Video Game Addiction and the Gospel

Here are the chapters for my book on how the gospel overcomes addiction:

If you were given the option to live for a million years on earth with infinite wealth, power, and pleasure, but then once your time was up, you had to spend the rest of eternity in eternal conscious torment, would you choose this? Only a fool would. A trillion years is a drop of water in the infinite ocean of eternity.[1] As finite human beings, we are unable to grasp the concept of eternity. If the gospel is true, then what we do in this life has eternal consequences.

On the other hand, what if you were offered eternal life with God instead of torment in hell? What would you give in exchange for this? It would be worth more than everything in this world combined. And if you believe that you have received this gift of eternal life with God, why would you want to spend the rest of your life on earth living for yourself instead of for building Christ’s kingdom? What would that say about your view of eternal life? Should we not instead live to repay this gift of love? Heaven must be forever because we can never repay the debt of love we owe to God just as hell must be forever because sinners can never repay the debt of their sins to an infinitely holy God.

Live for the Line

Randy Alcorn has a wonderful analogy that helps us better grasp the shortness of this life in comparison to eternity. He compares this life to a dot and the rest of eternity to a line that extends from it forever.[2] Therefore, why would you live for the dot instead of the line? As James 4:14 tells us, our life is a vapor that is here today and gone tomorrow. Once this life is over, we enter into eternity.[3] The danger of entertainment is that so many people are preoccupied with pleasing themselves that they never think about eternity. As Charles Spurgeon expressed, “Vain pursuits are dangerous to unrenewed souls.”[4] Any entertainment can become evil if it makes those who are lost forget about eternity and the day of judgment so that they never see their need for Christ. This life is our one chance to be saved from our sins. Do not trade eternal salvation for the momentary pleasures of this life. Only a fool would live for today instead of eternity. This life is the preparation for eternity.[5]

A wise man once said to me, “Life is a battleground, not a playground.” Do not treat life like a game. There is no reset button and we only have one life to lose for Christ. What has been done cannot be reversed. But we can resolve to live for the rest of our time for God instead of ourselves. We are accountable to God for our time and each of us will give an account for how we have used the time God has given us (Rom 14:12). That should motivate us to sacrifice “all the vain things that charm me most” when they come between us and God.[6] As Thomas Brooks reminds us, time is precious:

“Time is so costly a jewel that few know how to value it and prize it at a due rate. . . . Most are lavishly and profusely prodigal of that precious time which is their greatest interest to redeem. Time is a precious talent, and the non-improvement of it God will charge upon men at last.”[7]

This life was never meant to be our heaven on earth. [8] The suffering we experience in this life is a reminder that this world in its fallen state is not our home. This was the teaching of Thomas Case in his work on suffering:

“In affliction God teaches us to redeem the time. When life is tranquil, how many golden hours we throw down the stream that we shall never see again. Who is there that knows how to value time at its true worth? Most men waste it as if they had more time than they could ever spend. We make short seasons even shorter. . . . God comes upon the soul as the angel upon Peter in prison, and smites us upon our side, and bids us to rise up quickly, and gird ourselves, and bind on our sandals that we may redeem lost opportunities, and seek to do much work in a little time. It is a pity to lose any of our time, a thing that is so precious and so short.”[9]

In light of eternity, our prayer should be, “May I speak each word as if my last word, and walk each step as my final one. If my life should end today, let this be my best day.”[10]

Treasures in Heaven

When we invest our time in eternity by working to build Christ’s kingdom, we are giving back to God what is already his. Everything that we have, including our time, ultimately comes from God. As John the Baptist said, “A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given to him from heaven” (John 3:27). Each of us have been given a stewardship from God that we are accountable for (1 Pet 4:10). This means we don’t really own anything. We are owned by God and therefore we don’t have the freedom to live however we please (1 Cor 6:12-20). As debtors to God, we owe an eternal debt of love which can never be repaid. And the joy we experience now in serving the Lord is but a glimpse of what is to come (1 Cor 2:9).[11]

Since we are called to lay up our treasures in heaven in Matthew 6:19-21, we need to remove everything from our life that prevents us from fulfilling our calling. The devil wants to destroy us (1 Pet 5:8). But if he can’t destroy us, he will try to make our life unfruitful through temptation. Satan knows that his time is short, but ours is even shorter. If Satan labors to pull down the kingdom of Christ, we must labor even harder to build it up. We do this by seeing every moment of our lives as owned by God and bought by the blood of Christ. Because we are owned by God and are not autonomous creatures, we are called to live for the glory of Christ and make his name known among all the nations. As J. Campbell White explains:

“Most men are not satisfied with the permanent output of their lives. Nothing can wholly satisfy the life of Christ within his followers except the adoption of Christ’s purpose toward the world he came to redeem. Fame, pleasure and riches are but husks and ashes in contrast with the boundless and abiding joy of working with God for the fulfillment of his eternal plans. The men who are putting everything into Christ’s undertaking are getting out of life its sweetest and most priceless rewards.”[12]

The joy and peace found in Jesus are worth giving up everything for. We have already spent too much of our life playing games. Now is the time to act like men (1 Cor 16:13). Now God calls upon his church to reject passivity and laziness. By acting like men, we imitate the Father and Christ our bridegroom. Our Father in heaven provides us with everything we have and we are called to imitate his example by providing for others.

We should be motivated to invest in eternity because of the promise of eternal rewards as well (Dan 12:3; Matt 5:12; 25:20-23; 1 Cor 3:8). As Watson explains: “As there are degrees of torment in hell, so of glory in heaven (Matt 23:14). As one star differeth from another in glory, so shall one saint (1 Cor 15:41). Though every vessel of mercy shall be full, yet one may hold more than another.”[13] And treasures in heaven include others as well. When we bring others to the savior, we are bringing them with us to heaven.[14] The only thing in this world which will carry over into the next are the people who live in it.

It takes faith to believe that treasures in heaven far exceed anything this world could offer us. It makes no sense from the world’s perspective to sacrifice our time and money to invest in the spread of the kingdom of Christ. But we believe by faith that everything which does not have Christ as its center is of no eternal value. Therefore, we use our entertainment as opportunities to reach those for Christ who share the same interests we do.

Carrying the Cross

What will it profit a man if he gets everything he ever wanted in life and then goes to hell? What good does it do to accomplish every gaming achievement in the world, when in the process, we forfeit investing in eternity? How can we expect to go to heaven when we die when we never thought about heaven while we lived?[15] Do not sell eternity for the passing pleasures of this world. Show love for your own soul and consider how unbearable eternal torment is. Your greatest care should be for eternity, not this world which is passing away.[16] As Brooks exhorts us:

“The soul of man is worth more than a thousand worlds. And it is the greatest abasing of it that can be to let it doat upon a little sinning earth, upon a little painted beauty and fading glory, when it is capable of union with Christ, of communion with God, and of enjoying the eternal felicity of heaven.”[17]

As Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her (Eph 5:25), husbands are called to love their wives so much that they choose to neglect entertaining themselves to work for a God-honoring marriage and children who love the Lord. Your gamerscore will not be there for you on your deathbed when you come to die. But if you have raised children who walk in the fear of the Lord and trust in Jesus, they will be. Your children are far more important than any video game achievement. There will never be an end to new games and achievements. Attempting to collect them all is a chasing after the wind, an impossible task that will only result in regret and emptiness.

Eternity will make amends for all the suffering and pain we endure in this life. Therefore, we don’t need to drown it out through the idolatrous indulgences of the flesh. A life oriented toward eternity does not need the pleasures of this life to be content. Therefore, remove the idolatrous addiction to the things of this world which steals your joy and destroys your fruitfulness. If anything gets in the way of your devotion to God and calling as a man, you must cut it off. Entertainment in moderation is consistent with the Christian life, but it takes great discipline and love for Christ to not turn it into an idol. As C. T. Studd urges us:

“I do not say, don’t play games or cricket and so forth. By all means play and enjoy them, giving thanks to Jesus for them. Only take care that games do not become an idol to you as they did to me. What good will it do to anybody in the next world to have been the best player that ever has been? And then think of the difference between that and winning souls for Jesus. Oh! if you have never tasted the joy of leading one soul to Jesus, go and ask our Father to enable you to do so, and then you will know what real true joy is. The time is so short, such a little time to rescue souls from hell for there will be no rescue work in heaven.”[18]

An Enemy to Prayer

Gaming can become an enemy to prayer if it makes us forget about our need for God. We are commanded to pray without ceasing (1 Thess 5:17). Praying should be like breathing for the Christian. It is one of the ways we express our faith and dependence on God. But addictions sever us from prayer and cut off the power of God in our life. Addiction to entertainment is a thief which robs us of communion with God. Entertainment can become an enemy to our worship of God because it directs our minds from God back to ourselves. We can all too easily tune out from our relationship with God.

We are commanded to make “the best use of the time, because the days are evil” (Eph 5:16). Can you honestly say with a good conscience that you are making the best use of your time when you spend most of the day pleasing yourself? Even times of vacation are not an excuse to neglect prayer, family worship, and meditating on Scripture. We live on the words of God as we live on bread (Matt 4:4). It is foolish to believe that anything in this world is better than communion with God.[19]

Those Christians who pray the most are most full of joy and assurance of salvation. As Thomas Manton preached:

“The sweetest experiences of God’s saints are when they are alone with him. Without seeking God often, the vitality of the soul is lost. We may as well expect a crop and harvest without sowing, as living grace without seeking God. God is first cast out of the closet, and then out of the family, and within a little while, out of the congregation. Omit secret prayer, and some great sin will follow. A man who is often with God, does not dare to offend him so freely as others do. Religion, as it were, dies by degrees. Whatever else is forgotten, God must not be forgotten. Make God a good allowance. Make a prudent choice yourselves, and consecrate such a part of time as will suite with your occasions, your course of life, and according to your abilities and opportunities.”[20]

The kind of prayers God loves are those which come from the heart. As Brooks once said, “Cold prayers always freeze before they reach heaven.”[21]

Whenever we are engaging in entertainment, we need to ask, does this activity make Christ more precious to us?[22] Does it make you want to share the gospel more? Does it make you want to spend more time with God? As Matthew Mead teaches, our communion with God is vital to a healthy Christian walk:

“Maintain a constant communion with God daily; this communion with God is man’s chief good; the happiness of a child is in communion with his father, and the happiness of a wife is in communion with her husband, and this is the happiness of a believer’s soul, communion with God the Father, through Christ our head and husband. . . . Spiritual peace will never be obtained, if communion with God be not maintained; that gives comfort in the midst of all sorrows, and satisfies all doubts, and recompenses all wants.”[23]

A Monument to All Your Sins

Think about all the time you have spent playing games. Gaming has been called a “time sink” because playing them is like pouring time down the drain.[24] The same criticism can be applied to any form of entertainment. While there is value in entertainment insofar as we use it like medicine or to grow in our relationships with others, turning entertainment into an idol is always a waste of time. A lazy servant is a wicked servant according to Jesus in Matthew 25:26. To not improve upon what we have been given is evil in God’ sight.

Holiness and idleness can never go together. We are commanded to work because we serve a working God (John 5:17). Idleness always brings shame and misery because we are living contrary to the purpose for which we were made. Paul says in 2 Thessalonians 3:10: “For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.” Paul modeled this in his own life by working as a tentmaker while serving as an apostle (Acts 18:3). Do not use religion as an excuse to neglect the hard work to which you are called.[25] You can seek after Christ and provide for your needs and those of your family at the same time (1 Tim 5:8).

Ralph Venning illustrates how the neglect of our calling leads to temptation:

“Every man should have a calling to follow, and follow his calling, which is an excellent preservative from evil thoughts. Idle people have no business but to sin, and they who follow their calling have no leisure to sin; their thoughts are too intent to be diverted. Time lies heavy on some men’s hands for want of employment, and therefore they become busybodies, gadding and wandering about as their fancy or the Devil, like the wind, drives them, or like a decoy draws and allures them (1 Timothy 5.13-15). . . . They know that their time is passing away and will pass away, but they do not know how to pass it away, so that whatever temptation comes, they seem to be ready. The wink of an eye or the holding up of a finger prevails with them. They follow the Devil’s whistle, and dance to his tune. They spend their days like vagrants, and their life is a mere diversion from that which is the business of it. They cannot endure to be with themselves, and therefore trifle away their precious time, and adventure the loss of their precious souls, by becoming sinners for company. Our thoughts are so active and restless that they will be doing something or other, and like unruly soldiers, if others do not employ them well, they will employ themselves ill. God has therefore in mercy appointed us callings to take up our thoughts, that they may be not only innocent but profitable to ourselves and others. Paradise had employment, and Heaven also will not be without it. Idleness is an hour of temptation; and we can have no excuse to stand idle in the market place when God himself offers to employ us. The best way to rid our ground of weeds is to till it, and the best way to free our hearts from evil thoughts is by good employment.”[26]

Therefore, we must remove from our life those persons and things which seek to keep us from fulfilling our calling. If we walk with fools, we will become a fool (Prov 13:20).

Brooks likewise warns us of the dangers which attend idleness:

“Oh! the deadly sins, the deadly temptations, the deadly judgments – which idle and slothful Christians are given up to! Therefore be active, be diligent, be abundant in the work of the Lord. Idleness is the very source of sin. Standing pools gather mud, and nourish and breed venomous creatures; and so do the hearts of idle and slothful Christians.”[27]

Fulfilling our calling requires urgency as Richard Wurmbrand admonishes us: “What is good must be done straightaway, immediately. Only this moment is ours. The next moment might belong to death, even if we are young and in perfect health. If we don’t act immediately, other cares might make us forget our duty.”[28]

When it comes to completing difficult tasks, Alexander MacLaren gives us this great piece of advice:

“No unwelcome tasks become any the less unwelcome by putting them off till tomorrow. It is only when they are behind us and done, that we begin to find that there is a sweetness to be tasted afterwards, and that the remembrance of unwelcome duties unhesitatingly done is welcome and pleasant. Accomplished, they are full of blessing, and there is a smile on their faces as they leave us. Undone, they stand threatening and disturbing our tranquility, and hindering our communion with God. If there be lying before you any bit of work from which you shrink, go straight up to it, and do it at once. The only way to get rid of it is to do it.”[29]

The Horror of Eternity

A common regret most Christians have on their deathbed is that they did not use their time better than they did. They regret not praying more and not spending more time with their family. What regrets will you have on your deathbed? Think much on the day of your death because it will come sooner than you think.[30] God has not promised you tomorrow. How will this world be different when you are gone? Will your life have made a lasting impact on those around you?

The last sermon of Thomas Watson to his congregation when he was forced from his pulpit because of the Act of Uniformity urges us to always think about eternity:

“Every day think upon eternity. Oh eternity, eternity! All of us here are, ere long – it may be some of us within a few days or hours – to launch forth into the ocean of eternity. . . . No prospective-glass can see to the end of eternity. Eternity is a sum that can never be numbered, a line that can never be measured. Eternity is a condition of everlasting misery or everlasting happiness. If you are godly then shall you be for ever happy, you shall be always sunning yourselves in the light of God’s countenance. If you are wicked, you shall be always miserable, ever lying in the scalding furnace of the wrath of the Almighty. Eternity to the godly is a day that has no sunset; eternity to the wicked is a night that has no sunrise. Oh, I beseech you, my brethren, every day spend some time thinking upon eternity. The serious thoughts of an eternal condition would be a great means to promote holiness.”[31]

This was the same plea as Brooks to those who are young:

“Ah, young men and women, remember death is oftentimes sudden in his approaches, and you had need therefore to be prepared to meet him. Nothing more sure than death. Nothing more uncertain than life; therefore, turn from your sins, lay hold on the Lord, and make peace with him, so that you may never have to say, as Caesar Borgia said when he was sick unto death, ‘When I lived, I provided for every thing but death; now I must die, and am unprepared!'”[32]

If you die without Christ, your eternal regret will be that you did not use your precious time to find peace with God. As Brooks lamented:

“How many young men are now in everlasting chains, who would give ten thousand worlds, had they so many in their hands to give, to enjoy but an opportunity to hear one sermon more, to make one prayer more, to keep one Sabbath more, but cannot! This is their hell, their torment; this is the scorpion that is still biting, this is the worm that is always gnawing. Woe! woe! to us, that we have neglected and trifled away those golden opportunities that once we had to get our sins pardoned, our natures changed, our hearts bettered, our consciences purged, and our souls saved.”[33]

The shortness of life is an incentive to flee from sin. Would you give into sin and addiction if you knew that you only had an hour to live? As Brooks exhorts us:

“Would you thus dally and play with sin upon a dying day? Would you thus stroke and hug sin upon a dying day? Would you not rather show all the dislike and hatred that is imaginable against it? Would you not tremble at sin more than at hell? And abhor the very occasionsof sin more than the most venomous serpent in all the world? Would you not rather suffer the worst and greatest punishments, than to smile upon a darling sin upon a dying day? Yes; oh would you fain do this upon a dying day? Why not then every day?”[34]

Now or Never

Do not put off repentance till you feel like repenting, or you may never come at all. As Brooks warns us, “Though true repentance be never too late, yet late repentance is seldom true.”[35] The sands of time are sinking fast.[36] Yesterday you were but a child, and tomorrow you shall be old. None of us know how long we have to live. Do not take for granted your good health because one day it will be gone. As Watson writes on the state of fallen man:

“A natural man is sick, and his taste is gone; since tasting the forbidden tree, he hath lost his taste. Sickness takes away the comfort of life; a sick person hath no joy of any thing, his life is a burden to him. So the sin-sick soul is void of all true comfort, and his laughter is but the pleasing dream of a sick man; he hath no true title to comfort, his sin is not pardoned, he may be in hell before night for any thing he knows.”[37]

Think about all the people who are in hell now because they put off believing in Christ and repenting of their sins. Today is the day of salvation (2 Cor 6:2). This is the very day on which your soul may be saved. Give the most glory to God by serving him while you are young as Brooks urges you:

“Do not put off God to old age; for old, lame and sick sacrifices rarely reach as high as heaven. . . . An aged man is but a moving anatomy, or a living mortuary. Now how unlovely, how uncomely, how unworthy, nay, how incensing, how provoking a thing must this needs be, when men will dally with God, and put him off till their doating days have overtaken them, till their spring is past, their summer overpast, and they arrived at the fall of the leaf, yea, till winter colours have stained their heads with gray and hoary hairs!”[38]

This is the same message John Piper preaches to our generation that we might not waste our lives:

“Fight for us, O God, that we not drift numb and blind and foolish into vain and empty excitements. Life is too short, too precious, too painful to waste on worldly bubbles that burst. Heaven is too great, hell is too horrible, eternity is too long that we should putter around on the porch of eternity.”[39]

The God of Second Chances

Rats and pigeons were not created to be locked in Skinner boxes, and neither were we. We were designed to worship and serve God, not to sit for hours on end mindlessly consuming entertainment while neglecting our calling. We were made for so much more than this. You will always be miserable until you turn to Christ and seek to fulfill the calling he has given you. We were made to live, to laugh, and to love. And love requires membership in a community. The only thing in this world that will carry over into the next one is the people who dwell in it. That means we must invest ourselves in the lives of others. Yes, it is risky, but it is worth it.

