Settlers of Christ-like Catan
Now I’ve had a “Monopoly” phase, and I’m having a “Settlers of Catan” phase, and I’m beginning to see the differences.
I first saw the differences last week when I won a game of Catan and realized it wasn’t that gratifying. Sure I was the first one to get 10 victory points (or 12 in Seafarers Catan), but it seemed so anticlimactic. After all, in Monopoly, the winner not only wins, but squeezes the “game life” out of every other player. In Catan, you cross a finish line, but you’re left with the feeling that if the game were one point longer, you would have lost. There seems to be all this uncertainty.
Which is what I sometimes feel about being a follower of Christ. Like most areas of my life, I’m looking to win somethng, or to be rewarded in some way because I’ve followed well, or unfortunately, I want to follow better than everyone else (mainly because of my competitive spirit).
Then I look at the life of Christ, and plainly see that winning and losing meant very little to Him. Oh we like to take Paul’s words in our American culture and use them to fit into our nice Christian systems and world views, but it seems to me that Christ couldn’t have given a rip about winning, empire building, crushing the opposition of people who don’t believe (see Peter’s Ear incident) or even getting the right answers on a Bible test. He lived. He loved. He brought justice. And in the end, he was killed for it. Which of course brought more love and more justice.
Sometimes I wonder if that is the kind of game I’m playing?
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In addition to this, I think two things about monopoly appeal to your personality.
#1) Your goal-centered. having the goal of being the only one left is a much less arbitrary goal than scoring a certain number of points.
#2) Your extroverted. People who have never played Monopoly with the FC crowd might not get this: but the way you guys play was quite fascinating. The rules almost fade into the background, as the importance of negotiation, the art of the deal become incredibly important. As properties get bought and sold, there’s this whole array of currencies: it’s not just about the money that changes hands for the property, but also, these other things (You get free rent for life; you get x percent of what I make off of this; you pay my way if I land on…) It becomes about the art of the deal, interactions, even playing people off of each other.
not to be an ass, Jeff, but it’s YOU’RE and not YOUR.
and I agree in any case.