Bit by Bit - How Nintendo is a Byproduct of the Great Commission

 (Bit by Bit is a series expressing gospel
truths through gaming metaphors. The title refers to our progressive sanctification. And, you know, 1's and 0's)

No doubt, you doubt my premise. How could the Great Commission have anything to do with what is arguably the classic of all classic video games?

Hear me out... it's a closer correlation than you're probably expecting.

In 1541, Francis Xavier (former classmate of Ignatius of Loyola) set sail from Portugal to Goa, India. He did so at the request of Henry III of Portugal, who wanted him to address the reportedly declining state of the Church among Portuguese in India. Goa was Portugal's massively important colonial trading center in India, and from there Xavier was to spread the gospel in the East Indies. (Basically India to Indonesia)

Before his departure, Xavier (with Ignatius and others) had been involved in founding the Jesuit order. He thus went out as the first Jesuit missionary. (Of the Jesuit missions movement much can be said, both good and bad, but it brought Christ to many, many people around the world, and is something of which more evangelicals should be aware)

I won't spend this whole entry recounting Xavier's fascinating story (parts of his wikipedia article are quite poorly written, so I'd recommend looking elsewhere), but it is worth noting that in many ways he was ahead of his time as a missionary, employing methods we might call incarnational while those that followed after him often took more of a colonialist approach.

Xavier ministered in a variety of places around Asia, but one important and well-known period of ministry near the end of his life was the 2+ years he spent working in Japan, beginning in 1549.

While Xavier was making efforts to reach Japan with the permission of its rulers, a course of action he felt would be more culturally appropriate there, the Portuguese crew of his ships also quite naturally interacted with the local Japanese people. Seemingly not feeling personally invested in Xavier's missionary purpose, they began teaching a new game to the local people who enjoyed gambling, using a deck of Portuguese playing cards they'd brought with them. This caught on, and variants of the game spread widely. Gambling card games based on this European style 48-card deck became very popular, and were banned in the 1600's as Japan entered its centuries of isolation, closing itself off to the outside world and trying to rid itself of foreign influences. People who enjoyed the card games found various ways around this ban, however, often by changing the look of the cards. Over the next century or two the decks involved into what became known as the Hanafuda, a numberless deck with flowers designating the different suits.

From the creation of the hanafuda deck, still with 48 cards organized similarly to the Portuguese deck, though now with very different art, we now fast forward to the Meiji Era, in which Japan sought to leave behind the old days and become a modern power. Many bittersweet stories are told of this time of loss and renewal, some historical (in 1876 the remnants of the samurai were banned from carrying swords; in 1877 the last samurai rebellion occurred, was eventually stamped out, and the era of the samurai was ended), and many imaginary tales, as it is a common setting for Japanese period fiction.

In these storied days, not long after Japan had moved its capital from its ancient seat in Kyoto to what is now Tokyo and just after telegraph lines had begun going up, a young entrepreneur named Fusajiro Yamauchi started a company selling high-quality hanafuda cards, which the government had finally decided were far enough removed from the original gambling cards to stop banning them.
Mr. Yamauchi opened his first hanafuda store in 1889, named "Nintendo Koppai."

Therefore it was that, 340 years after Portuguese playing cards were introduced (unintentionally) by Francis Xavier as he sought to establish a foothold for the church in Japan (and did see many Japanese accept Christ, though the history of the church in Japan has been a largely tragic one), the Nintendo company was founded to sell an updated Japanese version of those cards.

It was managed well and expanded rapidly, and after 1959, when Fusajiro's grandson Hiroshi acquired the rights to put Disney characters on Nintendo's playing cards, it became Japan's most successful playing card company. Following a trip to the US, however, feeling underwhelmed after his visit to the world's largest playing card manufacturer there, Hiroshi realized there was little future in remaining solely a playing card manufacturer. The company began experimenting with different product lines, finally settling on toys, then by the 70's, early electronic games. (Some of you will at this point be familiar with Nintendo's history, with the Game and Watch device coming onto the market in 1980.)

