Bit by Bit - Language Unlocks (Culture)

(Bit by Bit is a series that seeks to better understand timeless truth through gaming metaphors. The title refers to our progressive sanctification. And, you know, 1's and 0's)

Haven't done one of these in months, but I continue to be impressed with how gaming metaphors apply to unchanging truths and principles of life. Today's entry is related to my overseas work. It's not meant to discourage anyone who feels they can't learn languages well, but to encourage everyone to keep going.

The Struggle to Connect 

Language is one of the biggest barriers to ministry in East Asia. The difficulty of languages like Japanese, with three writing systems mixed together and complicated grammar, and Mandarin, with lots of similar-sounding words distinguished tonally and thousands of characters to memorize, is something most people are aware of.

When I say language is a huge barrier to ministry, I don't mean that one must be impressively fluent to do ministry over here. English teaching is always a way to help and meet people, and one can train many local pastors through a translator and accomplish important long-term kingdom work without spending years trying to get fluent in their language.

The problem, rather, is the relational issue: to connect with the average local person who does not speak your language, you need to speak their language well enough to do so, and while there are exceptions, most ministry that will not evaporate fairly quickly after you leave depends on that kind of connection. Without the language, you're also permanently separated from the culture; you can learn about it, but you'll always be missing a huge part of everything, a black box into which you rely on other people to look inside for you.

Language learning is tough, but that difficulty can be over-hyped too; there are some people who do struggle to learn any new language, but for most people with most languages it's a simple question of learning correctly (the right content studied in the right way) and investing enough time and effort to pound it into your brain until you make new neural pathways for it.

That means to learn a new language is to re-wire your own brain, so it only makes sense it would be a challenge. The attitude I condemn is neither the fear that one cannot do a good job in learning a new language due to its difficulty, nor the natural frustration that comes after much effort put into learning with seemingly little result; it's the attitude that says "language learning is hard, how little can I get by with and still serve?"

For me, as a Christian living overseas hoping to share my faith with as many people as possible in my community, language is a constantly present, relevant, and exhausting challenge. Most of my day-to-day communication here is done in Mandarin, and the more used to speaking it I become, the more obvious it becomes that it's not adequate. That doesn't mean I can't do what I do now with the language level I have now, it means I can see opportunities that lie beyond my reach because my language abilities aren't up to them yet. I want the language keys that open those doors.

There are discouraging days, where I feel like I should just give up and use English, and there are encouraging days where I can turn and see that, although the mountain ahead seems ever higher, I'm looking from a vantage point far above the plains below where I started.

But one of the most motivating things about the process of learning a new language, whether you've just started or over the long term, is that with every new useful phrase or word you learn, you are opening up new conversational or even social possibilities. This exciting process of slowly increasing your ability to function effectively in a new place and culture, at the same time greatly expanding your versatility and flexibility in ministry, is very similar to learning the rules and techniques of a new game.

Let's compare that process to an old classic:

Super Mario World

This is one of my favorite old games of all time. I think the designers hit a perfect balance of great art and level design; fresh and varying content and enemies so the levels don't get boring; memorable music themes, sound effects and cues; and secrets hidden everywhere. And yes, nostalgia may play a part; we did not have a SNES growing up, but I spent many hours playing it at friends' or cousins' houses.

One of my favorite parts of Super Mario World was how many secrets there were to unlock if you knew how. Whether flying above the screen in the Ghost House to unlock a secret level that gives you infinite lives (basically the secret to beating the game), or going to Star Road and finding all the different colored Yoshis, even the secret levels sometimes had their own secrets.

Secrets within secrets...

One of the more fun secrets to unlock in SMW are Switch Palaces. Everyone knows Mario games involve jumping under lots of blocks; Super Mario World introduced the innovation of several different colors of "exclamation point blocks" [ ! ], which must be "switched on" at the hidden switch palaces. (Only the first palace, Yellow, is in plain sight, the others must be found by discovering secrets in various levels) Until you find and activate the correspondingly-colored switch palace, these colored blocks are shown only as dotted outlines, showing where the blocks will be.

Early in the game, you had probably switched on the yellow blocks (further levels became fairly ridiculous if you didn't), but not yet the green, red, or blue ones, and every so often you saw a weird little area where you knew there was something going on, but only had the outlines of the potential colored blocks, so you wouldn't be able to reach the secret there without finding the switch palace of that color first.

Our family tradition was to run, jump, then switch directions exactly as he landed

Correct me if I am wrong, dear readers, but if memory serves, it is possible to finish the game with only the yellow blocks switched on. You don't need to unlock the secrets to finish it, you can make your way through and achieve the main goal of beating Bowser in his castle, which after everything it takes to get there is actually not terribly difficult.