You are out of lives and there are no more continues. You only have one chance to live in light of eternity. Every day that passes is another day for which you will have to give an account to God. Don’t waste your one chance to die to yourself for Christ. Look forward to the real heaven that will not pass away. Reject the temporary heaven on earth that addiction promises and wait patiently for the one to come. As long as you are still alive, your story can have a happy ending.

Addiction is like a locust that eats up our precious time and opportunities to serve the Lord. But God has promised his people, “I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten” (Joel 2:25). If you have spent all day playing games with the devil, there is still time to stay up all night in prayer with God.[40] Remember that only what is done for Christ will last.[41] Let’s give the best years of our lives to God and not waste them. Christ gave us the example to follow by spending his youth preparing for a life of suffering and service. And when the time comes, God will use us for his glory.

[1]As Macarius the Egyptian once said, “A thousand years of this world, compared with that eternal world, are as if a man should compare a single grain of sand with all the sand upon the sea-shore” (As cited in Horatius Bonar, ed. Words Old and New: Gems from the Christian Authorship of All Ages [Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1994], 20).

[2]See the article “Live for the Line, Not the Dot” by Randy Alcorn at http://www.epm.org.

[3]“Eternity to the godly is a day which hath no sun-setting; and to the wicked, a night which hath no sun-rising” (Thomas Watson, A Christian on the Mount, or a Treatise concerning Meditation, in The Sermons of Thomas Watson, 2 vols. [Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1990], 1:232).

[4]Stephen McCaskell, ed. Through the Eyes of C. H. Spurgeon: Quotes from A Reformed Baptist Preacher (Brenham, TX: Lucid Books, 2012), 169.

[5]“Heaven is won or lost on earth; the possession is there, but the preparation is here” (Richard Baxter, Dying Thoughts [Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2004], 4).

[6]See the hymn “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” by Isaac Watts.

[7]Thomas Brooks, The Crown and Glory of Christianity, in The Works of Thomas Brooks, 6 vols., ed. Alexander B. Grosart (Edinburgh: John Greig and Son, 1866), 4:248.

[8]As Richard Baxter taught, “This life was not intended to be the place of our perfection, but the preparation for it” (As cited in I. D. E. Thomas, The Golden Treasury of Puritan Quotations [Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1977], 207).

[9]Richard Rushing, ed. Voices from the Past: Puritan Devotional Readings (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2009), 187.

[10]Arthur Bennet, ed. The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1975), 221.

[11]See the sermon by Jonathan Edwards “Heaven, A World of Love” available at http://www.biblebb.com.

[12]J. Campbell White, “The Laymen’s Missionary Movement,” in Perspectives on the World Christian Movement, ed. Ralph D. Winter and Steven C. Hawthorne (Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 1981), 222.

[13]Thomas, The Golden Treasury of Puritan Quotations, 260.

[14]“He who is godly labours to be an instrument of making others godly: he is not content to go to heaven alone” (Thomas Watson, The Godly Man’s Picture, Drawn with a Scripture-Pencil, in The Sermons of Thomas Watson, 2 vols. [Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1990], 1:556).

[15]As James Janeway said, “How can they look for heaven when they die, that thought it not worth their minding whilst they lived?” (As cited in Bonar, ed. Words Old and New, 227).

[16]As Thomas Manton concluded, “A man’s greatest care should be for that place where he lives longest; therefore eternity should be his scope” (As cited in Thomas, The Golden Treasury of Puritan Quotations, 92).

[17]Thomas Brooks, Smooth Stones Taken from Ancient Brooks, ed. Charles Spurgeon (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1996), 171.

[18]Norman P. Grubb, C. T. Studd: Cricketer & Pioneer (Fort Washington, PA: Christian Literature Crusade, 1982), 55.

[19]“Such fools are all unholy persons, who prefer the toys, the trifles of this world before the pleasures and treasures that be at God’s right hand” (Brooks, The Crown and Glory of Christianity, 4:55).

[20]Rushing, ed. Voices from the Past, 2.

[21]Brooks, Smooth Stones Taken from Ancient Brooks, 107. As Brooks also said, “Cold prayers shall never have any warm answers. God will suit his returns to our requests” (Ibid., 92).

[22]See “Does Netflix Make Christ More Precious to You?” by John Piper at http://www.desiringgod.org.

[23]Matthew Mead, The Sermons of Matthew Mead (Ligonier, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1991), 385-86.

[24]As William Nevins said, “Procrastination has been called a thief – the thief of time. I wish it were no worse than a thief. It is a murderer; and that which it kills is not time merely, but the immortal soul” (As cited in Bonar, ed. Words Old and New, 344).

[25]Brooks, The Crown and Glory of Christianity, 4:64.

[26]Ralph Venning, The Sinfulness of Sin (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1993), 234-35.

[27]Thomas Brooks, The Unsearchable Riches of Christ, in The Works of Thomas Brooks, 6 vols., ed. Alexander B. Grosart (Edinburgh: John Greig and Son, 1866), 3:136.

[28]Richard Wurmbrand, The Overcomers (Orlando, FL: Bridge-Logos, 2006), 201.

[29]Alexander MacLaren, “Redeeming the Time” available at http://www.reformationtheology.com.

[30]“Queen Elizabeth, on her dying bed cried out, ‘Call time again, call time again; a world of wealth for an inch of time!’ but time past was never, nor could ever be, recalled” (Thomas Brooks, The Secret Key to Heaven: The Vital Importance of Private Prayer [Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2006], 117).

[31]Thomas Watson, “Parting Counsels,” in Sermons of the Great Ejection (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2012), 176.

[32]Brooks, Smooth Stones Taken from Ancient Brooks, 268.

[33]Thomas Brooks, Apples of Gold, in A Mute Christian Under the Rod & Apples of Gold, ed. Jay P. Green (Mulberry, IN: Sovereign Grace Publishers, 2001), 138.

[34]Thomas Brooks, Heaven on Earth: A Treatise on Christian Assurance (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1961), 121.

[35]Brooks, Apples of Gold, 148.

[36]See the hymn “The Sands of Time Are Sinking” by Anne R. Cousin.

[37]Thomas Watson, “The Soul’s Malady and Cure,” in The Sermons of Thomas Watson, 2 vols. (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1990), 2:44-45.

[38]Brooks, Apples of Gold, 169.

[39]John Piper, Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ, 2^nd ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2004), 72.

[40]Grubb, C. T. Studd, 203.

[41]See the poem “Only One Life” by C. T. Studd.

Video Game Addiction and the Gospel – Chapter 9: Overcoming Fear and Anxiety

Addicts are anxious people. It goes with the nature of addiction. Since they cannot find peace in this world, they create one of their own choosing. Addicts must be liberated from the fear that drives them away from reality and into bondage. Video game addicts turn to gaming to avoid worrying about the problems of tomorrow as the proverbial ostrich buries its head in the sand.

The Irrationality of Sinful Fear

Kurt Gödel was a brilliant man. He was one of the most important mathematicians of the twentieth century and the winner of the 1951 Albert Einstein Award. But for all this, he had one fatal flaw: he was scared to death to eat anything but his wife’s cooking for fear of being poisoned. And after his wife fell ill and could no longer prepare his food, he chose to starve to death rather than take the risk of eating poisoned food. His fear of eating caused him to die from not eating! And what was the probability that the food he could have eaten to stay alive was poisoned by someone? Almost zero. There was no incentive for anyone to poison him. Likewise, sinful fear results in an irrational lack of trust in God that is killing us. As Gödel would not trust common sense that taking the small chance of being poisoned is better than dying of starvation, sinners refuse to trust in God for their daily bread and the bread who came down from heaven (John 6:33-35).[1]

The Cause of Sinful Fear

Fear is normally the result of failing to trust in God. Since all sin brings with it shame, guilt, and fear, often, the fear and anxiety we experience in life is a consequence of our unrepentant sin. As John Flavel relates: “A servant of sin is necessarily a slave of fear. Those who commit evil must expect evil. As soon as Adam defiled and wounded his conscience with guilt, he trembled and hid himself.”[2]

I believe much of the mental illness that exists in the world is not so much an illness where the person who is suffering from it is a victim with no control over his situation, but the result of living in rebellion against God. We experience depression, fear, anxiety, and loneliness sometimes because we are suffering the consequences of our forsaking fellowship with God and his people. But the Bible says, “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you” (Jas 4:8). If we feel forsaken by God, it may be because we have forsaken him first. The solution to this feeling of abandonment is to draw near to God in repentance and resolve to follow Christ by obeying him in every aspect of our lives.

The irony of addiction is that by seeking lasting pleasure apart from God, we become enslaved to the very thing that promised freedom. Sin destroys the comforts of God and grieves his Spirit. Addiction can create a fear of getting caught that ruins whatever pleasure we would have derived from it. As Thomas Brooks put it, “One drop of an evil conscience swallows up the whole sea of worldly joy.”[3] The addict craves for a pure conscience, but becomes angry with anyone who confronts him about his sin. Our conscience can be our best friend or worst enemy. As Thomas Watson illustrates, “Conscience is like the bee, if a man doth well, then conscience gives honey, it speaks comfort; if he does ill, it puts forth a sting.”[4]

If this life is all we have, then I don’t see how we can avoid living in constant fear that something might happen to us. But, if our treasures are in heaven, we can be content with the loss of our earthly treasures. If this life is all we have, then why not live for pleasure through sexual immorality and substance abuse? But in order to be content in our sin, we must forget that God exists. Sinners want to escape reality where God is and enter a world where he does not exist. Entertainment can serve this purpose for sinners with a guilty conscience by temporarily allowing them to enter a world where God does not exist and where they will never have to face the consequences for their sin.

Sometimes we are afraid because we love the pleasures of this life too much. As Flavel explains: “Our immoderate love of life and its comforts and conveniences is another cause of sinful fear in times of danger. If we loved our lives less, we would fear and tremble less.”[5] This is why the martyrs in Revelation are described as those who “loved not their lives even unto death” (Rev 12:11). Their love for Christ was greater than their love for this life when faced with the decision to forsake Christ or die.

Both fear and depression are caused by the circumstances we find ourselves in because of Adam’s fall and our fall into sin. This is part of the terrible exchange of sin where seeking to live independently of God results in the loss of the comfort of God. Addictions make these things worse by creating an environment of self-deception. We deceive ourselves into believing that we are not as bad as we really are. We tell ourselves that we can quit at any time. They create the illusion of control while we are unable to stop.

Sometimes we are afraid because we do not know who God is. If more Christians understood the providence and goodness of God, their faith would not be so small. This is why Jesus connects the fear of the disciples to their lack of faith, “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?” (Matt 8:26). Often, we are afraid because we are living prayerless lives. Our lack of prayer expresses our lack of trust in God. Sometimes we are afraid of the future because we have not yet fully surrendered our will to God. We may be afraid because we are not willing to go wherever he sends us even though God has a plan for us that is greater than anything we could have imagined (Eph 3:20).

Video game addiction is often motivated by the fear of the future. Gaming addicts are afraid of failure, so they never try. Gaming then becomes a way to cope with the idleness of not working hard. Video games provide a risk-free way to experience the pleasure of satisfaction without the effort and risk necessary to accomplish real-life goals. Hence, it’s a kind of simulation that allows one to overcome the fears of life without risk.

Looking for Community

We cannot function without the fellowship of others. This is why prisoners often go insane after being locked in solitary confinement. We naturally form communities to fight against fear together because we know that we are stronger as one than apart. Isolation and self-love lead to depression because God has designed us for community and to be other-centered. This desire for community is ultimately fulfilled through communion with God and communion in the church which is united to Christ as his bride. There is a comfort in numbers and it’s easier to believe something is true when lots of other people believe in it. This herd mentality also determines what moral beliefs we choose to adopt through shaming those who hold divergent views.

Gamers are seeking for community in the online communities of the games they play. For some gamers, the friends they have online are the only true friends they have. Now, I have a confession to make. I do not view the people on my friends list as my real friends. They are simply the people I have added who are good at the game so that I can always play with other people who are good instead of losing because of random teammates who are new at the game. It is easier for me to say this because I have friends outside of gaming. But for those who do not, gaming addiction is driven by their desire for community and need to spend time with their friends. To leave online gaming would be tantamount to leaving the closest friendships they have.

The Ultimate Form of Pain Numbing

If addiction is man’s attempt to numb the pain of life by creating heaven on earth apart from God, then what happens when nothing in life can ease your pain? This is why many addicts turn to suicide because they think it is the only way to escape their pain. But for those outside of Christ, suicide is just the beginning of their pain apart from the presence of God. They think that suicide will end their pain, but it just creates pain for others. Suicide is wrong, not just because of the pain it brings, but because only God has the authority to take life because he alone is its creator (1 Sam 2:6). When a person takes an innocent life, he is declaring that he has the authority to destroy the image of God.

In contrast to suicide is martyrdom. The martyrs choose death over life if the cost of their continued existence on earth would bring shame to Christ by denying him. Martyrdom is a self-sacrificial love for God and his glory. Christians are willing to die as martyrs because they love God more than what this world has to offer. On the other hand, suicide is the result of self-love when our lives are not measuring up to the standard we have set for ourselves.[6] We think we deserve better than what we are getting when what we really deserve is hell. But if you are trusting in Christ, the pain you experience is only temporary. You don’t need to enter a fantasy world to escape it through addictions or death. You will be free from your pain soon enough in heaven after a lifetime of joyful service to God.

The Key to Overcoming Fear

Without a future hope, we would be abandoned to despair. But we have not been abandoned. Christ has defeated death through his death. He has set us free from our bondage to the fear of death by triumphing over it through his resurrection (Heb 2:14-15) We do not need to fear death because now it serves as the entrance into the believer’s everlasting rest. If sinful fear is caused by ignorance of God and rebellion against him, then the solution to fear is to know and love God. Our fear of God will cast out sinful fear as Isaiah 8:13 tells us, “But the LORD of hosts, him you shall regard as holy. Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread.” Fearing God is defined by Scripture as the holy adoration of God that leads to turning away from evil (Prov 3:7).

The highway of holiness is the only path to lasting joy. Christ’s joy was in the fear of the Lord as Isaiah 11:3 says, “And his delight shall be in the fear of the LORD.” Christ calls us to enter into his joy (Matt 25:23). True happiness comes through the fear of the Lord instead of the fading pleasures of sin. This results in resting in the sovereignty of God while doing as much as we can for Christ with the time that we have.

Fearing God requires a right view of who God is. He is Immanuel or “God with us” who will never leave or forsake us (Matt 1:23; Heb 13:5). But Immanuel can either be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how we relate to him. It is a bad thing for those who are far from God because the God who is always with us will never leave or forsake his obligation to punish sinners for their sin (Isa 8:7-8). We all want justice, we just don’t want to be on the receiving end of it. “God with us” reminds us that all of life is lived before his face.

If the solution to fear is fearing God, then we must express our fear of him by turning from sin and placing our faith in Christ each day. The one who fears God will turn from every sin which brings the fear of discipline and judgment. 1 John 4:18 teaches us that “perfect love casts out fear.” And the most perfect love of all was displayed in the cross of Christ. Fear of death was defeated through God’s love for us. If love drives out fear, then fear comes from a lack of love for God and others. When we love God, we will fear bringing shame upon the name of Christ by our sins. This is how love for God and the fear of God go together.

