Video Game Jesus

"For He knows how we are formed; He remembers that we are dust" (Psalm 103:14, ESV).

There's a really simple explanation for the popularity of most video games. It's not so much that video games are fun and entertaining (although they are) as that they allow the player to enter into an alternative reality and experience an alternative way of life. The same is true for movies and literature. For different people, this means different things. If your fantasy is being a hero who keeps evil at bay, then maybe you play Rainbow Six or Call of Duty. If you really want to be Peyton Manning, you might find yourself playing Madden into the wee hours of the morning. The best video games, like Halo or Skyrim or Call of Duty, generally have the best narrative story-lines, which make it easier for us to become willing participants in the game's carefully crafted world.

But of course, video games can only take us so far. No one throws six touchdowns with Tim Tebow on Xbox and then identifies with Tim Tebow. And after saving the world in Goldeneye, you can't really walk away and say you know what it's like to be James Bond. You only have a cursory secondhand knowledge of these things.

Sometimes I think we see Jesus as a kind of video game Jesus. Sure, Jesus knows our every weakness, He suffered as we suffered, He experienced emotions as we experienced them. But I think we are inclined to buy into the lie that Jesus knows ABOUT our emotions rather than actually KNOWING our emotions. We tend to think Jesus has the same kind of knowledge about out human condition that we do when we play a video game: cursory and detached.

But the wonder of the gospel is that Jesus has felt exactly as you feel, will feel, and have felt. The depression that you felt that was so deep and painful? Jesus felt that too, just as intense as you did. The grief at the loss of a friend? He knows it. That incredible joy and happiness you feel when things go your way? He has tasted every bit of it. Abuse? No one knows it better. He not only knows about it, He knows it, because He has drunk deeply of it as the God-man. Why? Because He knows how we are formed; not just the facts and biology of creation, but every bit of your and my humanity. And He remembers it, because He still lives it.

The beauty of Christianity is not that if offers a sure-fire answer to pain and suffering; the beauty of Christianity is that it presents us with a God who experiences the same pain and suffering that we do. Maybe there is a "problem of evil," but if there is, it's God's problem too. Christianity doesn't so much offer us a theodicy as it offers us a God who sits with us in pain and says "I know." And a God who promises to erase it all one day.

I sometimes think that when we see Jesus in glory, we will undoubtedly gaze at the wounds that purchased our salvation and the glory of His face. But after a while our eyes might gaze elsewhere upon the risen Lord. Upon the pain in His eyes, the stress wrinkles on His forehead, the marks of abuse, and then we'll exclaim,

"My God, I didn't know!"

And then Jesus will say something like,

"Yes, but I did. Now come child, there will be no more talk of that here."*

We would do well to remember that.

*Inspired by a Sinclair Ferguson quote