Perhaps you are a better person than I am… actually, there is a VERY good chance that you are. Maybe these little “sounds” and their accompanying notifications mean absolutely nothing to you, and you have always simply played video games for the sheer joy of it. I was once much like you… but then a terrible and shameful addiction took hold of me. My purpose for playing games became horrifically twisted as I fell down a never-ending rabbit hole of playing truly horrible titles for the WORST of reasons. The good news is that I am in recovery now… it has been many moons since my last INTENTIONAL participation in a bad game simply to pursue the “achievements” they contain. As a recovering “achievement-holic”, I have learned to stay away from games based on licensed properties and I no longer take a quick glance at the achievement list when booting up a new game to see how many of these little pop-ups I can look forward to. I try to simply play the game the way it was designed and enjoy the occasional happy surprise of an in-game notification if it happens organically. It has been a long, hard road to recovery… I played SO many truly bad games for years simply for the joy of seeing these points populate next to my name. But then, one day, I finally realized something that changed my perspective on them for good… and for the better.

Over the years, game developers have attempted many innovations to add additional reasons to purchase and play their products, but few have been as simple yet effective as the addition of “achievements” or “trophies”… artificial accolades that compel very specific actions or pursuits from the players. In the early days of the arcade boom, the opportunity to become temporarily immortalized by achieving a “high score” on a game allowed us to put our initials in, demonstrating our status as an elite player on that particular title. As video games headed into our homes, a new way of tracking gamer greatness emerged… achievements and trophies. Whether we are referring to “achievements” as they are called on the Xbox platform or “trophies” for those who play on Sony’s family of consoles, their purposes are identical… to provide a form of visible recognition for the accomplishment of specific in-game challenges while playing. Many are “just for fun” such as achievements that populate when we press start for the first time or perform an embarrassing exploit such as fail the same level repeatedly. Others are added to our collection by simply playing through the game to its’ conclusion. But the REAL reason that these in-game awards and the scores associated with them are so coveted is because the rarest and most valuable ones are only unlocked when a truly challenging objective is completed… typically involving beating a game on the hardest difficulty levels or seeking out the most impossible goals and overcoming them. And the advent of these “achievements” have changed both the WAY many people play games as well as the REASON some of these games get played at all… because they add to our “Gamerscore” or “Platinum” trophy virtual locker.

If I am being truly honest, I think I have an idea why the pursuit of these particular accolades compelled me in the first place. It is the same reason I chase certain accomplishments in my real-world adventures… and even if you have never felt the siren call to play a terrible game simply for “points”, you may have grappled with this desire as well. It is a temptation as old as time… the temptation to step back and “quantify” our accomplishments or achievements. It is revealed in a million different ways… some of which we may not even recognize. When we think of this action, we tend to picture Scrooge McDuck counting his massive treasury of coins or Alexander the Great staring out at his freshly conquered empire with a continuing thirst for more, both of which seem pretty hard to relate to for all of us ordinary people. But this particular desire reveals itself in a much smaller and intimate way than we may realize… the human instinct to find our validation, recognition, perception of value, or our sense of security in what we can “count”. It can be what is found within our bank account, on our resume, in our quantity of friends and followers, through our test scores, the quantity of weight we can lift, the number we see on the scale staring back at us, or any other number of arbitrary measurements of success. This desire reveals itself in ways we wouldn’t even traditionally expect, and even the meekest and most humble of us may struggle with it without realizing it. All of these desires share the same common source… pride. And even the most “Christian” of us may unknowingly be caught in the grip of this parasite because it hides itself within our BLESSINGS.

Last week we took a deeper look at the “Parasite of Pride” and how it attempts to co-exist even within our service to the Lord… if you missed it here is the link before we move further into the topic:

The most infamous moment of “counting his blessings” is found in 1 Chronicles 21, when the very human known as being “a man after God’s own heart” fell prey to the desire to see exactly how much he had achieved in his service to the Lord by counting the quantity of people he had been entrusted to lead. David had gone from a simple, unassuming shepherd boy who had the lowest ranking in his own house to receiving the blessing of being anointed by God to lead His chosen people of Israel… but this “rags to riches” story created an opportunity for David to be curious exactly HOW much the Lord had entrusted him with. Even though he had been gifted all of this through unearned Divine providence, this king who was responsible for some of the most beautiful and humble poetry in existence still fell victim to a moment of “pride” as he sought to “count his blessings”… with disastrous results for him and the very people he had been given to lead.