Think about the worst thing that could possibly happen to you. The worst thing that man could do to you is kill you, but God has the power to throw you into hell (Matt 10:28). But for the Christian, death is gain because it brings us into the presence of Christ (Phil 1:21-23). The worst thing that can happen to you in this life can only put an end to all your sins and sorrows. If you fear God, you will not fear the world. Remember that everything you get in this life that is not hell is a mercy from God. You and I both deserve to be in hell right now. It is only by the grace of God that I am even able to breathe or offer up praise to God for my salvation.

If you are trusting in Christ, this world is the closest you will ever get to hell. As Brooks expressed, “Lazarus had his hell first, his heaven last; but the rich man had his heaven first, and his hell at last.”[7] Until we arrive at heaven, we are given a peace that passes all understanding through prayer and thanksgiving (Phil 4:6-7). The result of walking with God is peace of conscience and the strengthening of our faith: “And the effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever” (Isa 32:17).

Rather than running from God in the midst of our suffering, our pain is meant to teach us that his grace is sufficient for us (2 Cor 12:9). As Brooks teaches, assurance of salvation gives rise to trust in God: “A soul that lives in the assurance of divine favour, and in its title to glory, cannot but bear up patiently and quietly under the greatest sufferings that possibly can befall it in this world.”[8] Without this hope, we would be unable to endure.

Maybe the reason why you are so fearful is because you are in rebellion against God’s sovereignty. But submission to his lordship is the beginning of our happiness. As Richard Sibbes explains:

“The happiness of weaker things stands in being ruled by stronger. It is best for a blind man to be guided by him that has sight. It is best for sheep, and other feckless creatures, to be guided by man. And it is happiest for man to be guided by Christ, because his government is so victorious that it frees us from the fear and danger of our greatest enemies, and tends to bring us to the greatest happiness that our nature is capable of. This should make us rejoice when Christ reigns in us.”[9]

As our master, king, and bridegroom, he has given himself to us and therefore all that he has is ours (1 Cor 3:21).[10]

We overcome fear by meditating on God’s promises to us in his Word. Remember that you are precious in God’s sight (Ps 72:14). Hope beholds the smiling face of God behind the dark clouds of providence.[11] As Brooks reminds us, our suffering in this life moves us closer to Christ:

“As the waters lifted Noah’s ark nearer heaven, and as all the stones that were about Stephen’s ears did but knock him the closer to Christ, the corner-stone, so all the strange rugged providences that we meet with, they shall raise us nearer heaven, and knock us nearer to Christ, that precious corner-stone.”[12]

Assurance of salvation in the midst of suffering gives us the confidence we need to live fearlessly for him.

We overcome fear by finding fellowship and accountability in the local church. Since fear often comes from loneliness, we need others to encourage us on our heavenly voyage. Often, we lack love for others because of our fear of being wounded by them. We have been burned before by those in the church and don’t want to go back. But if you are a true Christian, you will desire fellowship with other Christians since this is one of the marks of a true believer (1 John 3:14). All sin flows from a lack of love for God and others (Matt 22:37-40). Fear is associated with a lack of self-control, a weak love for God, and the diminishing of God’s power in our life (2 Tim 1:7). But love for God is associated with self-control and the power of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, your greatest fear should be fearing to displease Christ by your sins. It is evil to displease Christ by pleasing yourself through a lack of self-control.[13]

We outgrow fear by growing in our trust of God. Faith is the key which quenches fear.[14] An amazing example of trust in God is seen in the documentary The Cross: Jesus in China which chronicles the joy of the underground church in China in the midst of their suffering for Christ. They are joyful in suffering because they have been saved by God from their sins and are gladly fulfilling the purpose for which God has called them. And we too can live without fear because we know that our future is secure. Refuse to live as if there is no heaven or as if we could make earth better than heaven. The men of this world become afraid when they fear they won’t get their heaven on earth. As John Bunyan said near the time of his death:

“Did we heartily renounce the pleasures of this world, we should be very little troubled for our afflictions; that which renders an afflicted state so insupportable to many is because they are too much addicted to the pleasures of this life, and so cannot endure that which makes a separation between them.”[15]

To overcome fear, we must learn to cleave to Christ when our world is falling down all around us. This fallen world was never meant to be our rest.[16] This life is not the only one we have. If our world falls to pieces, we can rest knowing that we have another one which is “eternal in the heavens” (2 Cor 5:1). In that world, the pain of our afflictions and sorrows shall be forgotten.[17] This is why Augustine can say, “One must be very greedy to have God and to run after other things, too.”[18] Is not God enough to satisfy us forever? If we doubt God’s ability to satisfy us, then he will discipline us so that we will be weaned from our love for the world. This was the teaching of Matthew Mead and the rest of the Puritans:

“When the Lord designs to work grace in a heart, and redeem a soul to himself, he first weans it from the world. This is how God dealt with the prodigal son. God is never better to us than when the earthly is most bitter. To forsake God to live upon earthly pleasures is a great loss; it is to forsake a living fountain for a broken cistern, and leads us out of God’s blessing. An excess in creature-enjoyments drowns our reason in sense, and our judgment is extinguished by our appetites. When God weans a soul from the world he makes the earthly bitter by some affliction or disappointment. Thus he leads the soul to look out for a more pure and lasting satisfaction in Christ. In times of outward prosperity we are full of the world, and the Lord can find no room in our hearts. Present comforts have taken possession and thrust him out. When Christ was born, there was no room for him in the inn. Thus it fares with the Lord Jesus Christ in the world yet. Most of us lay him in the manger out of the way.”[19]

But when we come to realize that God is the only treasure who can satisfy our hearts, this enables us to live a confident and risky life for the building of his kingdom without fear. As Brooks teaches:

“The treasures of a saint are the presence of God, the favour of God, union and communion with God, the pardon of sin, the joy of the Spirit, the peace of conscience, which are jewels that none can give but Christ, nor none can take away but Christ. Now why should a gracious soul keep off from a way of holiness because of afflictions, when no afflictions can strip a man of his heavenly jewels, which are his ornaments and his safety here, and will be his happiness and glory hereafter? Why should that man be afraid, or troubled for storms at sea, whose treasures are sure in a friend’s hand upon land? Why, a believer’s treasure is always safe in the hands of Christ; his life is safe, his soul is safe, his grace is safe, his comfort is safe, and his crown is safe in the hand of Christ.”[20]

The Key to Overcoming Depression

Depression is the result of believing that our situation is hopeless and beyond our control. Because we believe that there is nothing we can do to change it, we live like we have no future. Brooks describes the hopelessness that leads to depression with these sobering words:

“A hopeless condition is a very sad condition; it is the worst condition in the world; it makes a man’s life a very hell. If ‘hope deferred makes the heart sick,’ as the wise man speaks, Prov 13:12, then the loss of hope will make the soul languish, it will make it choose strangling rather than life; it will make a man’s life a continual death. A soul without hope is like a ship without anchors. Lord, where will a soul stay that stays not upon thee by hope? A man had better part with anything than his hope.”[21]

To overcome depression, we must find the source of our belief that we are without hope and tackle it head-on. Running away from your problems will only make them worse. Don’t try to make excuses for yourself. Trust in God and take action believing that he will provide the food we need for each day (Matt 6:11). Seek the counsel of godly men and women who can help you. Speak with a Christian pastor who can help. Believe in the words of Jesus who said that nothing is impossible with God (Matt 19:26).[22] Stop worrying about tomorrow and live each day for God’s glory. As Leo Buscaglia once said, “Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.” His words are a reflection of the words of Jesus in Matthew 6:31-34 except that Jesus grounds the basis upon which we are not to worry on the providence of God in the context of our seeking his kingdom and righteousness.

Remember that God has given you this trial to sanctify you and make you more like his Son.[23] In the midst of your suffering, meditate on the promises of God (Ps 118:6; Isa 41:10; Rom 8:31-32; Heb 13:5-6). Remember God’s goodness to you in the past. Meditate on the times you have been delivered from temptation to sin. Remember that our right to the throne of grace does not come from our own worthiness, but through the righteousness of our mediator. Salvation is not based on what we have done, but on what Christ has done for sinners.

Do not seek to cover over your depression with entertainment. As Gisbertus Voetius observes:

“Melancholia is often alleviated or eliminated by recreation, physical diversion, and mental entertainment, by games, music, and song, by the speeches and conversations of comical and farcical entertainers, and so forth, but these measures only intensify the bitterness and severity of desertion and its attendant woes.”[24]

These things fail to heal the depression for the same reason secular treatment programs often do: they do not deal with the heart of the problem, only the symptoms. They are merely treating symptoms for a limited time instead of getting to the root of the problem. The root problem is a lack of trust in God which is rebellion against him. The solution to depression is faith in Christ and repentance from sin just as they are the solution to sinful fear. This is because depression and fear both flow from the same source: a lack of trust in God. They are two sides of the same coin or two different manifestations of trying to live independently from God.

The solution for these, just like addiction, is communion with God as we express our faith to him in worship from the heart. In the Father’s presence, there is fullness of joy (Ps 16:11). And we have access to this joy in Christ to whom we are united as his bride. In one sense, we are already seated with him at the right hand of the Father. As Paul says, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:4-6).

Sometimes we are depressed because we do not feel God’s love as we once did. This too is a test from God to see if we will still love him. Will you continue to love him when he does not seem to love you?[25] Running after idols will only increase your sorrow (Ps 16:4). Our love for the sinful things of this world hinders assurance of our salvation (1 John 2:15).[26] As Brooks lamented, many people are unable to find assurance of salvation because “their souls are so taken up and filled with creature enjoyments as that Christ is put to lodge in an out-house.”[27]

Another reason we may experience depression is because we are under temptation. But remember, even Christ was tempted and triumphed over them through his trust in God.[28] If you do give into temptation, quickly turn from that sin in repentance and ask God for forgiveness because he is merciful and slow to anger. If you are trusting in Christ, then all of your sins have been perfectly dealt with on the cross of Christ (1 John 1:7). You may feel depressed because of unconfessed and unrepented of sin in your life (Ps 32:3-6). Indwelling sin will make this life a hell on earth. It’s no wonder that you feel depressed when you can kiss Christ one moment and then betray him with your next breath.[29] Do not grieve the only one who can make you happy.[30]

After you have turned from your sin, don’t put yourself in bad situations where you might be tempted to fall back into that sin. Avoid every trigger that could lead you back into temptation. It’s hypocritical to pray that God would lead you away from temptation while looking for opportunities to be tempted (Matt 6:13). Find accountability in the body of Christ. Resolve to tell others about Christ and the forgiveness you have found in him (Ps 51:13). Maybe you feel empty because you are keeping the truth to yourself instead of being bold by sharing the gospel with others. Melt your will into the will of God.[31]

You may also feel depressed because you are leading a prayerless life. A prayerless life is a worrisome and dangerous life. Go to God in prayer to take the burden off your shoulders. Go to him to find forgiveness and peace of conscience. Put away whatever hinders prayer before God. By not praying, you are inviting temptation.[32] As Brooks teaches, in prayer we give God the glory that is rightly his: “Prayer crowns God with the honour and glory that is due to his name; and God crowns prayer with assurance and comfort. Usually the most praying souls are the most assured souls.”[33]

A Calling from God

Every Christian has a calling from God (1 Cor 7:17). You will always be miserable until you are fulfilling the calling God has given you. A calling is more than just a job, it is an opportunity to display the glory of God to the lost world around you. We find satisfaction in our calling as Jesus found satisfaction in doing the will of his Father (John 4:34). Only a life lived in the center of God’s will can satisfy man’s deepest longings and give him peace of conscience.[34] True faith results in obedience in every area of our life. We are motivated to work hard, not just because we are commanded to do so by God, but because we know that hard work brings peace of conscience (Eccles 5:12). The very work you fear doing is what will put an end to your fears. As Chrysostom taught, idleness is “the root of despair.”[35]

By your inactivity, you are only hurting yourself. What good did laziness ever do you? As Brooks teaches, “A lazy Christian shall always want four things: comfort, contentment, confidence, and assurance. God hath made a separation between joy and idleness.”[36] You may fear failure, but you are setting yourself up for failure by your inaction. The inordinate desire for pleasure displayed by addiction leads to poverty and ruin (Prov 21:17, 25). Gaming addiction is ultimately a worthless pursuit: “Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits lacks sense” (Prov 12:11).

Those who are lazy are good at making up excuses for their lack of work: “The sluggard says, ‘There is a lion outside! I shall be killed in the streets!’” (Prov 22:13). Hard work is part of the self-denial that Christ calls us to (Matt 16:24). Idle times are times of great temptation as Watson warns us, “Idleness tempts the devil to tempt.”[37] But when we walk in obedience to Christ in our calling, this is one sign that we have been born again. True faith expresses itself by obedience as Brooks teaches:

“The best way to joy, peace, and assurance is to set your minds on your responsibilities. Ah! Had many mourning, complaining Christians done this, their mourning would have been turned into rejoicing, and their complaining into singing. The high way to comfort is to seek comfort less, and duty more. Set your mind on what you should do more than on what you would like to have. While faith is trusting in Christ, the Lord comes, and by his Spirit seals up life, love, and glory to us.”[38]

Fear keeps us from serving God and fulfilling the calling we have been given. But hope gives us the confidence we need to take risks for God. Brooks explains the relationship between hope and action this way: “A man full of hope will be full of action; a lively hope and a diligent hand are inseparable companions. Hope will make a man do, though he die for doing.”[39] True faith will obey God instead of arguing with him.[40]

While some Christians are hard workers in their employment, they are spiritual sluggards at home. Once they get home from work or school, their sole focus is on pleasing themselves. They neglect private prayer, family worship, fasting, and meditating on Scripture since most of their free time is taken up in entertainment. They may even live in secret sin thinking that God’s law doesn’t apply to them. As a result, they live weak and ineffective Christian lives.[41] But our calling not only applies to our job, but to the whole of our Christian life. At no point should we ever stop fulfilling our calling. While jobs may come and go, God’s calling remains the same.

As the Chinese pastor Brother Yun reminds us, we are called to start serving God now instead of waiting until we feel ready:

“My friend, do not sit around waiting to become perfect before you feel qualified to serve God. That day will never come in your lifetime! Go forth and do what Jesus commanded all of His followers to do, and the Lord will change your life as you obey Him.”[42]

In doing so, we will get a heaven of serving God here and a heaven hereafter. As Brooks eloquently stated, we should attempt to do great things for God and never settle for mediocrity: “He that shoots at the sun, though he be far short, will shoot higher than he who aims at a shrub.”[43]

Our calling is an opportunity to share the good news about Christ with others. You cannot share the gospel with the lost if you do not know any people who are in need of Christ. One of the reasons why new Christians are the most evangelistic is because they have so many non-Christian friends. We must force ourselves to be intentional in sharing Christ knowing that the Lord rewards boldness for his name. As Brooks teaches us, the confidence before God which assurance brings should result in a natural desire to tell others about the savior:

“There are more glorious joys, more pure comforts, more abiding peace, more royal contents, more celestial delights, in one day’s walking with God, in one hour’s communion with God than is to be found in all things below God. And by these and such like ways, souls under the power of a well-grounded assurance endeavor to make others happy with themselves. A soul under assurance is unwilling to go to heaven without company. He is often a-crying out, Father, bless this soul too, and crown that soul too: let us go to heaven together, let us be made happy together.”[44]

We must do the work of Christ while it is day because night is coming when no man can work (John 9:4).

Chapter 10

[1]Another extreme example of sinful fear is seen in the hoarding of the Collyer brothers which eventually killed them.

[2]John Flavel, Triumphing over Sinful Fear (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2011), 32.

[3]Thomas Brooks, The Crown and Glory of Christianity, in The Works of Thomas Brooks, 6 vols., ed. Alexander B. Grosart (Edinburgh: John Greig and Son, 1866), 4:257.

[4]Thomas Watson, The Christian’s Character: Showing the Privileges of a Believer, in The Sermons of Thomas Watson, 2 vols. (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1990), 1:96.

[5]Flavel, Triumphing over Sinful Fear, 42.

[6]I owe this insight to Pastor Tim Conway in his talk “Can a Christian Commit Suicide?” at http://illbehonest.com.

[7]Thomas Brooks, The Mute Christian Under the Rod, in A Mute Christian Under the Rod & Apples of Gold, ed. Jay P. Green (Mulberry, IN: Sovereign Grace Publishers, 2001), 111.

[8]Ibid., 112.

[9]Richard Sibbes, The Bruised Reed (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1998), 108.

[10]“All that is in God is ours: his wisdom is ours to teach us; his love is ours to pity us; his Spirit is ours to comfort us; his mercy is ours to save us. When God saith to the soul, ‘I am thine,’ it is enough, he cannot say more” (Watson, The Christian’s Character, 1:7).

[11]See the hymn “God Moves in a Mysterious Way” by William Cowper.

[12]Thomas Brooks, Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1968), 154.

[13]Thomas Brooks, The Unsearchable Riches of Christ, in The Works of Thomas Brooks, 6 vols., ed. Alexander B. Grosart (Edinburgh: John Greig and Son, 1866), 3:79.

[14]Thomas Brooks, Smooth Stones Taken from Ancient Brooks, ed. Charles Spurgeon (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1996), 114.

[15]John Bunyan, Mr. John Bunyan’s Dying Sayings, in The Works of John Bunyan, 3 vols., ed. George Offor (London: Blackie and Son, 1858), 1:65.

[16]As Thomas Brooks says, “This world was never made to be the saints’ rest” (As cited in Horatius Bonar, ed. Words Old and New: Gems from the Christian Authorship of All Ages [Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1994], 199).

