Blocked Out

I made a big mistake. Recently, I downloaded the highly addictive game, "Tetris", onto my cellphone. Seeing as I have never shown compulsive behavior with any other video game, I figured I would write about it now.

In my leg-numbing sessions of wasted time playing it, I've come to realize that life is very much like Tetris.

It is a game that you can never win. You begin with the shapes descending laughably slow, slotting the chunks neatly into form-fitted spaces. You feel a subtle sense of mastery in this small success. The pace picks up. You can still handle all the pieces and you feel good about how well you're doing but you develop a knot of tension between your shoulders. Now the blocks are sliding down like raindrops on a window and the intensity increases. You make a mistake here and there, causing some empty pockets that keep you from keeping up, but you manage to stay afloat despite the gnawing sense of inevitability. Now they're streaking down like comets and suddenly things are piling up haphazardly. The pieces shoot down faster still as you hopelessly watch the blocks fill up the screen until you fall apart altogether. The game wins again. As it always does.

And yet this "game" remains one of the most addictive and timeless diversions ever (and believe me, for a video game to have any notoriety that lasts more than several months, much less two decades, is an accomplishment). Despite inevitable defeat, you hit start and go again. And again. And again. Like the fly slinging his body into the screen, desperate for freedom.

With time as one of our most precious gifts to steward, why spend it practicing futility? When wanting a diversion from the pressure of "real life" (what an oxymoron: what most people call "real life" is neither real nor life), why do we hand over the 20-40 minutes to something that is not real? You might pat yourself on the back for getting farther. But then you drag your mind out of the game, lift up your eyes and look around the room at a world that cares nothing for the numbers on the screen. And it is definitely not changed or made beautiful, nor does it know God more because you managed to push certain buttons in a certain sequence into a certain end.

The game is the "world". We pick it up every morning to play by the game's rules: rules that favor the house and ensures that no matter what, we do not win, nor, in the end, do we matter. And as we lower our attention into the well to dangle in darkness, we are unable to notice the real world shining above us, seemingly far away: the reality of God and His Kingdom that does not keep score by the rules of the game or place value on how high our scores may seem.