However, that is not "really" beating the game. There is a way, by beating secret levels in the right way, to actually permanently change the in-game graphics from Spring/Summer to Autumn. The enemy designs change, the color palette changes, it's a victory which accomplishes much more than simply defeating the last boss and watching the credits.

Again, if memory serves, one cannot beat the final secret level and cause this change without the presence of the different colored blocks which you need to switch on at the hidden switch palaces. In other words, you can beat the final boss 100 times and the game won't change, but by switching on the missing blocks and unlocking the secret levels, you can affect the game itself.

Unlocking a Culture, Block by Block

Language is like that. Living in a new culture, in a new language environment, you start out with few things you can do. "Survival" language skills give you what is necessary to keep living there in the basic sense; you can get done the very basic things that must get done without finding someone that speaks your first language or someone to translate. You could continue in this way for a very long time, and many people do. 

But you won't even know what you don't know. You'll never have the conversations that could have opened up new doors, never get to know that local who can't speak English at all, but who is very influential in their own context, or can encourage you or be encouraged by you. You can set goals, ministry or otherwise, and reach them, and even "beat the game," by accomplishing everything you set out to do in a given time period.

What you set out to do might not be the best or most effective thing you could be doing, however. Missions is fraught with examples of people doing what they thought was a good idea and actually causing serious problems. But on a less extreme level, how many times have I read about and personally witnessed people who worked very hard, yet somehow found the long-term fruit from a given ministry was surprisingly absent?

That's not to denigrate their effort; God rewards our motive, not the outcome, which we are never totally in control of anyway. (sometimes not at all) But if your goal is to be as effective as you can, without enough language to get deeper into the culture, to understand the lives of the people you are ministering to, you won't know whether you're working in ways that make sense for the culture or not. I have been in the situation more than once of being present for someone ministering in English while listening to the attendees speaking Chinese, and realizing the attendees' assumption of what was happening and that of the person leading were wildly different.

I wonder how many times that has happened to me in the past, when I had no way of knowing.

Like the colored block outlines mentioned above, you might become aware that there are opportunities eluding you, but until you unlock the next level of your language abilities, you simply won't have access to them. That's not to say they're automatically open to you at that point. The secret levels are typically especially difficult or confusing, and have their own secrets. But knowing they exist gives you a whole new set of goals to strive for.

The Final Word

So if you are headed towards, or already work/minister in a multi-lingual context, my advice is this: To avoid burning out, make your default language goal whatever is enough to accomplish the goals you or your organization or ministry or team currently have--following our Super Mario World analogy, unlock those Yellow Blocks, then go ahead and set out to defeat your Bowser.

But set another goal too, which is that along the way you will keep trying to find those Switch Palaces and unlock new blocks to help you get into new areas. Then use the opportunities those new language abilities provide to go places and do things you couldn't before. Maybe the Star Road is where you'll find that breakthrough you've been praying for.

Bit by Bit - Spiritual Checkmate

(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)

Like many other people, I very much enjoy games of strategy, whether digital or board games. (in a few years there will probably be increasingly no distinction) I preferred them from childhood onward because I had -and still typically have- rotten luck; if it involved dice, I would lose. For games that depended on skill rather than chance, at least I had only my own abilities to blame, and I had a reliable way to improve.

I've only ever been decent at chess, as having a brain that jumps all over the place is not conducive to carefully considering a series of moves. Also my strategic efforts tend to naturally gravitate a place somewhere between Chess and Go- I tend to focus a little too much on local maneuvering and capturing other pieces in Go, where one has to always keep the big picture in mind, and a little too much on "putting pressure" here or there in Chess, where you have so few pieces in a small area that each move has immediate importance as well as being part of a given strategy or "push." (Some game that involved about 6 additional kinds of chess pieces per side on a board about double the size of a chessboard might be perfect)

But I often lose chess for purely tactical reasons. I recently got a chess app for my phone, and have been playing the computer on the hardest difficulty that's still fun (I lose 3/4 of the time). I found that I will nearly always try to wrest initiative away from the other player by making a series of provocative moves that he can't help but react to. Sometimes I can score an early victory in this way, or at least put him on the defensive and get my own pieces out earlier.

However this tendency of mine typically leads to a loss. The main reason is that when I am focusing on seizing the initiative early and putting pressure on the opponent's king, I am forced to concentrate less on building up a strong defensive position. This means as the game progresses, holding on to initiative and keeping up my attack on his king's position begins to mean sacrificing a pawn here and there, and sometimes making gambits which are numerically equal but weaken me positionally. The result is often a premature checkmate, made possible by the enemy taking advantage of my weak defense to pin and fork my pieces drawing near to his king and force them to retreat to try to protect my own king. It's often then too late to stop the checkmate, and even if I do, I'm forced to surrender initiative and begin a defensive game from my now weaker position.

