To those of you who aren't D&D geeks, that's not anything weird, sinister, or kinky. The guy who runs the game is a Dungeon Master or DM.
I first concieved of the paradigm of God as the ultimate Dungeon Master back when I was still married to Craig, who for all his faults was the best DM I've ever played with, bar none. The DM is basically god of the gaming universe. There are rules, but he can choose to bend them. Or not. He can choose to fudge the die rolls.
I asked Craig once what he did if we didn't go into the tavern where the old Gypsy woman was spinning the tale of the nefarious vampire we were supposed to go destroy. Craig pointed out that he had more means of getting messages to us and he could come up with somebody if the old Gypsy woman didn't work.
Now, that said, let's move a moment to one of my pet peeves with my preschoolers. Bear with me, they tie together. As you'll see quickly.
Every day we have a Teacher's Helper. It's just the next kid down the attendance sheet from the kid that did it yesterday. Unles the kid who is supposed to be TH is absent, and then the next kid gets it.
The kids drive me crazy with wanting to know who will be TH tomorrow, the next day, the day after that. I don't want to tell them because I hate being forced to commit to something that can change. I can tell Ye Eun that she'll be Teacher's Helper tomorrow, then she's absent and Ha Rin is Teacher's Helper.
And what does it matter? They rotate. Show up every day and you'll be Teacher's Helper roughly once a week. Be late, like Min Gun usually is, and you'll blow your chance most weeks and everybody else gets to be TH after only four days instead of waiting five for their next turn.
But for ten months now there's been the relentless pestering about who will be Teacher's Helper tomorrow and the day after and the day after.
"I'll tell you when you need to know!" I tell them.
And I get one of my Presence of God moments. The "Sound familiar?" moment. The "Somebody has to keep telling YOU that. If you can't listen to Me, you could at least listen to yourself."
But I want to know! What's my next assignment? What am I gonna be doing next year? What's my five year plan?
Never mind I've never once had a five year plan that worked. In fact, making a five year plan -- which all the Success Gurus tell you is absolutely necessary to avoid wasting your life -- is a sure fire plan for disaster for me. I've never had one that doesn't totally blow up in my face and send me 180 degrees off from the direction I'd thought I'd be heading in.
But not having a Five Year Plan drives me as crazy as it drives the preschoolers crazy not to know who will be Teacher's Helper on Monday.
Why is it harder to let go of the admonitions of Success Gurus, whose names I can't even recall, than to let go of the admonitions of GOD, for crying out loud?
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- Christina Dunigan
- Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them -- Eph. 5:11
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Hi there! (and Happy New Year in advance!)
I must say I've never thought of God that way. I think that looking at God through the lens of his admonitions is, well, ass backwards. The person who knew God the best, Jesus, rarely spoke in terms of admonitions. Jesus almost entirely spoke of good and simple living. More people stumble into heaven by being good old average Joes and Marys than I could ever describe. These are people who probably could not list the Ten Commandments (certainly not in order ha) but just enjoy life, love God, and are charitable by nature. The traditional family is the location where this can most easily and naturally flourish. However, in this day of fragmented or non-existent families, it can be a challenge. One tends to focus more on outside actions and corrective stances, rather than living in God's world naturally as he intended. Reading your blogs I think you probably suffer from "fighting the good fight" burnout. While your causes and stances are admirable, they cannot become one's entire life because then one starts to view life as a battlefield. Those who focus on the most dire problems, such as abortion, child abuse, slavery, extreme poverty, must prevent the "fighting the good fight" from overtaking one's own life and sucking all the goodness out of it. Again, study Jesus as the example of knowing God. He did not try to fix all the world's problems hands on. He even rejected preaching outside of his segment of the Jewish community, leaving the rest of the world to the Apostles and disciples after him. He healed the sick and taught that illness was not caused by sin, but he did not set up soup kitchens and write a tablet blog about the social inequities of the times. He lived a good average quiet life until the time he assumed his public ministry. Even then he had balance and friendship with those who accompanied him. He would strike up a conversation with a woman at a well, and at invitation, spend a few days in that town, and when he left they were converted. He didn't try to mend the poor children's clothing while he was there. People need to learn to be charitable to each other as a natural part of living. So far from being a dungeon master, God sends people who set good and realistic examples of love and charity, not uber social workers or zealots. The most pious and content people I've known in life are not those who can rattle off the prohibitions in Leviticus. They are the ones who it just would not even occur to them to be "bad" lol, and more important, they have pity for those who are not in the same condition, but they do not lay awake at night obsessing about even the most dire issues of the day. To do so is to suck all enjoyment out of life and misunderstand God. I'm always puzzled when people think they can understand God by looking at the "rules of the world." When life beyond death is infinite in length, does not one understand more about God by understanding the realm in which he is fully present, and prepares to share with those who seek him? It is like trying to understand the role of water on the planet earth only by turning on one faucet tap and spending a lifetime studying that faucet and its operations. How would that ever inform anyone trapped inside the room with the faucet about rain, lakes, the ocean, the amount of water in one's body? So far from being the dungeon master, humans are their own dungeon masters in not believing and loving what is right in front of them. Living a good life and loving the Lord God with one's heart and soul, and having charity for one's neighbor really is "enough."
Best wishes and hopes for a fulfilling New Year.
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