[17]“One smile from Christ’s face will make us forget all our afflictions” (Watson, The Christian’s Character, 1:41).

[18]As cited in Richard Wurmbrand, The Oracles of God (Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image, 1995), 169.

[19]Richard Rushing, ed. Voices from the Past: Puritan Devotional Readings (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2009), 282.

[20]Brooks, Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices, 113.

[21]Thomas Brooks, Heaven on Earth: A Treatise on Christian Assurance (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1961), 285.

[22]“Impossibility kills all endeavour; who will take pains for that which he thinks there is no hope of ever obtaining?” (Thomas Watson, “The One Thing Necessary,” in The Sermons of Thomas Watson, 2 vols. [Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1990], 1:360).

[23]“Though the cup be bitter, yet it is put into your hand by your Father; though the cross be heavy, yet he that hath laid it on your shoulders will bear the heaviest end of it himself” (Brooks, The Mute Christian Under the Rod, 38).

[24]Gisbertus Voetius, Spiritual Desertion, ed. M. Eugene Osterhaven, trans. John Vriend and Harry Boonstra (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage, 2003), 39.

[25]Thomas Watson, The Godly Man’s Picture, Drawn with a Scripture-Pencil, in The Sermons of Thomas Watson, 2 vols. (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1990), 1:404.

[26]Brooks, Heaven on Earth, 114.

[27]Ibid., 48.

[28]“God had but one Son without corruption, but he had none without temptation” (Brooks, The Mute Christian Under the Rod, 87).

[29]Brooks, The Crown and Glory of Christianity, 4:23.

[30]“If you grieve by your willful sinning he that alone can gladden you, who then will make you glad?” (Brooks, Heaven on Earth, 152).

[31]“This is the art of a Christian’s contentment: he melts his will into the will of God, and makes over his will to God” (Jeremiah Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment [Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1964], 54).

[32]“He that lives in the neglect of prayer, tempts more devils than one to best his soul, yea, to destroy his soul” (Brooks, The Crown and Glory of Christianity, 4:233).

[33]Brooks, Heaven on Earth, 84.

[34]Norman P. Grubb, C. T. Studd: Cricketer & Pioneer (Fort Washington, PA: Christian Literature Crusade, 1982), 235.

[35]As cited in Watson, “The One Thing Necessary,” 1:363.

[36]I. D. E. Thomas, The Golden Treasury of Puritan Quotations (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1977), 155.

[37]Ibid., 154.

[38]Rushing, ed. Voices from the Past, 75.

[39]Brooks, Smooth Stones Taken from Ancient Brooks, 131.

[40]“Faith that accompanies salvation is better at doing than at thinking, at obeying than at disputing, at walking than at talking” (Brooks, Heaven on Earth, 202).

[41]“He who hath any guilt in his conscience cannot carry the cross of Christ: will he deny his life for Christ that cannot deny his lust for Christ?” (Watson, The Godly Man’s Picture, 1:525).

[42]Brother Yun, Living Water, ed. Paul Hattaway (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2008), 144.

[43]Brooks, Smooth Stones Taken from Ancient Brooks, 52.

[44]Brooks, Heaven on Earth, 293.

Video Game Addiction and the Gospel – Chapter 8: But Is the Gospel True?

If the gospel is the solution to addiction, then the gospel must first be true. But if the gospel is false and Jesus has not been raised from the dead, then we had might as well go back to living for pleasure until we shuffle off this mortal coil. But how can we believe something as incredible as the resurrection of Jesus in our modern age of technology? Hasn’t science disproven Christianity? If the gospel is false, then Christians are to be pitied because we are investing in an eternity that does not exist while letting the sinful pleasures of this life pass us by. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:17-19:

“And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”

I know there will be many people who read this book who are not professing Christians. So, I will build the strongest case that I can for the truth of the gospel in this chapter.[1]

But I Don’t Believe God Exists

Have you ever seen the movie The Sound of Music? There’s a song in it that goes like this: “Nothing comes from nothing. Nothing ever could.” But atheism would have us believe that everything in existence, the entire universe with all of its stars and galaxies together with all biological life, came from nothing. But from nothing, nothing comes.[2] If God does not exist, then life came from non-life, order from chaos, reason from irrationality, personality from non-personality, and morality from amorality.

We know that the universe had a beginning because the universe is constantly expanding.[3] The galaxies in the universe are moving away from us as observed by what is known as redshift where observable wavelengths of light expand with the expansion of space. Since everything that has a beginning has a cause, the universe must have had a cause and has not eternally existed. Another reason the universe had a beginning is because of the Law of Entropy or Second Law of Thermodynamics. The amount of usable energy in the universe is constantly running down which means that if the universe has eternally existed, then there would be no more useable energy left.

The cause of the universe must therefore be incredibly powerful and exist outside of the known universe. He must likewise be incredibly wise given the fine-tuning of the universe for life.[4] The laws of physics and chemistry point to the impossibility of the universe and all life coming into existence by random chance.[5] The cosmological constant, gravitational constant, strong nuclear force constant, weak nuclear force constant, and fine-structure constant point to an intelligence as the cause of the universe. As the astronomer Fred Hoyle concluded:

“A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.”[6]

In addition, our planet is located in what is known as the “Goldilocks Zone” at just the right distance from the sun with just the right rotational axis to support the existence of life.[7]

The biological complexity of life points to an intelligent designer as its cause. Many of the organisms on our planet display irreducible complexity or features that are so complex that they cannot be explained by natural random chance processes.[8] Examples of irreducible complexity include the flagellum of the E. Coli bacteria, the immune system and antibodies, blood clotting and the fibrin protein network, the metamorphosis of caterpillars, sexual reproduction, the human eye, photoreceptors, the biochemistry of vision, the human brain, the bombardier beetle, the making of proteins, amino acids, DNA, RNA, mRNA, DNA transcription and repair, gene regulation, the binding of proteins to catalyze a chemical reaction, cilium, the animal cell, mitochondria, ribosomes, vesicular transport, photosynthesis, biosynthesis of the AMP, the symbiosis of cells, and cell membranes.[9]

If our brains are the result of random mutations and irrational causes, then how can we trust our minds to arrive at rational conclusions? This was the question Charles Darwin asked:

“But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?”[10]

But if we are made in God’s image, then we are called to think God’s thoughts after him.

The existence of the laws of logic such as the law of noncontradiction transcend the material world because they would still be true if life never existed. The existence of transcendental truths point to a creator who transcends the material world.[11] God’s existence is the necessary precondition for knowledge, the laws of logic, the uniformity of nature, universally binding morality and ethics, the conscience, human dignity, freedom, love, respect, and beauty.[12]

Our conscience or innate knowledge of right and wrong points to a lawgiver. Paul calls this the law written on the heart (Rom 2:15).[13] In order to have a moral law that is binding on all people for all time, there must be a universal moral law. That is why in atheism, morality is relative, subjective, culturally determined, and derived from the government.[14] Without God as the universal reference point who holds all men accountable for their sin, there is no firm foundation on which universal ethical norms can be built.[15] Richard Wurmbrand explains the relationship between atheism and the loss of hope that leads to addiction:

“The enormous amount of drunkenness in Communist countries exposes the longing for a more meaningful life, which communism cannot give. The average Russian is a deep, big-hearted, generous person. Communism is shallow and superficial. He seeks the deep life and, finding it nowhere else, he seeks it in alcohol. He expresses in alcoholism his horror about the brutal and deceitful life he must live. For a few moments alcohol sets him free, as truth would set him free forever if he could know it.”[16]

But most atheists don’t want to live this way. That’s why they must borrow from the Christian worldview to provide a basis for morality and human dignity. If they do not, then the government takes the place of God. This is why communist governments must suppress religion and dissent because the government must be seen as the ultimate authority instead of God. They do not want a fair debate or free exchange of ideas so they use force to control the masses.

Doesn’t Evolution Disprove the Bible?

The Darwinian theory of evolution is the dominant scientific model for explaining the origin of life and mankind. But there is, in fact, nothing scientifically true about molecules-to-man evolution. There is not one shred of evidence for the hypothesis that life came from nonlife by random chance natural processes. It is simply an unproveable theory of the atheist scientific community that is believed because it has been repeated for so long by so many people. Its huge influence has less to do with science and more to do with scientific peer pressure. Evolution must be true in order for atheism to be true. Without evolution, there could be no way to explain the origin of life apart from God. And since people don’t want to believe in God, another theory must be created regardless of how ridiculous it sounds. If aliens or the multiverse created life or the universe, then that just moves the problem one step back because these things are not eternal by definition and life and the universe had a beginning.[17]

Even though the arguments for evolution have been shown to be false, they just keep getting repeated.[18] The Miller-Urey experiment actually proved that life could never come about by spontaneous generation because of the problem of chirality.[19] The embryonic diagrams that are often used to argue for common ancestry are based on the falsified drawings of Ernst Haeckel. Evolutionists interpret the fossil evidence through the lens of their worldview to find missing links by either downgrading human skeletal remains or upgrading the remains of apes.[20]

The history of the theory of evolution is filled with hoaxes and misinterpretations of the evidence because scientists, like all other people, suffer from confirmation bias. The primary argument for the truth of Darwinian evolution from 1912 to 1953 was Piltdown Man. While Piltdown Man was eventually exposed as a hoax, it helped create the environment in which Darwinian evolution became the dominant scientific theory on the origin of man similar to how the forgery of the Donation of Constantine helped give rise to the political power of the papacy.

All the scientific evidence actually points to an intelligent designer as the creator of life.[21] There is no known mechanism by which new genetic information can be added to an organism.[22] The process of natural selection only removes information from the gene pool, it can never create it. Genetic mutations are almost always harmful. Evolution cannot explain the origin or complexity of DNA and proteins.[23]

Did Jesus Even Exist?

There are some radical atheists who deny that Jesus even existed. But these arguments are not taken seriously by even liberal scholars. I’m not sure they are even being serious when they make these claims because the evidence for the life of Christ is so overwhelming. References to Jesus outside the New Testament in non-Christian sources can be found in the writings of Cornelius Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, Lucian of Samosata, Suetonius,Mara Bar-Serapion, the Jewish Talmuds, Josephus, Celsus, and Galen.[24]

The writings of the apostolic church fathers such as Clement of Rome, Papias, Ignatius, Polycarp, Mathetes, the Didache, and Second Clement give additional Christian testimony to the life of Christ. The archeological evidence of the Alexamenos graffito and the inscription at Megiddo Prison give further proof for the existence of Christ. And all of this excludes the New Testament itself which is the best attested written document in the ancient world. This evidence is what led the agnostic scholar Bart Ehrman to say:

“Despite the enormous range of opinion, there are several points on which virtually all scholars of antiquity agree. Jesus was a Jewish man, known to be a preacher and teacher, who was crucified (a Roman form of execution) in Jerusalem during the reign of the Roman emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was the governor of Judea.”[25]

This is also why the liberal scholar John Dominic Crossan concludes: “That he was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be.”[26]

Are the Gospels Textually Reliable?

But how do we know that the Gospels we have today have not been corrupted by the church? The reason is because there was no possible way for the church to corrupt all of the New Testament manuscripts when they were spread over such a broad geographical area so quickly. As Nabeel Qureshi elaborates:

“Nobody had ruling power over all of Christendom until the fourth century, three hundred years after Jesus. By that time, there were thousands of copies of the biblical texts, and even someone with authority over them would not have the practical ability to collect them all. Even if someone had the capacity to recall all the texts and edit them, there would certainly have been some record of such a massive recall. It is virtually impossible to imagine every Christian calmly handing over sacred texts to be altered without some trace of resistance or complaint.”[27]

Furthermore, the papyri manuscripts of the second century are in general agreement with the fourth century manuscripts Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus.[28] No other ancient written document comes close to the New Testament in terms of reliability.[29] There are over 5,700 manuscripts or manuscript fragments of the New Testament in existence.[30] Through the practice of textual criticism, we can reconstruct the text of the New Testament with up to 99.5% reliability.[31] No doctrine of the Christian faith is dependent on a verse which contains a textual variant. The New Testament church never had an incentive to corrupt the text of the New Testament and carefully preserved the text in the midst of persecution by the Roman authorities.

Are the Gospels Historically Reliable?

But even if Jesus existed and the Gospels are textually reliable, how do we know the Gospels are historically reliable? How do we know that the authors of the Gospels were not putting words in Jesus’ mouth that he never said? The authors of the Gospels present their writings as coming from eyewitnesses to Jesus.[32] The author of Luke begins his Gospel by saying:

“Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught” (Luke 1:1-4).

Peter likewise affirms that he was an eyewitness to Jesus: “For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty” (2 Pet 1:16)

The apostolic church father Papias wrote that Peter was the origin for the information in the Gospel of Mark:

“And the Elder used to say this: ‘Mark, having become Peter’s interpreter, wrote down accurately everything he remembered, though not in order, of the things either said or done by Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but afterward, as I said, followed Peter, who adapted his teachings as needed but had no intention of giving an ordered account of the Lord’s sayings. Consequently Mark did nothing wrong in writing down some things as he remembered them, for he made it his one concern not to omit anything which he heard or to make any false statement in them.'”[33]

This is consistent with the second century church father Justin Martyr’s testimony that the four Gospels are “the memoirs of the apostles.”[34]

The Gospels are considered to be historically reliable because they give multiple attestation to the life of Christ. They exist as four distinct witnesses to Christ in addition to Acts and the letters of Paul.[35] They paint a consistent picture of who Jesus is and what he taught. All four Gospels teach that Jesus is God.[36] The embarrassing details in the Gospels about the apostles give further evidence for their historical accuracy.[37]

It is interesting that the Gospels and Acts never make reference to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD which gives evidence that they were written before then. John 5:2 uses the present tense verb “is” to describe the pool of Bethesda which would have been destroyed by the Romans. The authors of the Gospels, together with the Book of Acts, display a remarkable knowledge of the people, places, and customs of Israel in the first century.[38] The popularity of names in the Gospels corresponds with the popularity of Jewish names from first century ossuary boxes.[39] There is a great deal of overlap in the historical events recorded in the Bible and the Jewish historian Josephus.[40]

The real reason why people do not believe that the Bible is historically reliable is because they do not want to believe what it says. They are interpreting the evidence through the lens of their worldview. Therefore, by definition, if a person does not believe miracles can exist, then they must believe that the passages in the Gospels which describe miracles are not historical.

Fulfilled Prophecy

Up until now, I have been giving arguments for things that both Christians and non-Christians could agree on. A person doesn’t have to be a Christian to believe that God exists, that evolution is false, that Jesus existed, and that the Gospels are textually reliable and generally historical. An Orthodox Jew believes that God exists, that evolution is false, that Jesus existed, and historically many have believed that Jesus did perform miracles but that they were done by sorcery and magic instead of the power of God.[41] But now I will turn to arguments that only Christians could make which prove that Jesus is the Messiah and that the Bible is the Word of God.

The most remarkable messianic prophecy in the Bible is Daniel 9:24-27 which foretells the exact day on which the Messiah would die:

“Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place. Know therefore and understand that from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks. Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time. And after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing. And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed. And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate, until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator.”

We can calculate the date of the Messiah’s death by subtracting the date of “the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem” (March 444 BC according to Nehemiah 2:1 since it was during the 20^th year of the reign of King Artaxerxes I of Persia during the month of Nisan and he reigned from 465 to 424 but 464 was the first full year of his reign using the ascension year system of dating) by the amount of time that Daniel gives. To get this number, we add 7 weeks to 62 weeks to get 69 weeks. Sixty-nine weeks is 483 days. Each day represents one prophetic year (other examples include Numbers 14:34 and Ezekiel 4:5-6 where a day represents a year). But these are years in the 360-day Persian calendar since Daniel lived in Persia when this prophecy was given and not the modern 365.25 days in a year one. Therefore, we must convert it from 483 years to the more accurate 476 years. This is done by multiplying 483 years by 360 days to get 173,880 days and then dividing that number by 365.25 to get 476 years.

And 444 BC minus 476 years is 32 AD but we need to add one year because there is no year zero which results in 33 AD when “an anointed one shall be cut off.” The ministry of Christ was three and a half years before his death and the second half of the 70th week is the church age which is symbolically referred to as three and a half years (Rev 11:2-3, 9, 11; 12:6; 13:5). If Christ was crucified on April 3, 33 AD, then 173,880 days before that is March 13, 444 BC which is in the month of Nisan as Nehemiah 2:1 says.[42]

The entire Book of Daniel is filled with incredible prophecies. Daniel 11 chronicles the entire history of the Seleucid and Ptolemy dynasties before they took place in the second century BC. The only way to get around these arguments is to say that they were written down after the events took place. But the historian Josephus records that the Book of Daniel was in existence during the time of Alexander the Great:

“For Alexander, when he saw the multitude at a distance, in white garments, while the priests stood clothed with fine linen, and the high priest in purple and scarlet clothing, with his mitre on his head, having the golden plate whereon the name of God was engraved, he approached by himself, and adored that name, and first saluted the high priest. . . . And when he went up into the temple, he offered sacrifice to God, according to the high priest’s direction, and magnificently treated both the high priest and the priests. And when the Book of Daniel was showed him wherein Daniel declared that one of the Greeks should destroy the empire of the Persians, he supposed that himself was the person intended” (Antiquities 11.8.5).