1 Chronicles 21:1-8 Now Satan stood up against Israel, and moved David to number Israel. So David said to Joab and to the leaders of the people, “Go, number Israel from Beersheba to Dan, and bring the number of them to me that I may know it.” And Joab answered, “May the Lord make His people a hundred times more than they are. But, my lord the king, are they not all my lord’s servants? Why then does my lord require this thing? Why should he be a cause of guilt in Israel?” Nevertheless the king’s word prevailed against Joab. Therefore Joab departed and went throughout all Israel and came to Jerusalem. Then Joab gave the sum of the number of the people to David. All Israel had one million one hundred thousand men who drew the sword, and Judah had four hundred and seventy thousand men who drew the sword. But he did not count Levi and Benjamin among them, for the king’s word was abominable to Joab. And God was displeased with this thing; therefore He struck Israel. So David said to God, “I have sinned greatly, because I have done this thing; but now, I pray, take away the iniquity of Your servant, for I have done very foolishly.”

This provides a challenging question… how can we balance our healthy desire to give the Lord thanks with a grateful heart for all He has done for us with the unhealthy human appetite to count how many chickens He has blessed us with? Even in our initially innocent thought to look and see how good the Lord has been to us, we can easily and inadvertently open the door to what the Bible calls “a proud look” (Proverbs 6:17) as we cast our gaze out the window towards what we can count, quantify, and measure. There is a secret to avoiding this that the Apostle Paul uncovered for us… and it is the same secret that helped me break my bizarre interest in “achievement hunting” in my video games. Let’s take a look at how Paul cracked the code…

Philippians 4:11-13 Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content: I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

The secret to destroying the parasite of pride that seeks to hide itself in the very blessings we receive from the Lord is to find true contentment in ALL of our seasons in life… and that means recognizing His love for us in the “lean” times in the same manner that we feel it during our times of “abundance”. It means that our praise for Him when we have “little” should not be any different than when we have “much”. He doesn’t love us less when our finances are low and our bills are high, and He isn’t loving us more when our cup is “overflowing”. There is a reason why He allows us to experience hardship in conjunction with His grace… it is to suffocate that parasite of pride before it has the opportunity to infect His children. In the case of Paul, the Lord gave him both a blessing AND a struggle… to starve the human desire to count our achievements as proof of His approval and view our setbacks as an indication of His disappointment.

2 Corinthians 12:7-10 And lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure. Concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

The secret is what Paul was referring to when he shared that he had “learned to be content whether in seasons of abundance and abasement”. It is the same painful lesson that David learned the hard way when he attempted to “count” what the Lord had done for him. The key was to STOP COUNTING… to stop looking for artificial, temporary, or arbitrary forms of validation in our lives and simply find our peace in His hands regardless of how high or low we feel that He is holding us at the moment. He doesn’t love us less when we are low or have a higher approval of us when we are flying high… He loves us unconditionally, and that means that our externally measurable performance is not an indication of the strength or status of our relationship. Paul realized that the Lord loved and cared for him just as much when he was trapped in an unearned prison as when he was preaching to large crowds and enjoying what appeared to be “success”. He was not simply “accepting” his challenging circumstances and “rejoicing” in his victories… Paul saw them both as IDENTICAL seasons in his relationship with the Lord regardless of how differently they each felt. And because of his acceptance of the “thorn in the flesh” designed to prevent the parasite of pride from entering his thoughts, Paul was able to experience both the ups and downs of his physical life without allowing it to impact his recognition of the Lord’s loving presence in both.

