So – I got all the way through the Orange Box (cheated like crazy… I have no time, remember? and that List of Great Things I Must Accomplish ain’t getting any shorter). It’s been at least 2 years since I’ve played a video game and I was amazed at the gameplay (I know – this is pretty old now). Half-Life is all about a single Messianic hero (who never speaks) and just goes around blowing crap up and shooting just about anything that isn’t verifiably human.
The appeal of this one-man army is incredible from a Christian perspective. We all want to be Jesus – the One that everybody looks to and relies on. Couple this desire to be Jesus with our desire to not come off as affeminate and you have Gordon Freeman. The man doesn’t speak, can carry almost 10 different weapons on himself with tons-o-ammo and cut a swath of destruction through every Combine or Ant-Hill infested area while working valiantly to keep any weird rag-tag hangers-on from getting killed in the process of following this messianic warrior through the destructive wasteland they find themselves in.
We want to be that guy so desperately that we’ve forgotten something extraordinary – we’re already called to be that guy (but without the cool guns). I mentioned the other day that we’re called to be winsome extremists – a peculiar people who refuse to shirk back from a proclamation of truth, but do so humbly with no arrogance.
How? Live people – live out the truth of the Gospel in everything we do. Work out your salvation for the world to see so that when you screw up and run to God, they recognize that it’s not perfection in action that they seek, but perfection in whom they seek. Everybody knows that nobody’s perfect – we’re just the only ones who actually know the person who is. Let’s act like that, eh?
Hopefully, you see in these writings a man who is staying The Course and pursuing The Path amidst the pitfalls and selfish ways of being a son of Adam. I pray earnestly that my writing would encourage some of you by showing you that this journey - though arduous and sometimes tragic - is a journey of great satisfaction. A satisfaction greater than our greatest imaginings. The trials and refining fire of tribulation are to be recognized as a small shadow of the suffering of our Savior so that we can rejoice, as Peter and the disciples did, to be counted worthy to suffer for the sake of the Name.