This means Daniel was in existence during the fourth century BC before Alexander came to Jerusalem. And Daniel makes reference to Alexander’s rise to power and the division of his empire into four parts in Daniel 8.

Another incredible prophecy concerning the Messiah is Isaiah 53. It tells us that the Messiah would not open his mouth when he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, that he was intended to be buried like a criminal, but was buried in a rich man’s tomb, and that he would suffer on behalf of others. And we know that Isaiah 53 has not been tampered with to fit the life of Jesus because of the Great Isaiah Scroll written in the second century BC found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.[43] While Daniel 9 and Isaiah 53 are the most important messianic prophecies in the Old Testament, there are many others.[44]

The prophecy of Ezekiel 26:3-6 was fulfilled quite literally through Alexander the Great:

“Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I am against you, O Tyre, and will bring up many nations against you, as the sea brings up its waves. They shall destroy the walls of Tyre and break down her towers, and I will scrape her soil from her and make her a bare rock. She shall be in the midst of the sea a place for the spreading of nets, for I have spoken, declares the Lord GOD. And she shall become plunder for the nations, and her daughters on the mainland shall be killed by the sword. Then they will know that I am the LORD.”

Alexander used the debris of the old city of Tyre destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar to build a causeway to the new island city of Tyre off the coast.[45] The land was literally scraped clean and the city was thrown into the sea by Alexander’s army.

The Resurrection of Christ

The resurrection of Christ is the heart of the gospel. Paul cites an early Christian creed in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 which demonstrates that belief in Christ’s resurrection goes back to the original disciples of Jesus:

“For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.”

Paul claims that this tradition was delivered to him by others and not his own invention. Even liberal scholars date this creed to near the time of Christ’s crucifixion.[46]

Only an encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus could have changed Paul. How can we explain the origin of the letters of Paul and his conversion apart from the truth of the Christian faith? What would have led a Pharisee who persecuted the church to become a follower of Christ and the greatest spokesman for him? What would convince James the brother of Jesus, who formerly doubted, to believe in him if Jesus was not raised from the dead? What caused the twelve disciples to go from hiding from the authorities in fear to boldly proclaiming that Christ had been raised from the dead if they did not believe that Christ had been raised from the dead?

Historical testimony records that the majority of the apostles of Jesus suffered martyrdom for their faith including Peter, James, and Paul.[47] They knew that either the resurrection was true or that it was a lie. As Gary Habermas and Michael Licona note, “liars make poor martyrs.”[48] And who would die for what they knew was a lie? The original twelve knew whether Jesus was really raised from the dead or not. Yet none of them abandoned the faith in the face of death.

The empty tomb of Jesus was never disputed by the enemies of Christianity. But how could the body have been stolen with a detachment of soldiers guarding it? The disciples had been scattered after believing that Jesus had been defeated through crucifixion. They had no incentive to invent the story of the resurrection since it would have meant only suffering and persecution from the Jewish and Roman authorities. No other explanation but the resurrection of Jesus can account for all the facts including the empty tomb, the conversion of the skeptic James, the conversion of the persecutor Paul, the transformation of the disciples after claiming to see the risen Christ, the spread of Christianity in the face of persecution, the existence and preservation of the Bible, and the millions of testimonies of those who have been changed by the work of the Holy Spirit.[49]

The Only Consistent Worldview

Christianity is the only worldview that accounts for the world we live in. As C. S. Lewis once said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”[50] Every religion and cult except biblical Christianity has insurmountable problems.

Islam denies the crucifixion of Christ while claiming to believe that the Gospels come from Allah (Surah 4:157; 5:46-48, 65-66).[51] Therefore, they must say that the Gospels have been corrupted even though the Quran affirms that Christians still had the Gospels then (Surah 10:94; 16:43; 21:7).[52] The Jesus of Islam is a different Jesus than the one depicted in the New Testament.

Judaism claims to believe in the Book of Daniel even though Daniel 9:26 says that the Messiah would die before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Therefore, the Messiah must have arrived before then. Both Islam and Judaism suffer from the problem of allowing God to forgive sinners without there being a payment for their sin. Without a sacrifice that pays the penalty for their sins, God would be unjust to forgive sinners (Prov 17:15).

Hinduism believes that this world is Māyā or an illusion. Therefore, if this world is an illusion, then that would make the practice of science impossible since we can’t know the world as it really is. The caste system is racist and unjust to those who are poor. Hinduism has historically practiced sati or the burning of widows alive and it was only because of the influence of Christianity that this practice is outlawed today. Because of its pantheism or belief that God is the universe, it is forced to believe that the universe is eternal contrary to what we know from science.

Mormonism contradicts the Bible’s teaching that there is only one God by asserting that there are billions of gods in existence and that we can become a god one day ourselves (Isa 43:10; 44:6-8).[53] The gospel of Mormonism is a man-centered works-based religion that denies salvation by grace alone.[54] Joseph Smith has been proven to be a false prophet who distorted God’s Word.[55]

The Jehovah’s Witnesses have a long history of making false predictions about the end of the world.[56] They deny just about every central tenet of the Christian faith such as the bodily resurrection of Jesus, the deity of Christ, and the Trinity. Since affirming that Jesus is God and the resurrection of Christ are central to Christianity, Jehovah’s Witnesses teach a false gospel (Rom 10:9).

Chapter 9

[1]For an excellent introduction to defending the Christian faith, see Kenneth R. Samples, Without a Doubt: Answering the 20 Toughest Faith Questions (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2004).

[2]See the video “The Kalam Cosmological Argument” by Reasonable Faith. All of the videos I make reference to in this chapter are available on the internet.

[3]See the article “The Fine-Tuning of the Universe for Intelligent Life” by Luke A. Barnes at https://arxiv.org.

[4]See the videos “The Fine-Tuning of the Universe” by Reasonable Faith and “Is There Evidence That God Designed the Universe?” by Ratio Christi at Kennesaw State University. See also the article “The Fine-Tuned Universe Argument” by Eitan Bar at https://www.oneforisrael.org.

[5]See the article “Fine-Tuning for Life in the Universe” by Hugh Ross at http://www.reasons.org.

[6]Fred Hoyle, “The Universe: Past and Present Reflections” Engineering and Science (Pasadena, CA: California Institute of Technology, November 1981): 12. Available at http://calteches.library.caltech.edu.

[7]See Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay W. Richards, The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery (Washington, DC.: Regnery Publishing, 2004).

[8]See Michael J. Behe, Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (New York, NY: The Free Press, 2003). For a more detailed examination of irreducible complexity as it relates to DNA, see Stephen C. Meyer, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2009).

[9]See the video “Debate: The Triune God of Scripture Lives! James White vs Dan Barker” by Alpha & Omega Ministries.

[10]Charles Darwin, “Letter to William Graham” in The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, 3 vols., ed. Francis Darwin (London: William Clowes and Sons, 1887), 1:316.

[11]See the video “The Moral Argument” by Reasonable Faith.

[12]See the audio of the debate between Gordon Stein and Greg Bahnsen on the existence of God.

[13]See the video “The Atheist Delusion” by Living Waters.

[14]See the video “The Irrefutable Proof of God” by Jeff Durbin.

[15]See Arthur Allen Leff, “Unspeakable Ethics, Unnatural Law” Duke Law Journal (December 1979): 1229-49. Available at http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu.

[16]Richard Wurmbrand, Tortured for Christ, 30^th Anniversary Edition (Bartlesville, OK: Living Sacrifice, 1998), 95.

[17]See the article “Can Multiverse Theories Explain the Appearance of Fine Tuning in the Universe?” by J. Warner Wallace at coldcasechristianity.com.

[18]See Jonathan Wells, Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth?: Why Much of What We Teach about Evolution Is Wrong (Washington, DC.: Regnery Publishing, 2000).

[19]See the article “Why the Miller–Urey Research Argues against Abiogenesis” by Jerry Bergman at http://creation.com.

[20]See the article “Did Humans Really Evolve from Apelike Creatures?” by David Menton at https://answersingenesis.org and the video “Ape-Men: The Grand Illusion” by Terry Mortenson.

[21]The best book on scientific evidence for creation is Walt Brown’s In the Beginning, 8^th ed. (Phoenix, AZ: Center for Scientific Creation, 2008). But I believe Brown is wrong that remnants of Noah’s Ark may still exist today. We live in the age of Google Earth and if pieces of it still remained, it would have been found by now. The Ark was most likely dismantled after it landed to provide wood for human settlements. An online version of the book is available at https://www.creationscience.com.

[22]See the video “Check This Out: Evolution Refuted” by Answers in Genesis.

[23]See my article “Chicken and Egg Problems for Evolutionists” at https://jamesattebury.wordpress.com.

[24]See Gary R. Habermas, The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ (Joplin, MO: College Press, 1996).

[25]Bart D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2013), 12.

[26]John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1995), 145. See also the article “Is Jesus a Myth?” at https://www.gotquestions.org.

[27]Nabeel Qureshi, No God but One: Allah or Jesus? (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2016), 118.

[28]For a listing of New Testament manuscripts, see the articles “List of New Testament Papyri” and “List of New Testament Uncials” at https://www.wikipedia.org and “Table of NT Greek Manuscripts” at http://bibletranslation.ws.

[29]See the article “Manuscript Evidence for Superior New Testament Reliability” by Matt Slick at https://www.carm.org.

[30]See J. Ed Komoszewski, M. James Sawyer, and Daniel B. Wallace, Reinventing Jesus: What The Da Vinci Code and Other Novel Speculations Don’t Tell You (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2006).

[31]See the article “Is the New Testament Text Reliable?” by Greg Koukl at http://www.str.org. See also the video “Is the New Testament a Reliable Record of Jesus’ Teachings? White vs Ismail” by Alpha & Omega Ministries.

[32]For a detailed examination of this question, see Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: the Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing: 2006).

[33]Michael W. Holmes, ed. The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1999), 569.

[34]See Justin Martyr, First Apology 66-67.

[35]For a detailed overview of the books of the Bible, see http://www.biblequery.org.

[36]See Matthew 3:3; 4:7; 11:27; 14:33; 26:64; 28:9; Mark 1:2-3; 2:5-10; 2:28; 14:62-64; Luke 1:76; 3:4-6; 4:12; 24:51-52; John 1:1; 5:23; 8:58; 20:28.

[37]See Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2004), 275-97.

[38]See the article “Archaeology and the Historical Reliability of the New Testament” by Peter S. Williams at http://www.bethinking.org.

[39]See the video “Lecture – Dr Peter Williams – New Evidences the Gospels were Based on Eyewitness Accounts.”

[40]For a list, see http://josephus.org.

[41]See the article “Jesus in the Talmud” at https://www.wikipedia.org.

[42]You can do the math yourself at http://www.easysurf.cc/ndate1.htm. Subtract 173,880 days from April 3, 33 AD to get March 13, 444 BC. We get 173,880 days by multiplying 483 years by 360 days in the Persian calendar. See the article “April 3, 33 AD” by Andreas J. Köstenberger and Justin Taylor at https://www.firstthings.com.

[43]For more information on the Great Isaiah Scroll, see http://dss.collections.imj.org.il.

[44]See William Webster, Behold Your King: Prophetic Proofs That Jesus Is the Messiah (Battle Ground, WA: Christian Resources, 2003). For a list of messianic prophecies, see “351 Old Testament Prophecies Fulfilled in Jesus Christ” at http://www.newtestamentchristians.com.

[45]See Quintus Curtius Rufus, The History of the Life and Reign of Alexander the Great, 2 vols., (London: Samuel Bagster, 1809), 1:359-61.

[46]See the articles on the resurrection of Jesus at coldcasechristianity.com. See also the video “How to Destroy Christianity with One Easy Step” by Impact Video Ministries.

[47]See Sean Joslin McDowell, “A Historical Evaluation of the Evidence for the Death of the Apostles as Martyrs for Their Faith” (PhD dissertation, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2014). It is available at http://digital.library.sbts.edu.

[48]Gary R. Habermas and Michael R. Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2004), 59.

[49]See the testimonies of faith at http://illbehonest.com and https://www.oneforisrael.org. See also Tom Doyle and Greg Webster, Dream and Visions: Is Jesus Awakening the Muslim World? (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2012).

[50]C. S. Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry?” available at http://augustinecollective.org.

[51]See the videos “The Quran, the Bible, and the Islamic Dilemma,” “Muhammad vs. Jesus: Judging Religions by Their Central Figures (David Wood),” and “David Wood Destroys Zakir Naik on the Crucifixion of Jesus!” on YouTube.

[52]See James R. White, What Every Christian Needs to Know about the Qur’an (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers, 2013).

[53]See James R. White, Is the Mormon My Brother?: Discerning the Differences between Mormonism and Christianity (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers, 1997).

[54]See the video “The Gospel for Mormons” by Jeff Durbin.

[55]See the video “The Lost Book of Abraham” by the Institute for Religious Research.

[56]See Duane Magnani and Arthur Barrett, The Watchtower Files: Dialogue with a Jehovah’s Witness (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers, 1983).

Video Game Addiction and the Gospel – Chapter 7: Remembering the Gospel

The gospel is the good news about the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. It is the truth that God has not abandoned us to our sins but has acted through the sending of his Son who became man in the incarnation to die for sinners. It is the proclamation that Jesus is God incarnate and the risen Lord of all. He is the only way to God because he alone died for sinners on the cross. By his death and resurrection, he defeated sin, death, and Satan. The gospel calls all men to faith and repentance because there is no other way to God. Christ is now seated at the right hand of God the Father and will come again one day to judge the living and the dead.

Our Need for the Gospel

We are desperately in need of the gospel because sin has alienated us from God and made us his enemies (Rom 5:10). All sin is heinous because it is the rebellion of the creature against his creator. It is divine treason against the one who has only shown love to us.[1] Man’s rebellion against his maker demands punishment because a just judge must punish sin. No sin is small because every sin is against a great God.[2] Your worst enemy is inside of you, not outside you.[3] Man’s greatest problem is not ignorance, but rebellion. While Eastern and gnostic religions teach that there is a secret knowledge that leads to salvation, Christianity teaches that we need a person to save us. We cannot be our own saviors.

Often, when people speak about sin, they will talk about their “personal demons” that they are trying to get rid of. While it might sound biblical, it is a way for them to remove responsibility for their sins. The message being communicated is that it is not them who are in rebellion against God, but the demons inside them. It is another way of saying, “The devil made me do it.” But this emphasis on the demonic nature of sin and addiction is more true than they realize. Every sin is against God himself who is by nature holy, righteous, and good. John Bunyan once said, “Sin is the dare of God’s justice, the rape of His mercy, the jeer of His patience, the slight of His power, and the contempt of His love.”[4] While we are much better at seeing other people’s sins than our own, we must admit that we are our own worst enemy. This is what led Augustine to pray, “Lord, deliver me from an evil man, myself.”[5]

Every sin turns the gifts of God into idols which turn us away from God. Idolatry is at the root of every sin and self-centered pride is the motivation for this idolatry. As John Piper reminds us, God has made a separation between sin and joy:

“What makes the gospel good news is not that Christ can be buried in our TV-saturated lives without the loss of joy. What makes it good news is that God is long-suffering and willing to forgive and start over with us again and again.”[6]

Seeking to find our happiness in entertainment instead of God is an act of idolatry because we are exchanging God for something in creation. As Paul David Tripp explains:

“Human beings always worship someone or something. This is not a situation where some people worship and some don’t. If God isn’t ruling my heart, someone or something else will. It is the way we were made. . . . Sin is fundamentally idolatrous. I do wrong things because my heart desires something more than the Lord.”[7]

Sin deceives us into thinking that we are either gods or beasts.[8] We are deluded into thinking that we determine our own destiny and therefore have the right to give into every appetite as an animal would without fear of judgment. As Tripp explains, sin turns us into practical atheists: “Sin is functionally atheistic and anti-social. Because it reduces my focus to me, it blinds me both to God and to others.”[9] Imagine a world in which you were the only person who mattered. If the world revolved around us, that would be a terrible world to live in. Pretending to live as if this is true creates an environment that is loveless, cold, shallow, and indifferent to the suffering of others. Addiction turns our focus inward as if maximizing our pleasure is the only thing that matters. This quest for pleasure has then consumed our mind and become an idol. As Charles Spurgeon proclaims:

“Whatever a man depends upon, whatever rules his mind, whatever governs his affections, whatever is the chief object of his delight, is his god. . . . If you love anything better than God you are idolaters: if there is anything you would not give up for God it is your idol: if there is anything that you seek with greater fervor than you seek the glory of God, that is your idol, and conversion means a turning from every idol.”[10]

We have turned from God to other things to find meaning, purpose, and identity. We have become content without God as we bury ourselves in the many different entertainment options available to us while neglecting the one who alone can give us lasting happiness. This is the message of C. S. Lewis:

“If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by an offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”[11]

The worst thing God could do to you is to give you over to your sin so that you keep on making mud pies in the slum. As God said through Hosea: “I will not punish your daughters when they play the whore, nor your brides when they commit adultery. . . . Ephraim is joined to idols, let him alone” (Hos 4:14, 17). This is why Jeremiah Burroughs teaches, “The greatest misery of all is for God to give you up to your heart’s lusts and desires, to give you up to your own counsels.”[12] By not correcting your sin, God is allowing you to wallow in it until the day of judgment.

