Last night, I blogged on how I was fighting Yiazmat, the boss in Final Fantasy XII with 50,000,000 hit points. I could have beat him last night, but I had some friends who I normally go bowling with on Sunday nights, so I paused with maybe around 1.5 mllion hit points left on him and went bowling. My thinking is that I can resume a game any time. My time with my friends is different.
So I go and before too long, one of them is telling me about how a former co-worker of mine and a current one of hers was giving her a two-hour lecture on God and Jesus. Note that this was being said knowing that I am a Seminary student and that I definitely have some strong beliefs on the topic.
What resulted? Instead of a two-hour lecture, in between our bowls, an hour and a half-discussion with two of my other friends listening in and saying things every now and then and ending with my friend saying “I want to know why you believe what you believe.” Why’d I have to go? Well, I have a job that requires me to get up early, so home I went.
But I thought about that as I left the bowling alley. Now I did meet my goal today of vanquishing Yiazmat, but I also thought “Heaven won’t care if I defeated Yiazmat ultimately.” What will matter the most though will be that I was a witness for the Christ in the time that I had here. That is the real battle of good and evil.
Now as I say that, some of you might be thinking “Then why waste your time on things that don’t matter?” Because I think those things that we sometimes think don’t matter are secondary so that we can do the primary things. A man needs to take time for pleasure in his life that is non-religious in its nature for God gave us many good things to enjoy and those secondary things enable us to enjoy the good things and do the primary things better. If I did not take time to unwind in the evening, I wonder if I could truly do the apologetics that I do during the day.
Consider marriage as an example. There are a number of guys, and I think I’m one of them (In fact, I’m quite certain that I am) that come alive with the love of a good woman in the romantic sense. A woman can definitely help empower a man to do things that he would not normally be able to do.
That is really non-religious in its nature as marriage is something you can do regardless of religion. However, a good marriage can enable some men and women to be better at practicing their religion. In the same way, I believe our hobbies and interests when given the proper time enable us to be the best at what is primary. Note this. The secondary must always serve the primary.
However, this is where the real battle is fought. I enjoy fantasy battles of course, I’m a huge gamer. This is the most important battle of all. Peter Kreeft has said Christian apologetics is the closest you get to saving the world. I think he’s absolutely right. We’re each doing our part in the ministry. Some of us are empowerers. We enable others to go out and fight. Some of us are fighting in the frontlines.
We’re all needed. There are many battles out there to win and one way to lose is that the soldiers don’t do their jobs. Get out there and be the best at doing what you do. Someday, that will be a battle that Heaven will talk about.
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