In 1983, Nintendo began selling the Family Computer (Famicom) entertainment system in Japan, then from 1985-1987 in the West as well, where it was known as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), and came bundled with a game featuring everyone's favorite princess-saving Italian plumber. The Game Boy handheld system followed in 1989, bundled with a little Russian game that had recently begun gaining popularity in the US, called... "Tetris."

The rest, I think, you know. (Though you might not have known that Nintendo still sells hanafuda cards)

So, next time you play a Nintendo game, remember Francis Xavier, first Jesuit missionary to Japan.
Today, Japan's percentage of believers is less than 1%, and it remains one of the world's most secular countries. Early efforts to bring the gospel to Japan resulted, by the vagaries of history, in the export of Nintendo to the world. Maybe it's time for the world's Nintendo generation to take the gospel back there.

TL;DR: The founding of the church in Japan led to you having Nintendo games.
Next time you're playing a Nintendo game, pause it, and pray for the church in Japan.

Bit by Bit - You are Not an NPC

 (Bit by Bit is a series I'll do from time to time expressing gospel
truths through gaming metaphors. The title refers to our progressive sanctification. And, you know,
1's and 0's)

Anyone who has played an RPG or MMORPG (not to mention table-top role-playing games) will be familiar with the idea of an NPC. (If you're not, it means "non-player character" or "non-playable character")

Simply put, it is a character which is part of your game experience, but which you do not control. These characters range from allies that can join your party (often providing witty banter in addition to their combat assistance), to sellers in a market, to the various enemies you encounter, to those frustrating hostages in rescue scenario levels that seem to run lemming-like* to their doom given the slightest opportunity.

*- Lemmings don't actually run off cliffs en masse and kill themselves, it's a persistent urban legend. In one famous documentary they even used a device to launch them off the cliffs so they could film it happening as if the lemmings were doing it. Google or Snope it if you don't believe me.

An NPC doesn't have to care about the game because they -are- the game, existing as part of the game for you, the player, to interact with. They're typically just a computer-controlled character, usually responding to some kind of input from you as well, but of course lacking the means to make any real decisions on their own. (Unless the singularity has already occurred and the so-called AI in games has become real AI and is just toying with us, waiting for its change to go Skynet. But real AI is impossible, of course, for reasons I might explain in a future post.)

Incidentally, this is a convenient metaphor for explaining the idea of scriptural inspiration. We say that the Bible is "inspired" by God, with the Holy Spirit guiding godly men as they wrote. Theologians have often pondered exactly by what means this took place. While there are different schools of thought, the tradition I was taught (and hold to) and that most evangelicals would ascribe to based on their views of scriptural infallibility and inerrancy is Verbal Plenary inspiration, which considers Biblical authors to have been "carried along by the Holy Spirit" (2 Peter 1:21) and that every word of scripture is "God-breathed." (theopneustos, from 2 Tim 3:16, a cool word Paul seems to have coined for a concept he wanted to convey, Koine Greek being a language which let you do that sort of thing as English does today)

What this means is that Biblical writers were not NPCs, uninvolved spectators who suddenly woke up from a nap one day and found a glowing scroll and empty ink bottle in their inventory. They really did write the books and letters (or, as evidence seems to suggest for some NT books, dictated them to an amanuensis to copy down for them. Either way, they were generating the content..), and the books beautifully reflect the literary genres of the time and the personality of the human author. At the same time, it is not merely the important thoughts and insights of those writers that were communicated, but the Spirit guided them so that what they wrote was scripture, the true words of God, breathed out by Him. There is a gracious and powerful way in which almighty God works in conjunction with fallible humans to bring forth His own desired work. From the building of the tabernacle, to the writing of the scriptures, to the Incarnation itself, and our sanctification and ministry today; we are not NPCs either.

