Games We Play – Twister #1
The game Twister, really who comes up with a game like this? You throw a pad of dots out on the ground and then start spinning away to figure out just how many ways you can twist your body around. Of course you are not alone out there. You are trying to get your hand on a red dot, where someone else foot is currently residing. In this game you end up twisted up and with your head in places you never dreamed it could actually be.
It is strange how religion can do the same thing to us at times. It would be a little simpler if there were only a few religions. But, there is one thing that is true for all of mankind. We have been searching for something beyond us. There has to be something or someone out there that is bigger than us. Someone has to have the answer for all this twisting and turning that we do looking for a “higher power.” So people have searched for ever and have twisted themselves into shapes trying to appease something deep within our souls.
It would be awesome if religions straightened out or dealt with this problem. Many times religion spins the dial even after we are twisted with a limb on a different color and just fighting to keep our balance. We have all been in churches like this at times. No matter how much we worked, prayed or gave it just was not quite enough to win the game.
I honestly, as a pastor, believe that is why so many have walked away from religion or never even give it a true chance. When we come to find peace and guidance and the wheel spins and we are just lost trying to find our way. Religion can add another level to our frustration. We try to balance all of life and then we cannot maintain that balance when religion spins the wheel again and we find a new way to disappoint God and the religious people around us. With this struggle we can become discouraged and come close to giving up.
Imagine, if you were God and you created people for a relationship and then they turn the whole thing into a form of religion. I wonder if he ever gets tired of us trying to play Twister when he really wants our lives to be untwisted. After all, that is why Christ came to earth. He saw us twisted and turned around. Worse part is that he also sees people spinning arrows and adding to our unbalance and trying to live. We have to frustrate God so much with our pursuit of the perfect game of Twister. We try putting our right hand on red and then bam left hand on green, right foot on yellow. That is why we call it twister, because it twists us all around and we can’t seem to find solid ground to just stand.
That is the rub of this whole twister thing. We have been told and shown what we should be, and yet it is almost impossible to survive the game. I mean it would be hard enough to do it by yourself alone on the board. All of the sudden you add in 2or 3 more people and it is game over. Life is hard enough, but when you add in other people it just becomes even more twisted. The game pits you against each other. I mean that one red dot is the only one I can reach, but somebody decides to put their foot on it. Religion and life are tough on our own, but when you throw in others and their dot chasing it makes life even tougher.
We are going to take a look at how do we survive, not win at this game called Twister. We will start with how religious Twister has…well twisted us all into a knot. We are so nervous and scared to lose at this game. But let’s all be honest who does not like a good face plant and an “Oh crap!!!!” as someone falls forward trying to reach that one more dot. But, that is life and twister all in a nutshell. We are trying to just make one more move and not fall on our face. Then religion adds another hurdle for us to work through. We will talk about Jesus showing up and seeing the spinner going around and stopping it.