is so amazing about Grace?"12
and the absurd accounting of this grace in my life. It is
here where I meet the "invisible God."13
It is here that I meet people who hurt or who struggle with
their idols which again has disappointed them, and when people
are crying out against a "silent God" when one needs
"fixing" after a dream has shattered.14
1. To Michael
and Bobby: you are the "cause" for this article,
and thank you for being it.
2. Author
unknown to me, got it through one of the sends on the internet.
3. Hall,
L Michael and Bodenhamer, Bobby G(2001): Games
for Mastering Fear. Meta-Publications, Grand Junction,
Colorado. For a more technical introduction, their "Frame
Games" (2000) is highly recommended.
4. Hall
and Bodenhamer (2001) p. 75, 105.
5. Hall
and Bodenhamer (2001), p.113.
6. See Kruger
and Bodenhamer's article at "Biblical
Frames: The Key to Spirituality"
7. Hall
and Bodenhamer (2001), p. 102.
8. See Kruger's
"Languiging
Sin"
9. Hall
and Bodenhamer (2001), p. 90, 109.
10. For
a more thorough Games analysis, see "Frame
Games" or "Games
for Mastering Fear".
11. See
Kruger and Bodenhamer's "Biblical
Frames"
12. Book
of the same title by Philip Yancey.
13. Book
of same title by Philip Yancey
14. See
Larry Crabb (2001): Shattered Dreams. Waterbrook Press.
Contact information for
Armand Kruger:
South Africa's Institute
of Neuro - Semantics
Armand Kruger
PO Box 494
Meyerton
South Africa, 1960
Fax: 2716-362-1559
armandk@lantic.net
http://www.neurosemantics.co.za
©2001 Armand Kruger All rights
reserved.
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