We can act like it, though. We can claim we have no responsibility, claim that God's sovereignty means we can be fatalistic and not fulfill the tasks to which He has called all believers, and those which he reveals to us and calls us to pursue as individuals or couples or teams. "If it's God's will, it will happen," may be true of His revealed will, but maybe it is His will for you to go do that thing today, and not doing it would be sin.

Paul said, regarding our lives in Christ, that we should run in such a way as to win the prize. In the previous post, I suggested a paraphrased adaptation for the gaming generation might be "play in such a way as to win the game." (2 Tim 2:5 makes it clear this doesn't mean cheating is an option.) So would it make a whole lot of sense to play the game by getting a house in an NPC village and just kind of loitering around? Or trying to stand by the village gate and suggest quests to other people while not starting any?

God has given us a mission, a quest, a calling, and it's to bring the gospel to every person, everywhere. Not to save them; only God can do that. And we can't believe -for- anyone else, as much as we sometimes want to (God knows -and that is not taking His name in vain- how I have wanted to). But we can share the reality of what God has revealed to us, about Himself and our human condition. 2000 years later, the campaign is ongoing. The world has been forever changed, previous generations did and are doing their part, but large portions of it remain unreached, and that's our part.

Half of all online free multiplayer RPGs, it seems, start with the same task: go to the [grassy field], collect 7 [gopher pelts], and bring them back so this NPC can make a [jaunty hat]. You will receive [a tattered cloak] or some other thing that's only useful for the next 5min of the game as your reward.

It's not a surprise to anyone who's played an RPG or two, let alone many, that you have to start with small tasks and work your way up to big ones. Before you can receive the quest to slay the Vermicious Knid that dwells in the Stygian Pit of the Fire Swamp, there are those gopher pelts. Some believers, typically younger believers but not necessarily, want to "change the world for God." I'm not mocking this desire, I think it's wonderful and necessary, if coming from a desire to see God's kingdom advancing and a willingness to "become less, that He might become greater" and be a living sacrifice to see that happen for His glory.

What I would encourage those people to understand is that you have to start with the gopher pelts. As a missionary, I've observed that a lot of people think missionaries are magically transformed into conduits of God's grace and power either by taking on the role itself, or by going to live far away for the sake of the gospel. While both of those things can have a profound effect on our walk with God, both through suffering of all kinds that makes you rely on Him and from seeing how brightly His glory shines when your surroundings are especially dark (and there are different kinds of darkness) -it's not magic. It's much more like 'grinding' quests than most people know. Gopher pelts every day, from gophers that rarely drop them.

But: once you've taught the little kids Bible stories and caught their colds, or spent time listening to the homeless and impoverished and begun to question fundamental aspects of your own worldview, or patiently served the disabled elderly with no glory and little thanks, or shared the gospel with that curious but resistant friend for the 11th time, and then God calls you from the Sunny Labyrinth of Suburbia or Concrete Canyons of the Inner City to serve Him in the far away Jungle Encampment or Mountain Village or Grand Market of Cydonia, after you've done all that...

You suddenly find that those little +3 to Patience and +5 to Courage and God-Moment drops you've been collecting in familiar and even boring settings have prepared you to be able to attempt and sometimes succeed at the exotic and unfamiliar missionary quests you discover in your new home-far-away-from-home. And what are those quests, you ask?

Well, there's lot of...

Teaching little kids Bible stories, spending time with homeless and impoverished people, serving the elderly, sharing the gospel repeatedly-hey, sound familiar? It turns out much of what you'd do overseas as a missionary is what you could have already been doing where you are now.* And, the more you did it in your "normal life," -which is anything but normal, it is a defiant stand of goodness and love against a world reeling from sin and stained in darkness- the more successful you'll be at it in your missionary life, should God call you to that. If not, it turns out you have the opportunity to be the Church that withstands the gates of hell wherever He has currently placed you. (He has, you know.)