The Reality of Self-Deception

There are multitudes in hell now who thought they would be in heaven. They thought they were Christians, but did not understand that true Christianity is a matter of the heart. As Thomas Watson warns us, “The hypocrite deceives others while he lives, but deceives himself when he dies.”[13] Those who are born again desire to walk as Jesus walked (1 John 2:5-6). This is not sinless perfection, but an ever-increasing love for God throughout the course of our life. It is moving away from love of sin toward love of God. Our actions reveal the condition of our heart (Matt 15:19). The difference between a Christian and a hypocrite is that a Christian repents of his sins. As William Gurnall says, “A sheep may fall into a ditch, but it is the swine that wallows in it.”[14] It is only through the miracle of regeneration that a pig can become a child of God. Those who never repent of their sins demonstrate that they have never experienced the new birth just as a pig keeps on going back into the mud after washing (2 Pet 2:22). A pig acts like a pig because he is a pig. A sinner acts like a sinner because he is a sinner by nature. His nature must be changed in order to love God and his law (Rom 8:5-9). As a tree is known by its fruit, a hypocrite is known by his unrepentant sin (Luke 6:43-46).

No one wants to go to hell. But how many of them want to go to heaven to worship and serve God? We have created a folklore version of heaven that revolves around us and all the fun things we get to do. But where is God in all this? Heaven is centered around the worship of Christ (Rev 5:12-14). The saints in glory will be content with Christ because he is the only one who can give them contentment. But the hypocrite has no relish for the things of God. Watson elaborates on the differences between a hypocrite and a true believer:

“The hypocrite seems to have his eyes nailed to heaven, but his heart is full of impure lustings. He lives in secret sin against his conscience. He can be as his company is and act both the dove and the vulture. He hears the word, but is all ear. He is for temple-devotion, where others may look upon him and admire him, but he neglects family and closet prayer. Indeed, if prayer does not make a man leave sin, sin will make him leave prayer. The hypocrite feigns humility, but it is that he may rise in the world. He is a pretender to faith, but he makes use of it rather for a cloak than a shield. He carries his Bible under his arm, but not in his heart.”[15]

The hypocrite does not make war against sin, but coddles and protects it. As Watson illustrates: “Augustine saith, before his conversion, he prayed against sin, but his heart whispered, Not yet Lord; he was loath to leave his sin too soon; how many love their disease better than their physician! While sin is loved, Christ’s medicines are loathed.”[16] The sinner wishes that God did not exist so that there would be no future day of judgment for when he must give an account for the time he has been given. Sinners are secretly hostile toward God for his sovereignty and holiness. Burroughs gets to the heart of the matter with these words:

“Now a hypocrite may be brought to fear and tremble at the Word of God, but he never loves it. First, fear and love do not join together in them. They fear God’s Word, but they hate it. They wish that there were no such Word of God, and that it was not so strict and holy as it is. And that’s as much as to say that God were not so holy, which is as much to say, ‘I wish there were no God at all.’ And yet a wicked heart is so in love with his lusts that, rather than that he should not have his lusts, he would have no God at all.”[17]

This is why Psalm 14:1 says, “the fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” Notice that it says “in his heart.” He may not openly say this is what he believes, but this is what he truly believes based on his actions. He lives as if there is no God. If God is dead, then they can sin to their heart’s desire without consequences. They deny God’s existence so that they can live as if there is no God to whom we must give an account. This is the real motivation behind atheism. It is not a matter of the head, but of the heart. Man intrinsically knows that God exists, but he denies his existence as a way to get back at him and deprive God of the worship he deserves. It is like the Prodigal Son in Luke 15 who wishes that his father was dead so that he can squander away his wealth.

If our actions and desires reveal our heart, then we must examine ourselves in light of Scripture to see if we are truly trusting in Christ alone for salvation (2 Cor 13:5). It is hard to pray, “Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” when we live contrary to the desires of those in heaven (Matt 6:10). As Paul Washer explains:

“Further proof that most people desire a heaven without God is that the desires and ambitions of most here on earth are totally contrary to those of heaven. Why would a person who has no desire for worship on earth desire to go to heaven where everything is worship? Why would one who is apathetic about righteousness desire a place where perfect righteousness dwells? Why would one who is unconcerned with the will of God desire a place where the will of God is everything?”[18]

The focus of most men is to forget about the miseries of life: to pretend as if the world in which we live is not really fallen. This is why suffering is a gift from God to rouse us from our slumber and point us to eternity. But Satan wants us to forget that we are desperately in need of a savior. As A. W. Pink saw, the gospel of Satan “aims to make this world such a comfortable and congenial habitat that Christ’s absence from it will not be felt and God will not be needed.”[19] The gospel of addiction tells us that heaven on earth can be found apart from communion with God. It calls into question God’s character and his ability to satisfy. But those who love God know that only he can fill their soul.[20]

Do not delude yourself into thinking that you can dance with the devil all day and then dine with Christ at night.[21] Real Christianity is a supernatural and experiential religion. It is a personal relationship with the triune God. As Burroughs writes:

“No soul shall ever come to Heaven, but the soul which has Heaven come to it first. When you die, you hope you will to go to Heaven; butif you will go to Heaven when you die, Heaven will come to you before you die.”[22]

Hindrances to Conversion

There are many things that can keep a person from embracing Christ. Jesus teaches that in many cases, “The cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful” (Mark 4:19). The inordinate love for other things prevent many from taking up their cross and following Jesus. Richard Baxter warns us about this danger:

“Worldliness keeps man from repentance and coming home to God. Is there any other thing that so hinders the conversion of sinners as earthly things? The love of riches destroys holy meditation by turning it to worldly things. It steals the heart in its necessary preparation for death and judgment until it is too late. . . . Is the world more loved, sought, delighted in, and faster held? Does it have more of your heart, delights, and industry? If you cannot let go of all for heaven, you cannot be Christ’s true disciples (Luke 14:26-33). To overcome the love of the world you must mortify the flesh, for the world is desired for its pleasures. A mortified man has no need for the cravings of the sensual. You will be thankful to God when you look upon other men’s wealth that you do not have need of these things. How much better you can enjoy God and yourself in a more retired and quiet state of life.”[23]

Satan seeks to keep men and women asleep in their sins so they will never think of eternity. Man uses entertainment as an opium to make him forget about his troubles rather than turning to the only one who can help him. Others turn to pleasure to silence of the voice of their conscience. But we cannot keep it buried forever. Eventually, it will resurface since we can only hold it down for so long (Rom 1:18). Pleasures and riches can never satisfy divine justice, pacify divine wrath, or quiet a guilty conscience.[24]

There are two ways to live: the broad way which leads to destruction and the narrow way which leads to life (Matt 7:13-14). Washer explains why there are so many people on the broad road:

“The broad way is filled with every sort of superficial distraction designed to keep people from concerning themselves with what really matters. It offers temptations that create and increase cravings in carnal people’s hearts while at the same time decreasing their capacity for satisfaction.”[25]

On the other hand, the narrow road is difficult and hard, but full of joy. This is the same teaching as Watson: “The devil delights men with the music of the world, that the noise of this should drown the noise of the day of judgment, and make them forget the sound of the last trump.”[26]

There is no lasting comfort in this life until you have made peace with God. You must trust in Christ alone for salvation because he is the only way to the Father (John 14:6). But if the gospel is false and we have no future hope, then there is no reason not to live for sin and pleasure. As Russell Moore concludes: “If all that awaits you is unconsciousness in a worm-filled tomb, then, yes, tickling every sensory node and exciting every gland and feeling every urge is probably the only alternative left.”[27] But no one can consistently live this way. To do so is to live contrary to the purpose for which we were made. We were made to love God and one another, not to be absorbed in ourselves. Society could not function if everyone constantly lived for pleasure. A world dominated by selfishness is one that has no compassion for the hurting.

Our greatest need is to know Christ in order to be rescued from the dominion of sin. The great preacher Robert Murray M’Cheyne exhorts us to flee to Christ without delay:

“I never will deny that there are pleasures to be found out of Christ. The song and the dance, and the exciting game, are most engaging to young hearts. But ah! think a moment. Is it not an awful thing to be happy when you are unsaved? Would it not be dreadful to see a man sleeping in a house all on fire? And is it not enough to make one shudder to see you dancing and making merry when God is angry with you every day? . . . The pleasures of sin are only “for a season;” they do not last. But to be brought to Christ is like the dawning of an eternal day; it spreads the serenity of heaven over all the days of our pilgrimage. . . . Last of all, in a dying day, what will the world do for you? The dance and the song, and the merry companion, will then lose all their power to cheer you.”[28]

It is impossible to have peace with God too soon.[29]

Remember that you cannot hide from God (Heb 4:13). He knows everything and is always watching. Your sins will find you out (Num 32:23). While sinners may feel safe and secure, one day it will all come crashing down (Amos 6:1; 1 Thess 5:3). While you may think that you can put off repentance, know that it is no easy thing to repent.[30] The longer you go without repentance, the stronger your sin will become and the more difficult it will be to repent.[31] But there is also a danger in false repentance that does not bring about change. Paul warns us of this false repentance in 2 Corinthians 7:10: “For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.” But true repentance comes from the Holy Spirit and is a repentance never to be repented of.[32]

Resolve to turn away from all sin because all sin is offensive to God. Even one sin unforsaken and unhated can keep us from trusting Christ. As Richard Sibbes argues, “Satan does not care how many sins one forsakes if he still lives in any one sin, for by one sin he has him and can pull him in.”[33] God commands us to do things we have no power to do in our own strength. He tells us to circumcise our heart (Jer 4:4), to make for ourselves a new heart (Ezek 18:31), and to be perfect as God is perfect (Matt 5:48). But it is God who circumcises our heart (Deut 30:6), gives us a new heart (Ezek 36:26-27), and in Christ find the righteousness of God (1 Cor 1:30). It is through the call to repentance that God works to bring about regeneration by opening our eyes to see the beauty of Christ (Acts 16:14; Jas 1:18).

Putting off repentance will only make repentance more difficult. As Watson warns us, “The longer men go on in sin, the more full possession Satan hath of them; the longer poison stays in the stomach, the more mortal.”[34] None of us know how long we have to live. Your inability to save yourself from your addictions and sins should drive you to Christ in prayer because he alone has the power to change your heart. It is pride that keeps men from coming to Christ when they say they do not feel worthy enough. As Ebenezer Erskine saw, “It is a devilish humility that keeps you from believing; for the more unworthy you are of the grace or favour of God, the more fit you are for receiving the grace of God.”[35] As the old hymn says, “If you tarry until you’re better, you will never come at all.”[36] This was the same message as Watson:

“If we never come to Christ to be healed till we are worthy, we must never come; and let me tell you, this talking of worthiness savours of pride, we would have something of our own; had we such preparations and self-excellencies, then we think Christ would accept us.”[37]

Our Only Hope

Because we cannot save ourselves, God must be the hero of our story. Our sins have made a separation between us and God (Isa 59:2). Only God can save us from his just wrath through his Son (Rom 5:9). This means God’s justice for our sins had to be satisfied by the death of Christ. As the Bible says:

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law” (Romans 3:23-28).

God’s justice for those who believe in Christ had to be satisfied in order for God to be just when he justifies us. God cannot pardon our sin without his justice being satisfied or else he would be an unjust judge (Prov 17:15; Rom 4:5).

Salvation by faith in Christ excludes all boasting because salvation is the work of God, not our own. God will not allow the glory of our salvation to be shared between us and him. If we contribute anything to our salvation except the faith by which we believe, then we would have a ground for boasting. But even our faith has been granted to us by God (Phil 1:29). Our hope is not in our good works or what we have done, but in God’s mercy to undeserving sinners (Titus 3:5). Salvation is a free gift of God (Rom 6:23). And while we are justified by faith alone (Rom 4:4-6), that faith which justifies always results in good works (Eph 2:10).[38] Our trust in Christ is the instrumental cause of salvation by which we lay hold of Christ, but the ground or basis upon which we are declared righteous by God is the death and resurrection of Christ (Rom 4:25).

Because it was our sin that nailed Christ to the cross, that should make us hate it even more. It was sin that slew my savior. But in the cross, we see the supreme demonstration of the Father’s love for sinners (John 3:16). There is no greater example of love than seeing a man lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13). But none of my idols ever died for me. Only Christ is worthy of my hope, my life, and my all because he alone died a bloody death to secure my salvation.[39] Nothing else in this world is worth living for. My idols cannot love me, but Christ will never leave me or forsake me in spite of my many sins (Heb 13:5). The early Christian writing Epistle to Diognetus has a wonderful section on Christ’s death for sinners:

“But when our wickedness had reached its height, and it had been clearly shown that its reward, punishment and death, was impending over us; and when the time had come which God had before appointed for manifesting His own kindness and power, how the one love of God, through exceeding regard for men, did not regard us with hatred, nor thrust us away, nor remember our iniquity against us, but showed great long-suffering, and bore with us, He Himself took on Him the burden of our iniquities, He gave His own Son as a ransom for us, the holy One for transgressors, the blameless One for the wicked, the righteous One for the unrighteous, the incorruptible One for the corruptible, the immortal One for them that are mortal. For what other thing was capable of covering our sins than His righteousness? By what other one was it possible that we, the wicked and ungodly, could be justified, than by the only Son of God? O sweet exchange! O unsearchable operation! O benefits surpassing all expectation! that the wickedness of many should be hid in a single righteous One, and that the righteousness of One should justify many transgressors!” (9:2-5).[40]

Because our sins have been covered by Christ’s blood, we no longer need to try to cover over our sins with fig leaves (Gen 3:7). We can go to God knowing that Christ is at his right hand interceding for us. Because Christ’s righteousness is now ours, we have confidence before God. While sin still lingers within us, we will be free from all sin with Christ one day. And we know that the sufferings of this life are only temporary as God uses them to make us more like his Son (2 Cor 4:17). There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:1). All of our sins have been forgotten by God because they have been forgiven in Christ never to be brought up again (Heb 8:12). As Brooks reminds us, “Your sins shall never provoke Christ, nor prevail with Christ so far, as to give you a bill of divorce.”[41] He has promised to finish the work he has started (Phil 1:6).

Closing with Christ will be the beginning of the end for your pain and shame. But embracing Christ will also be the beginning of your suffering as a Christian (Matt 16:24-25). This is the way of the cross, but there is no other way to lasting happiness. This was the hope of Spurgeon to which he invites us:

“My sole hope for heaven lies in the full atonement made upon Calvary’s cross for the ungodly. On that I firmly rely. I have not the shadow of a hope anywhere else. You are in the same condition as I am; for we, neither of us, have anything of our own in which we can trust. Let us join hands and stand together at the foot of the cross, and trust our souls once and for all time to Him who shed His blood for the guilty. We will be saved by one and the same Saviour. If you perish trusting Him, I must perish too. What can I do more to prove my own confidence in the gospel which I set before you?”[42]

How the Gospel Transforms Our Life

The Gospel is not just for lost people, it’s for Christians as well. We need to be saved every day from the deceptive power of sin by remembering the gospel daily. The same power by which Christ was raised from the dead is the same power which changes our hearts to love the things of God and hate the things he hates. We must hate sin, not just because of its consequences, but because it is against God himself. This desire must be supernaturally implanted in our heart by the Holy Spirit in regeneration and sanctification.