You may be wondering at this point how this has ANYTHING to do with my unhealthy “achievement hunting” in my video games… I guess it is finally time to pull these threads together. Once I recognized that my collection of achievements and trophies were NOT an actual measurement of my enjoyment of that game, the happiness I experienced playing it, or even my actual skill level within that game, I finally realized the limited value of spending any amount of my time chasing them. And to be honest, I am not even sure who really cares if I “platinumed” a specific title or unlocked EVERY achievement in a certain game… certainly not any of the people in my life that truly matter to me. I learned to recognize that whether an achievement pops up during a specific action or not, what matters is if I am truly content with the game I am playing… regardless of the game choosing to recognize these moments with an “achievement unlocked” notification. I learned to enjoy the game I am playing whether an achievement “unlocks” or not… if one does, that is pretty cool. And if it doesn’t, I still enjoyed the time I spent with it all the same. And that is the truth that must be present in my relationship with the Lord… if He chooses to bless the work of my hands and shower me with earthly blessings, then that is great. And if I am in a season that yields very little externally visible “fruit”, that should be EQUALLY great… otherwise, I am making the mistake of equating His physical blessings with spiritual success and opening the door for pride to enter the equation.

The Lord does not love us less during our times of struggle nor is He showing a greater affection for us when we are experiencing “quantifiable success”… and the moment we stop to “count our blessings” can be a dangerous one, because we tend to view these “achievements” as validation of His presence in our lives and approval of our actions. And once we equate the Lord’s blessings with something we can “count”, we have opened the door for the Trojan horse of pride to sneak in and allow us to bask in HIS glory. Instead, we shouldn’t count anything at ALL… we should simply count ourselves as abundantly loved and blessed by the Lord REGARDLESS of any measurable accolades that accompany our actions. As Christ’s followers, we are showered by His unearned love and grace at ALL TIMES… and if we only find contentment in those periods where we can measure His presence by external factors, we have missed the whole point. Just as earning a “platinum trophy” or a perfect Gamerscore in a game is rarely a reflection of it being one of my favorite games (or even a GOOD game), these measurable accomplishments in life are not necessarily an indication of the Lord’s increased favor in our lives… His rain falls on both just and the unjust, and He makes the sun rise on the evil AND the good (Matthew 5:45).

Let’s turn our eyes away from the size of the harvest and onto the Lord of the harvest Himself… the Lord who gives AND takes away (Job 1:21) and loves us the same either way. Whether we are currently in a period of feasting or in a state of famine, earning trophies or simply playing the game, His grace is sufficient for us through EVERY season (2 Corinthians 12:9) … so let’s avoid the temptation to only see His presence in our measurable achievements and equate anything we can quantify as proof of His “Divine approval”. He loves us when the mirror is kind and when the numbers on the scale keep on rolling… He adores us when our credit score is high and when it is low. His presence is near us when our heart is full AND when it is broken, and when we can see His love equally in both the sun AND in the rain, we can finally find the contentment that Paul spoke of and unlock the achievement in life that matters the most… the peace that only comes from Christ. The peace that surpasses all understanding and refuses any attempts at being validated by the “trophies” that this life offers… a peace that kills all forms of pride by suffocating them at their source. A peace that cannot be limited by the ferocity of the storm we are in nor measured by the size of the boat we have been given… and when we are able to rest just as securely and peacefully in His arms through our periods of abundance as we do in our times of abasement in life, that is when we can finally say with Paul that we have learned the secret of true contentment. The Lord is just as present with us on the top of the mountain as He is down in the valley of the shadow of death (Psalm 23), and if we have our eyes fully on Him instead of our current level of elevation then we won’t truly notice the difference. Achievement Unlocked 🙂

• Like us?  Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Spotify, TikTok, or YouTube for our articles, podcasts, and videos!
• Facebook: Finding God in Video Games
• Twitter: @FindingGodIn_VG
• Instagram: Finding God in Video Games
• Podcasts on Spotify/Apple/Google: Finding God in Video Games
• TikTok: @FindingGodInVideoGames
• YouTube: Finding God in Video games
• Video versions of our articles are available here: