This is RPG-ology #79: Faith, for June 2024.
Our thanks to Regis Pannier and the team at the Places to Go, People to Be French edition for locating a copy of this and a number of other lost Game Ideas Unlimited articles. This was originally Game Ideas Unlimited: Faith, and is reposted here with minor editing [bracketed].
I have previously mentioned my friend David, perhaps one of the most significant people in my life. [Three Five] decades ago I told him that he just might be the smartest person I knew, and that opinion has not changed. Today he is a Baptist pastor, and we share our thoughts on scripture and ministry through frequent e-mail. This story comes on his authority, in one of those e-mails.
He mentioned to me a man named J. J. Brown, an engineer for a Colorado mining company who at the turn of the century discovered gold, a discovery that created more millionaires than the California gold rush a half century earlier. He and his wife Molly moved to Denver, where the Colorado rich lived at that time, and enjoyed the luxuries that were then available to the extravagantly wealthy. Among those luxuries was a vacation in Egypt, in 1912, at that time very popular among the rich. But word reached them during their Mediterranean retreat that their grandchild died. They, of course, prepared to return home as quickly as possible, booking passage on the first luxury liner they could find (air travel, apart from ballooning, being science fiction).
You know that the Titanic struck an iceberg that year. As it went down, J. J. Brown went down with it. His wife made it to one of the lifeboats, however; and there she led the other women in hymns of praise to God, and encouraged them all with reminders of His presence with them. She is, if you have not already guessed, the unsinkable Molly Brown. In the midst of crisis, she found the strength to help others.
My friend used that as an illustration of how much greater heavenly riches are than earthly riches; and as I contemplate it now I know that this is one of many stories of faith, tales in which the hero passes through trials that would break any of us but rises above them to stand strong, an inspiration to all. I am not so myopic as to believe it is only Christians who have such heroes–but it does bring to mind an aspect of character that is oft overlooked, even in games in which players play people who are, or at least ought to be, deeply religious–clerics, priests, paladins, even ordinary people with a devotion to their faith. I wonder how many of us grasp the deep roots and solid foundations faith in God gives to a person, how so many are enabled by their faith not merely to withstand hardships but to rise above them, suffering joyfully as they pass through the fire.
That phrase, passing through the fire, almost certainly had its origin in another story of faith, that of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, three Hebrews who refused to worship the golden god built by Emperor Nebuchadnezzar. As Daniel tells the tale, they were thrown in a huge furnace, a fire so hot that the men who pushed them in were overcome by the heat themselves. But once inside, they were untouched by the flames, and were seen walking in the midst with a fourth person. At this moment I’m less concerned with the miracle and more with the fourth person. He is reportedly described by the king as being “as a son of the gods”. There is a suggestion that the three faithful believers were kept safe because the God in whom they placed their faith was with them at that moment–or at least sent someone to be with them–protecting them from the fire.
Believers, people of faith, have a confidence that they are on the side of the gods, and that the gods therefore will not abandon them. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego told Nebuchanezzar that they were not afraid of the flame, because they knew God was able to deliver them, and they were confident He would deliver them; but they also told the king that they wouldn’t worship his golden idol even if God wouldn’t protect them.
Perhaps one of the problems modern men have had with the concept of God’s favor on a person or group is that it is always phrased God is on our side. When so phrased, it is of course foolish–whether one God or many gods, the interests of the divine do not condescend to support one or another human cause. It is a very anthropocentric, even egocentric, view of faith. The truly devout character would not say that; he would say, we are on God’s side–a very important distinction, an awareness that it is not God fighting for us but we fighting for God. God fights alongside us not because He likes us or our causes, but because He is already fighting this battle and we have come to fight with Him.
It is difficult to understand people of faith, even for people of faith. It is often the case that the one who it seems would never amount to anything becomes the anchor that holds everyone steady, the rock on which others build their hopes, the surprising hero when the crisis strikes. That sudden courage and hope often surprises even the person who has it; many heroes have said that had they been told what they would face, they would not have expected to survive it, and looking back upon it they do not know that they could do it again. Faith only matters when it truly matters, and it is then that we discover whether we have it. It is at the moment of crisis that the believer discovers what he really, ultimately, believes. Either he trusts his God or gods and stands confident, or his faith fails and he sinks into despair.
I hope this look into the heart of faith helps you understand those characters in your games who truly do believe in something. There are depths to all characters awaiting discovery. People of faith have depth and dimension you might not suspect. Look for those depths, and bring them to the surface when the situation calls for them.
Next week, something different.
//The truly devout character would not say that; he would say, we are on God’s side–a very important distinc//
No distinction at all; you’re just pretending to ‘know’ the mind and intent of a god you can’t demonstrate. You might as well be pretending to be a god.
You’re not fixing the issue but rephrasing how you qualify something.
“I believe X” is the same thing as “God wants me to believe X” or “We are on Gods side and Gods side is X”.
These are all, on a practical level, the same. They work the same way, the actual ideology is all derived via subjective relativistic social/cultural drift, and the language of how it’s qualified is merely a superficial use of rhetoric. It’s actually quite disingenuous.
The hilarious part is that every Christian you disagree with does the same thing.
So does every theist of every other theology outside of Christianity.
Most theists are isolated islands of perfect ‘divine knowledge’ that just so happens to align to a very narrow window defined by their geographical location, their ethnicity, political affiliation, national affiliation, education level, etc. They reject the theology of everyone around them, on their own islands unto themselves, while all using the same litany of fallacious arguments.
If you don’t understand the distinction between “God is on my side” and “I am on God’s side” you are considerably less intelligent than I had thought. Let me try “I fully support the local police” versus “The local police fully support me.”
Certainly to you the distinction is meaningless: since you avowedly believe there is no God, it is not possible for that God to have an opinion. In that case, any claimed opinion of God would be our projection of what we want to believe God is saying. If, arguendo, God is real, then it might be possible for Him to have opinions and positions, and for us be influenced by them. Admittedly, we might misunderstand, get them wrong–but that doesn’t negate the possibility that He has them and has expressed them.