Spiritual Checkmate

When this happened yet again in a quick chess app match this evening, it suddenly struck me that there was a direct analogy to our spiritual lives as well. As a missionary in the 10/40 window I am generally considered more of an offensive than defensive unit when it comes to the Kingdom of God and the domain of the enemy. I'm on the edge, pushing into new territory (which this shrine-and-idol-filled neighborhood I work in certainly is..) for the gospel. But in my personal spiritual life, if I am always focusing on ministry and evangelism, and neglect my own time with God and His word, I'm making exactly the same mistake I have been making in those chess games.

While I'm maintaining forward momentum in my ministries I don't notice it; I can see there's progress being made, and experience spiritual growth of one sort through my efforts and seeing God at work. But when our little team runs up against difficulties, or a ministry fails, or if repeated salvos of insomnia and temptation of various kinds begin to wear down my spiritual armor, my lack of defensive preparation begins to show. The enemy can start "pinning and forking" me, and suddenly I've lost initiative and can only try to react from my weakened position.

Thankfully, the battle belongs to the Lord, so I am never only thrust upon my own devices. But certainly God allows us much freedom in how closely we choose to walk with Him, and my experience is that, like the Father He is, He is typically willing to let us suffer through the object lessons if we don't do what His word taught in the first place. That is not purposeless suffering, it's sanctification the harder way. (There is no easy way, but there are certainly wise and foolish ways to go about it which lead to more or less hardship relatively speaking.)

But "Spiritual Checkmate" by the enemy can certainly happen when we focus our time too entirely on working for God versus being with Him. In our spiritual life, often the best defense is not a good offense; both are necessary, but if anything it's the other way around. It's frequently noted how much time Jesus spent away from the crowds in prayer and solitude, seeking quiet and God's presence. If He did so, it's arrogant of us to assume we can always be in "attack mode," and not need to draw away and rest, not just physically but spiritually. (We are simultaneously spiritual and physical creatures, so the two are inextricably linked for us) Our spiritual immune system, our spiritual defenses, will be strengthened during those times.

Some people explode onto the ministry scene and make a huge impact in a short time through powerful and dynamic effort, but are brought down by scandal, destructive patterns of secret sin, or are simply worn out by the enemy's attacks. I suspect sometimes their private spiritual life was not strong; they were "too busy doing God's work" to maintain the devotional life that would have strengthened their spiritual defense against the enemy's attempts to stop their progress. Others may be hesitant to step up to ministry challenges and have less impact for the Kingdom than they might, but do continue on faithfully for decades unshaken. Their devotional life is steady, their defenses are strong, and they can weather the enemy's attacks. For them it may be their offensive capabilities that they need to work on, so that more people might be blessed through their faithfulness.

I would have lost if not for those two well-placed pawns protecting my king.
You can't win without the major pieces, of course, but sometimes it's the small,
consistent acts of devotion that keep the enemy at bay and help carry the day.

The Devil's (Desperate) Gambit

Since we have the Spirit, we do not need to look at this as a zero-sum game. Offensive capability does not come only at the expense of defensive capability and vice versa; both strengthen, enrich, and reinforce the other. Our private devotion and time in God's presence will directly improve our ability to advance the Kingdom through our ministries, and seeing God at work in the world and in our ministries brings excitement and passion to our devotion as well. That means we don't need to "balance" them, but increase both, focusing on whichever is lagging behind. Prayer (real, focused, time-consuming prayer) is probably the most straightforward way to simultaneously improve both.

I submit that in 2015, the enemy is pressing hard to bring the battle not just against our ministries but against our personal time in God's presence, when our defenses can be strengthened. Typically it's going to be our "defensive" side, private devotion and time with God, that needs to be constantly protected. A war is being fought to distract/entertain us 24/7, and increasingly I find that it's impossible to prevail by default. I have to actively take steps to push back. (It's one of my personal goals for this year.)

So I'd leave you with the same encouragement. Aggressively stake out time for defensive spiritual recuperation. You may find in doing so you've taken the initiative away from the enemy and put him on the defensive. Don't get cocky, the devil is a better chess player than any of us. But praise God that with Christ's total victory on the cross, he's only able to mount a losing battle. That the attacks look more and more vicious in recent months, as our brothers and sisters in the faith are attacked and killed in many parts of the world, is a sign not only of his evil malice but also of his desperation. The ultimate victory has already been won, but here on earth things will get worse before they get better.
Be neither apathetic nor fearful; shore up your defenses and stand firm.

"Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." (James 4:7)

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.