*- Yes, missionaries have cool adventures and bizarre experiences too, but that's not a average picture of your typical missionary life day-to-day. Like I said, gopher pelts. Although those quests like rescuing Crown Prince Huang from the Ancestral Demons dwelling in the Haunted Iron Fortress with the Sword of the Spirit and the power of the Name really do happen too... we have good stories for a reason.

In conclusion we are not NPCs, not non-playable characters, we are the ones who are called to serve wherever we find ourselves. Whether the adventure on our plate is loving our irritable coworker or smuggling Bibles into a closed country, it is not "for those people who do those things" to take care of while we wonder whether God will call us to serve Him. Because we are those people. We are the called.

TL;DR: We are the called. Start collecting those gopher pelts.

Bit by Bit - Grace Lag

Explanation for this blog series (Can skip if you're a gamer):

Back in the day, the internet was a source of great excitement, because now anyone could share their thoughts with millions of people. Shortly afterwards, the internet became a source of great frustration, because now anyone could share their thoughts with millions of people.

As one of those people trying to get your eyes to continue reading my words, I am aware of this difficulty, and that you don't want to waste your time. Therefore, I am trying to write about things regarding which I have some experience and can contribute something valuable. Whether I succeed or not is a subjective question that only you can answer for yourself.

For most millennials/Gen Y, especially perhaps those of us in the early years of the generational cohort, video games were a part of growing up. The first Christmas that I can remember distinctly, we got an NES, and 8-bit theme songs immediately began embedding themselves into my impressionable kid-brain. My parents, having bought it for us, decided to see what sort of thing it was, began playing around with it, looked up and found a couple hours had passed without their realizing it, and have instinctively disliked video games in general from that moment on. (They see nothing unusual with an evening of TV watching, however. Accepting the latter and not the former seems like a pretty clear example of generational bias to me!)

Anyway, what I'm trying to do with this series is connect in a humorous but truthful way with a generation who was raised on video games, whether console or computer or handheld. Video games, by their very nature, impact one's ways of thinking very deeply, and have affected our culture so greatly that probably very few people realize the true extent. Arguably, what sports analogies/metaphors were to earlier generations, video game metaphors are to ours.

For example, I know what "well boys, we're in the bottom of the ninth and the bases are loaded" means, but I don't 'feel' the analogy, it's not instinctive. I might even have to pause for a moment to process it. But for millions of us, saying "alright guys, we're at the final boss battle" communicates the same basic idea in an instinctive way. (Attend a business meeting years down the road and I bet you phrases like this will be thrown around.)

Since, for better or worse, so many of my generation's minds have been engaged in game-playing for hours every week for years, to me it only makes sense to speak to this subculture. Paul uses metaphors based on the culture of athleticism in Greek metaculture, something the Gentiles he wrote to (and probably most Jews of the period as well) would be familiar with. Though we are also a culture which highly values athletics and have no trouble understanding these metaphors, I boldly submit that thousands of students who know the meaning of "run in such a way as to win the prize" would still reflexively nod in deeper understanding if one paraphrased it "play in such a way as to beat the level."

So, with that being said, here's the first entry..

Bit by Bit: Grace Lag

(Bit by Bit is a series I'll do from time to time expressing gospel truths through gaming metaphors. The title refers to our progressive sanctification. And, you know, 1's and 0's)

One of the most frustrating phenomena a gamer can experience is lag. Your rocket-dodging skills are rendered useless as your character freezes on screen; a confused second later and you are dead. Or you are trying to recreate the batcave in minecraft and have to mine the same block 3 times before it stays mined. Or your game simply sits there inert until your internet connection stabilizes, and meanwhile your party members are messaging you impatiently. Nobody likes lag, except maybe griefers, who can only be described as the enemies Jesus commands us to love, if indeed we count them as human beings.

Lag is an old word which entered English before Shakespeare, from Scandinavia. (Thought to derive from the Norwegian "lagga," meaning "to go slowly." One imagines a bunch of vikings making fun of that one longship in back with an oar that keeps getting stuck.. "Ja, it's locked up again, they're lagging bad." Sweden's gaming culture has deeper roots than I'd realized...)