Our beliefs are shaped by compelling stories that we pass down from one generation to the next. And we have the greatest story of all. But unlike the fictional stories found in games and movies, this one is real. That means we surrender the right to please ourselves for the good of a lost world that needs to hear the message of the one who is all-satisfying. Christ surrendered his right to be served and instead laid down his life for our salvation (Matt 20:28). Now we who follow Christ are called to die to our sinful desires and lay down our lives for the spread of his kingdom. We deny ourselves because Christ denied himself. As Brooks writes, “It is the very nature of grace to make a man strive to be most eminent in that particular grace which is most opposed to his bosom sin.”[43]

As fallen human beings, we have an identity crisis. Some people deny that they are made in the image of God and instead live like animals. They say, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” (Isa 22:13). Sin attempts to find joy and happiness apart from living for God’s glory. Others find their identity in their favorite hobby, sports team, employment, or family. But if that is where your identity is, what happens when that is taken away from you? For those who are Christians, their identity is found in Christ with whom they are in union as his bride. As Brooks teaches:

“And therefore, saith the weak saint, because Christ is perfectly and infinitely holy above all other, I prize Christ above all. Ordinances are sweet, but Christ is more sweet to my soul. Saints are precious, but Christ is far more precious. Heaven is glorious, but Christ is infinitely more glorious. The first thing that I would ask, if I might have it, saith the weak saint, is Christ. And the next thing that I would ask, if I might have it, is more of Christ. And the last thing that I would ask, if I might have it, is that I might be satiated and filled with the fullness of Christ. Let the ambitious man take the honours of the world, so I may but have Christ. Let the voluptuous man swim in all the pleasures of the world, so I may have Christ. And let the covetous man tumble up and down in all the gold and silver of the world, so I may have Christ, and it shall be enough to my soul. . . . I can truly say, when the Lord gives me any strength against sin, and any power to serve him, and walk close with him in his ways, it is a greater joy and comfort to my soul, than all the blessings of this life.”[44]

We grow in Christlikeness by meditating on Scripture (Ps 119:11). It is one thing to read the Bible, and another to chew on it: to think about it throughout the day and ask yourself how to apply it to every situation you encounter. It is one thing to think about eternity, and another to walk the road that leads to it.[45] To find joy in Christ, you must look upon your sins as sorrows instead of sources of pleasure. You must write them a bill of divorce and vow to be done with them forever. You cannot be happy with God until you have been made holy like God (Heb 12:14).[46] That means we need to preach the gospel to ourselves daily because we are so prone to forget.[47] Its means denying ourselves sinful pleasures and worldly lusts as the early Christian sermon Second Clement exhorts us:

“This is the reason why a man is unable to find peace: they instill human apprehensions, preferring the pleasure of the present to the promise of the future. For they do not know what great torment the pleasure of the present brings, and what delight the promise of the future brings” (10:3-4).[48]

Living out the gospel means taking risks to share Christ’s love with others. The missionary C. T. Studd tells us about the time that he was convicted to begin living consistently as a Christian:

“About this time I met with a tract written by an atheist. It read as follows: ‘Did I firmly believe, as millions say they do, that the knowledge and practice of religion in this life influences destiny in another, religion would mean to me everything. I would cast away all earthly enjoyments as dross, earthly cares as follies, and earthly thoughts and feelings as vanity. Religion would be my first waking thought, and my last image before sleep sank me into unconsciousness. I should labor in its cause alone. I would take thought for the tomorrow of eternity alone. I would esteem one soul gained for heaven worth a life of suffering. Earthly consequences should never stay my hand, nor seal my lips. Earth, its joys and its griefs, would occupy no moment of my thoughts. I would strive to look upon eternity alone, and on the immortal souls around me, soon to be everlastingly happy or everlastingly miserable. I would go forth to the world and preach it in season and out of season and my text would be, ‘what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?’’ . . . I at once saw that this was the truly consistent Christian life. When I looked back upon my own life I saw how inconsistent it had been. I therefore determined that from that time forth my life should be consistent, and I set myself to know what was God’s will for me. But this time I determined not to consult with flesh and blood, but just waiting until God should show me.”[49]

This was the same motivation that drove Paul to go to hell on earth to bring the gospel to the lost (Rom 9:1-3; 10:1-3).

Because nothing is too difficult for God, he has the power to transform the desires of your heart (1 Cor 6:11). God not only forgives our sins, he gives us a new heart. This results in a reorientation of where our treasure is (Matt 6:21). Your behavior is determined by what rules your heart. If your heart is set on the things of God, your desire will be to do that which pleases him. You cannot have Christ as savior without also having him as your king. We will only deny ourselves sinful pleasures if we believe there is a greater joy awaiting us in the future. Therefore, look by faith to a crucified savior for deliverance from sin. Do you desire your sin more than communion with Christ? Pray that God would take from you these addictive desires that are consuming your life. Then replace them with new ones that build up his kingdom.

Now ask yourself, what good did your sin ever do for you? What lasting joy have you ever gotten out of it? No addiction can give lasting satisfaction. It is the nature of addiction to always leave the person who is enslaved to it wanting more. It is like the scroll of Revelation 10:9-10 which is as sweet as honey in your mouth, but then makes you want to vomit later. Why then should you envy those who are enjoying that which can never make you happy? Their portion is in this life (Ps 17:14). But we look forward to the one to come.

The addict is getting heaven on earth now and forfeiting the one to come. But his heaven on earth is really a hell of his own making. He cannot find satisfaction while he wanders from one pleasure to the next. But true happiness cannot be found in ourselves, but in Christ who accomplished everything necessary for the salvation of his people. Christ must reign supreme in the soul because he refuses to have his glory divided between himself and idols. He will be all or nothing as Brooks proclaims, “Christ will be all in all, or he will be nothing at all. Though his coat was once divided, yet he will never suffer his crown to be divided.”[50] We are no longer free to determine how we will live our lives. We now live under the lordship of Christ who gave up everything for us. Faith in him and love for sin can never consistently go together.[51]

The Reality of Hell

If the gospel is true, then the existence of hell is also true (Matt 25:41-46; Mark 9:47-48; Luke 16:22-28; Rev 14:9-11; 20:10-15). Hell is just because every sin is against a perfectly holy and righteous God. If we will not worship and serve him, then there is no other place for us. One of the most important principles you can learn is that not wanting something to be true does not make it false. If hell is true, then not wanting it to be true has no influence on whether or not it exists. If hell exists, then we should meditate on it to avoid going to it.[52] As Watson warns us, “It will be so much the worse to go to hell with hopes of heaven”[53]

By indulging in sinful pleasure, you may be excluded from lasting pleasure. Our desires reveal the condition of our heart. A man who is saved will get two heavens, one here and one hereafter. But the lost will receive two hells, one here and one hereafter. Sin will make you miserable in this life and in the next.[54] As Augustine once said, “A man bothered by his conscience is his own punishment.”[55] But trusting in Christ will make you happy in this life and in the next. Hell is a place of eternal grief and regret for sin. As Spurgeon preached:

“Suppose you are a drunkard. Drunkenness was your happiness on earth. Will you be drunk in hell? There it would afford you no gratification. Here the theater was your pastime: will you find a theater in heaven? The songs of foolish lasciviousness were here your delight: will you find such songs in eternity? Will you be able to sing them amidst unutterable burnings? Can you hum those lascivious notes when you are drinking the fearful gall of eternal woe? Oh! surely, no; the things in which you once trusted, and found your peace and comfort, will have gone forever. Oh! what is your happiness to-night, my friends? Is it a happiness that will last you? Is it a joy that will endure? Or are you holding in your hand an apple of Sodom, and saying, ‘It is fair, it is passing fair,’ when you know that you only look on it now, but will have to eat it in eternity?”[56]

The Urgency of the Gospel

You do not know if you will even have tomorrow. Every day is a gift from God. Every day is another opportunity to find peace with God. We enter the world crying and we will leave it the same way if we die without peace with God. But you can leave it with joy if your nature has been changed by God. That will be your true heaven on earth. It will be like heaven because heaven is when our communion with God will be perfected. Worship and prayer are foretastes of heaven where we see glimpses of the majesty of Christ.

Solomon warns the young man who walks as a stranger to God:

“Rejoice, O young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes. But know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment” (Ecclesiastes 11:9).

One day, you will be brought into judgment whether you like it or not. You will always be miserable until you find peace with God through Christ. All of your idols must fall before him, either now or on the day of judgment (Isa 2:20-21). My lament is the same as that of Brooks: “Ah it is sad when men had rather live in darkness, and die in darkness, and go to hell in darkness – rather than see the light, enjoy the light, and walk in the light!”[57] May you, dear reader, never be among those who perish in their sin. It would be horrible to be tormented by the thought of this book throughout all eternity.

Chapter 8

[1]See the article “Cosmic Treason” by R. C. Sproul at http://www.ligonier.org.

[2]Thomas Brooks, Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1968), 45.

[3]“Young men, your worst enemies are within you” (Thomas Brooks, Apples of Gold, in A Mute Christian Under the Rod & Apples of Gold, ed. Jay P. Green [Mulberry, IN: Sovereign Grace Publishers, 2001], 212).

[4]I. D. E. Thomas, The Golden Treasury of Puritan Quotations (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1977), 260.

[5]Brooks, Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices, 163.

[6]John Piper, When the Darkness Will Not Lift: Doing What We Can While We Wait for God – and Joy (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2006), 66.

[7]Paul David Tripp, Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands: People in Need of Change Helping People in Need of Change (Phillipsburg, PA: P&R Publishing, 2002), 66.

[8]Russell D. Moore, Onward: Engaging the Culture without Losing the Gospel (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing, 2015), 116.

[9]Paul David Tripp, A Quest for More: Living for Something Bigger Than You (Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2007), 90.

[10]Stephen McCaskell, ed. Through the Eyes of C. H. Spurgeon: Quotes from A Reformed Baptist Preacher (Brenham, TX: Lucid Books, 2012), 100.

[11]C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, in The Essential C. S. Lewis, ed. Lyle W. Dorsett (New York: Collier Books, 1988), 361-62.

[12]Jeremiah Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1964), 109.

[13]Thomas Watson, The Godly Man’s Picture, Drawn with a Scripture-Pencil, in The Sermons of Thomas Watson, 2 vols. (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1990), 1:389.

[14]Thomas, The Golden Treasury of Puritan Quotations, 271.

[15]Thomas Watson, The Doctrine of Repentance (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1987), 68.

[16]Thomas Watson, “The Soul’s Malady and Cure,” in The Sermons of Thomas Watson, 2 vols. (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1990), 2:61.

[17]Jeremiah Burroughs, Gospel Fear, ed. Don Kistler (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1991), 36.

[18]Paul Washer, Gospel Assurance and Warnings, Recovering the Gospel (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage, 2014), 163.

[19]A. W. Pink, “Another Gospel” available at http://www.gracegems.org.

[20]“He had rather see the face of God, and live in his everlasting love and praises, than have all the wealth or pleasures of the world. He seeth that all things else are vanity, and nothing but God can fill the soul.” (Richard Baxter, A Call to the Unconverted [Lafayette, IN: Sovereign Grace Publishers, 2000], 16).

[21]Brooks, Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices, 211.

[22]Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, 75.

[23]Richard Rushing, ed. Voices from the Past: Puritan Devotional Readings (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2009), 297.

[24]Thomas Brooks, The Unsearchable Riches of Christ, in The Works of Thomas Brooks, 6 vols., ed. Alexander B. Grosart (Edinburgh: John Greig and Son, 1866), 3:160.

[25]Washer, Gospel Assurance and Warnings, 199.

[26]Thomas Watson, A Christian on the Mount, or a Treatise concerning Meditation, in The Sermons of Thomas Watson, 2 vols. (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1990), 1:227.

[27]Russell D. Moore, Tempted and Tried: Temptation and the Triumph of Christ (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2011), 71.

[28]Robert Murray M’Cheyne, “Reasons Why Children Should Fly to Christ without Delay,” in Memoir and Remains of Robert Murray M’Cheyne, ed. Andrew A. Bonar (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1966), 587-89.

[29]Thomas Brooks, The Crown and Glory of Christianity, in The Works of Thomas Brooks, 6 vols., ed. Alexander B. Grosart (Edinburgh: John Greig and Son, 1866), 4:246.

[30]Brooks, Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices, 60.

[31]Ibid., 220.

[32]Thomas Brooks, Heaven on Earth: A Treatise on Christian Assurance (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1961), 224.

[33]Richard Sibbes, Glorious Freedom: The Excellency of the Gospel above the Law (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2000), 55.

[34]Thomas Watson, “The One Thing Necessary,” in The Sermons of Thomas Watson, 2 vols. (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1990), 1:366.

[35]Horatius Bonar, ed. Words Old and New: Gems from the Christian Authorship of All Ages (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1994), 261.

[36]See the hymn “Come, Ye Sinners, Poor and Needy” by Joseph Hart.

[37]Watson, “The Soul’s Malady and Cure,” 2:70-71.

[38]“Friendship with Jesus is costly. Faith alone saves, but saving faith is never alone. It is always accompanied by great sacrifices for Christ’s sake” (Richard Wurmbrand, The Overcomers [Orlando, FL: Bridge-Logos, 2006], 273).

[39]See the hymn “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” by Isaac Watts.

[40]Michael W. Holmes, ed. The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1999), 547.

[41]Brooks, The Unsearchable Riches of Christ, 3:70.

[42]Charles Spurgeon, All of Grace (Lexington, KY: Trinity Press, 2013), 28.

[43]Thomas Brooks, Smooth Stones Taken from Ancient Brooks, ed. Charles Spurgeon (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1996), 14.

[44]Brooks, The Unsearchable Riches of Christ, 3:80-81.

[45]As Augustine once said, “It is one thing to see the land of peace from a wooded ridge . . . and another to tread the road that leads to it” (As cited in C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life [Orlando, FL: Harcourt Books, 1955], 230).

[46]“Thou canst not make me happy with thyself, till thou hast made me holy like thyself” (Arthur Bennet, ed. The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions [Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1975], 171).

[47]See the article “Preach the Gospel to Yourself” by David Mathis at http://www.desiringgod.org.

[48]Holmes, ed. The Apostolic Fathers, 117.

[49]Norman P. Grubb, C. T. Studd: Cricketer & Pioneer (Fort Washington, PA: Christian Literature Crusade, 1982), 35-36.

[50]Brooks, Smooth Stones Taken from Ancient Brooks, 97.

[51]“Faith and the love of sin can no more stand together, than light and darkness” (Thomas Watson, The Christian’s Character: Showing the Privileges of a Believer, in The Sermons of Thomas Watson, 2 vols. [Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1990], 1:113).

[52]“Meditate much on hell. Let us go into hell by contemplation, that we may not go into hell by condemnation” (Watson, A Christian on the Mount, 1:230).

[53]Thomas Watson, The Upright Man’s Character, in The Sermons of Thomas Watson, 2 vols. (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1990), 1:348.

[54]Brooks, The Crown and Glory of Christianity, 4:211.

[55]As cited in Richard Wurmbrand, The Oracles of God (Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image, 1995), 119.

[56]Charles Spurgeon, “Simeon,” in vol. 11 of The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, in The C. H. Spurgeon Collection [CD-ROM] (Rio, WI: AGES Software, 2001), 795.

[57]Brooks, The Unsearchable Riches of Christ, 3:232.

Video Game Addiction and the Gospel – Chapter 6: Trusting Christ

Every moment of our life we are constantly answering the question of whether we will trust in Christ or believe in the lies of the world. God is infinitely worthy of our trust because he knows the future perfectly and will not allow his children to wander forever. He calls us to trust him when we do not know what the future holds instead of fleeing to the false promises of sin. We trust that our life is in his hands as we work to build his kingdom (Ps 31:15). Knowing that God is in control gives us confidence to live for him.

The Suffering of Job

Few men have suffered more than Job has. After losing his children and possessions, his own wife told him to curse God and kill himself (Job 2:9). But Job rebukes her and blesses God instead of cursing him. Job’s suffering began as a kind of bet between God and the devil: “Then Satan answered the LORD and said, ‘Does Job fear God for no reason?’” (Job 1:9). Satan may be saying the same thing about you right now. Is the only reason why you serve God because of the many things he has given you? What if God were to take away your money, health, and family? In your moment of suffering, will you choose to bless the Lord in worship or curse him by turning to sin in an attempt to numb your pain?

The wicked refuse to serve God because they see no benefit in it for themselves: “What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? And what profit do we get if we pray to him?” and “It profits a man nothing that he should take delight in God” (Job 21:15; 34:9). This was the same complaint of Israel in the days of Malachi: “You have said, ‘It is vain to serve God. What is the profit of our keeping his charge or of walking as in mourning before the LORD of hosts?’” (Mal 3:14). When things are going well for the people of God, the world is attracted to the outward prosperity of the church. They think that if they become members of a local church, God will bless them as well. But when it is no longer advantageous to be a Christian, the hypocrites leave their profession of faith.

But Job’s response was much different. He would continue to trust God no matter what happened to him: “Though he slay me, I will hope in him; yet I will argue my ways to his face” (Job 13:15). But even in the midst of his trust, Job’s view of God was too low. That is why the Lord had to come to him at the end of the book and reveal his glory in all its majesty. As a true follower of God, Job responds with heartfelt repentance: “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:5-6). The purpose for Job’s pain was to grow his faith and demonstrate the sovereignty of God. What Satan intended for evil, God intended for good. As Thomas Brooks writes, affliction refines our trust in God:

“No man lives so free a life, so holy a life, so heavenly a life, so happy a life, as he that lives a life of faith. . . . The Lord, by forsaking of his people for a time, he makes them skillful in the life of faith, which is the choicest the sweetest life in this world.”[1]

Pleasure and Pain

The sweet waters of pleasure and the bitter waters of affliction are used by Satan to turn us from God.[2] John Piper explains how each works in temptation:

“Satan uses pleasure and pain to try and destroy our faith. He wields pleasure to make us doubt God’s satisfying greatness, and pain to make us doubt God’s sovereign goodness.”[3]

But the sweet of sin is always accompanied by the emotional pain of shame.[4] While sin might initially bring pleasure, it soon makes our pain worse. The pleasures of sin are fleeting, momentary, and unsatisfying as Brooks reminds us:

“There is nothing in carnal delights but imagination and expectation; for they can neither fill the heart nor satisfy the heart. O sirs, there is no real pleasure in sin. All the pleasures of sin are counterfeit pleasures; they are but the shapes and shadows of pleasure; they are the seeds of future grief; they are but an earnest laid down for sorrow or ruin.”[5]

God is working in the life of his children to wean us from the world because he is doing a perfect work in our life that will be completed on the day of Christ (Ps 131:2; Phil 1:6). Every time you sin, you are rebelling against God and telling him that your way of living is better than his. But remember, no one has ever rebelled against God and prevailed (Acts 26:14). Turning to sin in your moment of suffering will only increase your suffering. As Charles Spurgeon preached:

“I do not remember reading of a person whose wife or child was sick, who discovered any miraculous healing power in rebellion against the Most High. It is a dark night, but the darkness of your heart will not light a candle for you. It is a terrible tempest, but to quench the fires of comfort and open the doors to admit the howling winds into the chambers of your spirit will not stay the storm.”[6]

The Lord has promised to turn the tears of his people into rejoicing. As David writes, “For his anger is but for a moment, and his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning” (Ps 30:5). If the Lord has given you eternal life, can you not trust him to give you that which you need for each day? If the Father has given you his own Son, can you not trust him with the things of this life? (Rom 8:32). Do not be troubled by your lacking of that which can never make you happy.[7] In the midst of your suffering, you are called to be patient because patience is an expression of our faith (Rom 12:12).

