Multiplayer shooters dominate the game store shelves these days and almost any theatre of war, real or imagined, can be brought to life on the home console of your choice to reenact over and over again.  But nestled in between World War 1 recreations and futuristic space simulators is a title that is completely it’s own… the colorful ink-fest that is Splatoon.  Brimming with character and a flair that is all it’s own, Splatoon is the anti-thesis to almost every competitive shooter on the market.  Bright and cheerful, featuring childlike avatars who transform into squids (yes, bear with me) who wield paintbrushes and rollers as their weapons of choice to literally cover the canvas of the level with the paint color of their faction.  Call of Duty eat your heart out…

It’s simple enough for my 4-year-old to pick up and play successfully but buried underneath the slick visuals and smooth gameplay is a surprisingly tactical and fiercely competitive online masterpiece.  At least, it usually is.  With the matchups locked into 4 on 4 battles, each participant’s contributions are critical to the success of the team, and when you find one player who is not pulling their weight this often spells defeat for even the most synchronized team effort.  After being vanquished by an opponent and sent back to my respawn point, I emerged from the ink ready to regain lost ground only to find a fellow teammate was standing stationary at our home location.  As time is of the essence in these battles I couldn’t observe them for long, but sure enough as the match wore on it was clear that this teammate, who had previously been fully engaged in the matchup, was not moving on from our home base.  Were they upset that they had been outgunned and simply walked away?  Did their battery die on their game pad?  Maybe they were summoned to take out the trash… regardless of the reason, they were given the gift of regeneration but did not move forward from that point and as a result our under-manned squad ended the match with a loss.

In the whole scheme of things, this was a pretty minor setback and the next session went on with this disappointment firmly placed in the rear view mirror.  But I couldn’t shake the idea of being given the opportunity to be re-birthed but stubbornly refusing to embrace the opportunities within that new life.  As a believer, I have observed many people “give their life to Christ”, “get saved”, or become “born again”, but then give no evidence that a change has occurred in their day-to-day life.  Surely a new lease on life, combined with the power of God’s Spirit taking up residence within us would be reflected in our approach to life going forward, right?   Not through imposed legalism or receiving a church handbook of appropriate musical selections and approved hair styles… no, I’m talking about an internal change that would impact decision-making and priorities at a spiritual DNA level.  This failure to launch intrigues me, and to determine if this is a by-product of our current culture and environment or if the roots run deeper I turned to the New Testament for help.

In Ephesians 2:1-10 we find one of Paul’s most succinct responses to the challenge of balancing the gospel of grace with the abandoning of dead works.  He draws a vivid example of the contrast between our previous condition as an enslaved corpse and our new life as a born again believer.  Sometimes we read these verses so often and hear key phrases in sermons and songs so frequently that we can lose the picture Paul is painting here.  So let’s really develop this in detail.

Paul equates our bondage to sin to the finality of death… an irreversible state of never-ending decay which would require a supernatural occurrence to alter.  We walked through our lives without Christ like the walking dead, hungering at a primal level without any hope of being satisfied, slaves to our fleshly desires lacking the strength or capacity to re-animate into something better.  This was the spiritual existence for each of us… until Jesus called us out of our tomb the same way he summoned Lazarus back to life.  But here is the interesting question… once Lazarus was resurrected and his life-force restored, what if he chose to continue living in the tomb?  What if he used his newly gained lease on life to simply occupy the tomb that had once imprisoned him?  What if he respawned but chose not to relaunch?

And therein lies the battle… there is a purpose to our lives that only BEGINS at the point of our salvation.  It is not the destination, but merely our respawn point.  Colossians 3:1-11 draws this out very dynamically, as Paul explains that if we have truly been reborn, then everything from our thoughts and actions to our words and deeds should reflect our new trajectory.  It is almost as if Paul peers ahead into the world of gaming as he uses language that should be very familiar to us in explaining in verse 3 that the act of salvation means that we DIED, and have now respwaned belonging to Christ.  But it does not say we are automatically changed in our way of thinking, as appreciated as that would be.  Paul cautions us to “Set your mind on things above, not earthly things”, which means we will have to participate in this process.  Have you ever “set your mind” to something?  If you have, it may have looked something like this:

If I set my mind on having tacos for dinner tonight, that will impact me in multiple ways.  I will assess my current capacity for producing tacos, review my budget for purchasing the ingredients I lack, make a plan for where I will procure these items, and make adjustments to my travel itinerary to accomplish this.  In addition, I will be thinking about these tacos throughout my day in anticipation and will most likely alter my lunch plans to avoid tacos since I will be having them for dinner.  I would communicate my “Taco Tuesday” plans to my family to gauge their interest and give them time to properly prepare their palettes for the feast as well.  And when I get home I will understand that these ingredients will not simply arrange themselves into tacos for me… no, I will need to perform some chopping and shredding and cooking to achieve the desired result.

There is a very similar process on “setting our minds on things above” that will remove the failure to launch dangers from our new birth.  Christ Himself guided us to “count the cost” of following Him, understanding that while His yoke is easy and His burden is light compared to the yoke of bondage to sin, there still is a load to be carried.  Salvation is a free gift, but our daily walk with Christ is not a free ride.  It requires our participation.  It is an intentional walk that impacts us on every decision we make and is intimately intertwined in every relationship in our lives.  I highly encourage a full reading of verses 1-11 as Paul is very detailed in the differences between a life that has not embraced this way of thinking versus one that has chosen to emerge from their respawn and begin painting their entire world with the ink of Christ, one glob of paint at a time.

Whatever the reason might be, if you have found yourself stranded at home base I encourage you to bring out the paint roller and start covering the area around you with the ink from above.  Saturate your thoughts with prayer, fill your words with the Word of God, and bathe your actions with the fruit of the Spirit.  We all spawn at the same point regardless of what happened in the life we used to live, just like in Splatoon.  There may be more ink and in different  colors on our maps because we each got here differently, but we are all equal in Christ Jesus.  So let’s get to painting….