The word has a variety of connotations, but in the gaming sense it is a gap between your input and the realization of that input. This either results in delayed realization, or a failure for your input to have any effect at all. Let us say, for example, you are playing an online shooter, and right before a bad lag, you give the game a command:
<Toss a Grenade>

Having done so, in one sense the grenade can be considered thrown, because, unless your connection gets totally dropped or the lag exceeds a certain time limit, your command will reach its destination, some bits will shift around, and eventually the display will show you a graphical representation of the result. Most games do not have a Ctrl-Z function, so once you have told the game you want to toss a grenade, you cannot then take advantage of the lag-induced delay to quickly Undo the grenade toss, there is no such command. So the grenade, for better or worse, has already been thrown.

Yet in another sense, the grenade has not been thrown. While waiting on the lag to resolve, you do not know at what point in the process of a) the command being issued, b) the execution of the command, c) and seeing the results of the command you are. You do not know whether the grenade's actions have been seen by other people before you, or whether perhaps the delay was simply too long, and the results of the command will never materialize. From your perspective, the grenade has not yet been thrown.

So we could say, regarding the throwing of the lagged grenade, that it is "already but not yet" thrown.

This, as it so happens, is a very important theological concept: in a similar fashion, we say that Jesus is "already but not yet" enthroned.

Christ has received that name above every other name, that at His name every knee shall bow in heaven and on earth and under it. He has been proclaimed Lord; He has won the victory. Yet Paul says in 1 Corinthians, that He must reign until all His enemies have been put under His feet. If Jesus already won, what's all this "until" business? If the command was effective, why can't we see the results of it?

Lag.
Intentional Divine lag.

God is purposefully delaying the inevitable earthly display of Christ's victory and rightful status of sovereign Lord of all creation. There is no extra requirement Christ needs to fulfill, no steps God must take before Jesus is ready to assume His place as the Alpha and Omega, the God-King of a world burned clean of evil. Jesus assumes humanity, wins the total victory, comes back to life as the firstborn of the dead, ascends into heaven with the disciples thinking He will return at any moment, and... pause. Confusing lag in the display of what is proclaimed to have already occurred, and that was two millennia ago.

But why would God introduce two thousand years of lag into His victory? 

Short answer: For us. The lag is the world's limited-time opportunity to come to God before the end.
Jesus won the victory, and before He takes charge, He delays, offering the world the chance to change their allegiance, to join His side before He destroys all His enemies, which they currently are. That is purely grace. And it is intentional grace, because His self-sacrifice and victory over sin and death were unnecessary for Himself. He did it for us, so that we could share in His joy instead of perishing in His wrath.

The Apostle Peter talks about this in 2 Peter chapter 3:

⁸ But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. ⁹ The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

Peter is saying, I think, something to the effect of: "I love you, but you really shouldn't complain that after saving you, God is delaying His return to save other people too."

It's natural, of course. No one likes lag. Paul says in Romans 8 that all of creation and our own inner selves are groaning in frustration at the delay. But the delay is for the salvation of millions of people from every tribe, clan, people group, and language.

So we have to endure the lag because we know the reason for it, though no one specifically enjoys it. Except possibly griefers, as I mentioned earlier, but Peter mentions their ilk a few verses earlier in chapter 3 as well: 

³ Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. ⁴ They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.”

In other words, scoffers gonna scoff. But we know that the level isn't completed until the required number of hostages are saved, and that having been rescued it's our job to free other hostages. Would you want Jesus to come back before your friends are saved? Take advantage of the lag, then, and tell them about Him.
This game has no save points or restarts; when it ends, it's over.

TL;DR:
God's gracious lag is a chance for the world to quickly swap to His side, because Jesus is just about to log onto the server, and as we all learned in Unreal Tournament, you want to be on the side that has the Redeemer.