The Never-Ending Battle

The Christian life is a daily battle against sin. It is a war between God and Satan, trust and temptation, life and death, and eternity and the present. Will you live for the passing pleasures of sin or will you deny yourself and follow Christ knowing that your treasure is in heaven and not on earth? God allows his children to be tempted in this fallen evil age in order that he might be glorified when they overcome the temptation. The next time you are tempted to sin, think about how much God will be glorified when you overcome the temptation. Do not waste your temptation. We do this by following the example of Christ and those who follow him. Like Moses, we must choose “to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin” (Heb 11:25). As Brooks reminds us, we must kill sin or it will kill us: “You must pursue your bosom sins to the death, or they will be the death of your souls.”[8]

Faith calls us to believe that the adoration of Christ is more soul-satisfying than the greatest pleasures this world can offer. Every sin is an expression of lack of trust in God and contains a deceitful lie within it. The way to overcome temptation is to identify this lie and expose its deceitfulness. Sin twists God’s good design for creation by questioning his character and wisdom. Every sin is also an expression of pride which pretends as if we know better than God. Sin is inherently self-destructive and deceptive. It promises freedom, but always brings corruption.

The key to overcoming secret sin is secret communion with God and open confession before man (Jas 5:16). Your secret sins show that you fear man more than God who already knows all your sins.[9] It takes faith to believe that the pleasures of God outweigh the pleasures of sin. It takes faith to believe that there is an unseen world of angels and demons who are at war with one another. It takes faith to believe that one day our bodies will be raised from the dead. And it takes faith to believe that Christ has been raised from the dead.

Christ is the one who gives light to those who sit in darkness (Luke 1:79). He sets captives free from their sin (John 8:36). Addiction is enslaving because it robs men and women of the joy they could have been experiencing in Christ. Think of all the money saved, time better spent, friendships made, knowledge learned, and memories made that addiction robs from you. Instead, our minds becomes filled with violence, immorality, profanity, and the absence of God. As Brooks teaches us:

“The conquest and effectual mortifying of one bosom sin, will yield a Christian more glorious joy, comfort, and peace, than ever he has found in the gratifying and committing of all other sins. The pleasure and sweetness which follows victory over sin, is a thousand times beyond that seeming sweetness which is in the gratifying of sin. The joy which attends the subduing of sin is a noble joy, a pure joy, a special joy, an increasing joy, and a lasting joy. But that joy which attends the committing of sin is an ignoble joy, a corrupt joy, a decreasing joy, a dying joy. The truth is, were there the least real joy in sin, there could be no perfect hell, where men shall most perfectly sin, and be most perfectly tormented with their sin.”[10]

The desire for joy must drive self-discipline and self-control. It requires a supernatural taste of heaven’s delicacies to say no to sin. This was the teaching of Richard Baxter:

“A life of sin will not be avoided for inferior motives. When lust and appetite incline men strongly and constantly to their respective objects, what shall sufficiently restrain them, except the motives from things eternal?”[11]

This was the motivation of Paul when he wrote, “But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified” (1 Cor 9:27). There are many who preach from pulpits today who will be in hell tomorrow. A lack of self-control is a sign of someone who may be a reprobate. They do not become reprobates by a lack of self-control, but prove themselves to have been so all along by their unrepentant sin. The joy of the hypocrite is but for a moment before he is unmasked on the day of judgment.

Hope is central to resisting temptation because if we believe that we have no future, then we live for the moment instead of looking forward to the reward. Because we are looking forward to a heavenly city, we can be content without heaven on earth (Heb 13:14). As Piper makes clear, this attitude revolutionizes the way we live:

“The way of love is both the way of self-denial and the way to ultimate joy. We deny ourselves the fleeting pleasures of sin and luxury and self-absorption in order to seek the kingdom above all things. In doing so we bring the greatest good to others, we manifest the worth of Christ as a treasure chest of joy, and we find our greatest satisfaction.”[12]

We will never desire to flee secret sin until we learn that true happiness can only be found in obeying God.[13] Your idols will always let you down and betray you. But Christ never will.

Our Sufficiency in Christ

Christ is the believer’s wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption (1 Cor 1:30). Our identity is in him and what he has done for us. Therefore, Brooks argues, “To run from Christ is to run from all life, peace and joy. It is to run from our strength, our shelter, our security, our safety, our crown, our glory.”[14] His mercy pardons us, his blood cleanses us, his merits justify us, his righteousness clothes us, his Spirit leads us, his grace enriches us, and his glory rewards us.[15] This is why John Flavel can say:

“The study of Jesus Christ is the noblest subject that ever a soul spent itself upon. The angels stoop to look into this deep abyss. The truths discovered in Christ are the secrets that from eternity lay hid in the bosom of God. Studying Christ stamps a heavenly glory upon the contemplating soul. How little do we know of Christ, in comparison with what we might have known? O, how much time is spent in other studies and worldly employments; but how little in the search and study of Jesus Christ? O then, separate, devote, and wholly give yourself, your time, and your strength to this most sweet, transcendent study.”[16]

We have no heaven on earth apart from a life lived in communion with Christ. And where we cannot see his face, we must trust his voice. It is impossible to trust him too much.[17] As Joseph Caryl observed, “The reason why God is trusted so little, is because He is so little known.”[18] To know and love God is the most important activity of life. This, in turn, should lead us to pray: “Help me to know continually that there can be no true happiness, no fulfilling of thy purpose for me, apart from a life lived in and for the Son of thy love.”[19] Do you love Christ more than anything in this world? If there is anything you love more than God, then it has become an idol to you. Matthew Mead reminds us that we have a truer source of joy:

“You will find whatever you over-love to be a cross or a curse. Live above the pleasures of sense; we have a nobler delight. We have God to delight in and Christ to comfort us. What a poor thing it is to satisfy your soul with the delights of brutes. They have no peace with God, no joy in the Holy Spirit, no peace of conscience, and no hope of glory. Is not the greatest ground of joy imaginable to have a name written in heaven? This is a truer cause of rejoicing than anything this world can afford.”[20]

By running after sinful pleasure, you end up destroying yourself. By neglecting God and his ways, you are acting like a fool who has lost his mind. This is why, in the parable of the Prodigal Son, we read: “But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger!’” (Luke 15:17). Sin is a kind of temporary madness where we act beside ourselves to our own harm. It is madness to refuse the help of God because he is the only physician who has the power to heal us. This is what led Jodocus van Lodenstein to exclaim: “To live without Jesus is worse than not to live at all! Yet the church will risk missing the Lord Jesus in exchange for carnal security and imaginary rest.”[21] It is an imaginary rest because it cannot last. One day, the bubble will burst and we will see sin for what it really is.

Christ has promised to never leave us or forsake us (Heb 13:5). And we know that he will keep his word because he “is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb 13:8). God’s promises rest on his unchangeableness. As Spurgeon once said, “There was never a man yet who dared trust Christ, and yet found that Christ was not equal to his need, or that he did not fully supply all his wants.”[22] It is only when we look to him in faith that we find what we have been searching for all along. This was the message of John Owen:

“The Lord Christ desired that his disciples should see his glory in order that they might be filled with joy and happiness for evermore. Only a sight of his glory, and nothing else, will truly satisfy God’s people. The hearts of believers are like a magnetized needle which cannot rest until it is pointing north. So also, a believer, magnetized by the love of Christ, will always be restless until he or she comes to Christ and beholds his glory. The soul which can be satisfied without beholding the glory of Christ, that cannot be eternally satisfied with beholding the glory of Christ, is not a soul for whom Christ prays. . . . While we are still on earth, faith, beholding the glory of Christ, will give us a foretaste of future glory. There is no glory, no peace, no joy, no satisfaction to be found in this world compared to what we get from that weak and imperfect view which we have of the glory of Christ by faith.”[23]

Love for Christ

Our love for Christ flows from his love for us. As 1 John 4:19 says, “We love because he first loved us.” God’s love is the self-giving of himself for others as seen in his kindness, mercy, and grace. Love expresses itself as a desire for union and oneness with another person. God is eternally loving because he is eternally triune. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit love one another perfectly and eternally. As Jesus prayed in John 17:24: “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.” Our love for Christ expresses itself as a desire to be with Christ. You cannot love someone you never spend time with. When Richard Wurmbrand was being pressured to deny the existence of God while suffering in prison for his faith, he cried out to God:

“If You were a myth, I would leave reality and live with You in a dream. If they proved You did not exist, You would receive life from my love. My love is mad, without motive, as Your love is, too. Lord Jesus, find some happiness here. For more I cannot give You”.[24]

Wurmbrand could only say these words because he had experienced the transforming work of the Holy Spirit. He had become a new creation in Christ and could not deny the reality of what had taken place in his life (2 Cor 5:17). This is the case with every true Christian. It is impossible for Christians to curse Christ or deny God’s existence (1 Cor 12:3; Heb 11:6). Johannes Tauler, whose writings had a great influence on the reformer Martin Luther, encountered a beggar with whom he began to speak with. Tauler asked him, “What would you do if you were damned for eternity?” He replied, “I have two arms: humility and love. With these I would embrace Him so mightily that if I had to enter hell, He would have to enter with me. It would be sweeter for me to be with Him in hell than without Him in heaven.”[25] This was the same attitude of Luther who would “rather be in hell with Christ, than in heaven without him.”[26]

This same love for Christ was seen in the example of Bonaventure:

“The devil, tempting Bonaventure, told him he was a reprobate, and therefore persuaded him to drink in the present pleasure of this life; for, said he, thou art excluded from the future joys with God in heaven. Bonaventure’s graces being active, he answered, No; not so, Satan: if I must not enjoy God after this life, let me enjoy him as much as I can in this life.”[27]

We can trust Christ because he has demonstrated his love for us in laying down his life for us. I can trust him because I know he loves me. But a lack of trust in Christ is a sign of a lack of love for him.[28] Is there anything you would not be willing to part with for Christ? Is there anything you love more than him? As Brooks teaches, love for sin and love for Christ cannot exist at the same time: “A man never begins to fall in love with Christ till he begins to fall out with his sins. Till sin and the soul be two, Christ and the soul can not be one.”[29]

Love for Christ expresses itself in love for the commands of Christ. We love his Word because it is his love letter to his bride the church until he returns. As Brooks explains, love for Christ must result in hatred for sin because sin takes us away from communion with him:

“True grace works the heart to the hatred of all sin, and to the love of all truth; it works a man to the hatred of those sins that for his blood he cannot conquer, and to loathe those sins that he would give all the world to overcome (Ps. 119:104, 128). So that a soul truly gracious can say, Though there is no one sin mortified and subdued in me, as it should, and as I would, yet every sin is hated and loathed by me. So a soul truly gracious can say, Though I do not obey any one command as I should, and as I would, yet every word is sweet, every command of God is precious (Ps. 119:6, 119, 127, 167). I dearly prize and greatly love those commands that I cannot obey; though there be many commands that I cannot in a strict sense fulfill, yet there is no command I would not fulfill, that I do not exceedingly love.”[30]

Those who love Christ are willing to follow him to the death (Matt 16:24-26). Love for Christ is the driving force behind the Christian life. As Christ showed compassion for the hurting and the lost, we are called to show the same mercy to those in need. This was the message Spurgeon preached:

“If the Scriptures tell me my Lord is going to fill me with his own glory, and to set me at his own right hand, I can believe it. He who went to the cross for me will never be ashamed of me: he who gave me himself will give me all heaven and more: he that opened his very heart to find blood and water to wash me in, how shall he keep back even his kingdom from me? O sweet Lord Jesus, thou art indeed to us the hope, the pledge, the guarantee of glory. Friend, do you not feel that Christ in you is the dawn of heaven? . . . Go your ways and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and let men see who it is that lives in you. Let Jesus speak through your mouth, and weep through your eyes, and smile through your face; let him work with your hands and walk within your feet, and be tender with your heart. Let him seek sinners through you; let him comfort saints through you; until the day break and the shadows flee away.”[31]

Thomas Vincent gives us one of the most amazing appeals for love to Christ ever written. He calls us to look to Christ alone for our happiness instead of the passing pleasures and riches of this world:

“Be much in contemplation of Christ. Consider often what motives there are of love in Him; press them upon your spirits, and labor to awaken and rouse up your hearts unto the vigorous exercise of this love. Spend time in secret retirement, and there think and think again of the superlative excellencies and perfections which are in Christ’s person; how wonderful and matchless His love is, what heights that cannot be reached, what depths in it that cannot be fathomed, what other dimensions which cannot be comprehended. Meditate often on His benefits, how incomparable His love-token is: and, while you are looking, you may feel your hearts leaping. . . . Get often into the mount of divine contemplation, and there look upwards unto heaven and think with yourselves, ‘Yonder, yonder, above the shining sun, is the more glorious Sun of righteousness. There, at the right hand of the throne of God, is my beloved Jesus, the Son of God, seated and, though He is so high above me, both in place and dignity, yet He thinks upon me, and pleads for me, and many a gift has He sent and, by His Spirit, conveyed unto me; and I can ask nothing of the Father in His name but, if it is really for my good, I have it by His means.’ O dear Jesus, how lovely art Thou in Thyself! The darling of heaven! The delight of the Father! The admiration of angels! O what brightness of glory, what shining luster art Thou arrayed with! Thou art clothed with most excellent majesty and honor! Thou art girded with infinite might and power! The beauty of Thy face is most wonderful! The smiles of Thy countenance are most sweet and delightful! And does this lovely fair one, this fairest of ten thousand, this most excellent and altogether lovely person bear a particular love to me? To such a vile worm as me? To such a hell-deserving sinner as me? O what marvelous kindness in this! What infinite riches of free grace! Does He know me by name? Has He given Himself for me, and given Himself to me, and shall not I give Him my heart? Am I written in His book, redeemed with His blood, clothed with His righteousness, beautified with His image? Has He put the dignity of a child of God upon me, and prepared a place in the Father’s house for me? O wonderful! O admirable! What shall I render? What returns shall I make? Had I a thousand tongues, should I not employ them all in speaking His praise? Had I a thousand hearts, should I not present them all as too mean for a thank-offering unto Him? And yet am I slow, slow of heart to love this dear and sweet Jesus? Awake, O my soul! Awake from your dullness and stupidity! Shake off the sleep which glues your eyelids so close together, shake out the dust of the earth which has gotten into your eyes, and keeps you from the view of your beloved. Arise, O my soul, and lift up yourself; unfetter the feet, unclog yourself, take the wing, and mount up above the sky and visible heavens, even to the place where the lovely and dear Jesus is! Take your leave of the world and all things therein. Bid farewell to the flattering honors, the deceitful riches, the glancing pleasures that are here below; bid adieu to them, and leave them to those who place their chief happiness in them. If earth had your body for awhile, yet let it have your heart and chief affections no more.”[32]

A Jealous God

The Bible tells us that “the LORD your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God” (Deut 4:24). But how can God be jealous? Isn’t jealousy a bad thing? God is jealous because he is intensely desirous for his own worship. God loves himself and has a wonderful plan for himself and his people to exalt the honor of his name. He is jealous for us because he loves us and values his glory above all things. He loves us too much to have our worship divided between himself and idols. It is not wrong for God to be jealous because he is the creator of all things and is worthy of the worship of all people. But there are many people who only want Christ for his benefits. Believing the gospel becomes a kind of “get out of hell free” card instead of being motivated by love for Christ.

Because God is jealous for the love of his people, he will smash our idols when they take his place. As Samuel Rutherford once expressed:

“I am most gladly content that Christ breaketh all my idols in pieces: it hath put a new edge upon my blunted love to Christ. I see he is jealous of my love, and will have all to himself.”[33]

God is making us into masterpieces for his glory (Eph 2:10). But the process can be painful. It is painful when the idols we cling to are wrenched from our hands.[34] God’s discipline is difficult to endure, but it is for our good: “For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Heb 12:11). To preemptively avoid the painful discipline of God, we must remove everything that hinders our enjoyment of Christ. We do this by trusting that he is more satisfying than sin. In heaven, there will be no sin and the saints will be perfectly happy without the things of this world (Rev 7:14-17).

On that day, the saints will be perfectly conformed to the image of Christ. When sin is taken away, perfect holiness will result in perfect happiness.[35] Sin prevents us from taking joy in the Spirit, hinders our prayers, and destroys our confidence before God.[36] For this reason, God must root out the sin in our life. As Spurgeon relates: “If thou make anything to be thy glory except Christ, God will prepare a worm to eat the root of it. For he will have thee, if thou art his, he will have thee chaste to himself, and thou shalt never have anything to glory in but Christ.”[37] Some of the most convicting words I have ever read come from the pen of Thomas Watson on Christ’s love for us:

“You that are professors, your sins are sins of unkindness, they go nearest to Christ’s heart. Do you live as those who have hope of things to come? Is Christ preparing heaven for you, and are you preparing war against him? Is this your kindness to your friend?”[38]

The Proverbial Fool

One of the most important passages in the Bible on trusting God is Proverbs 3:5-6: “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.” The fool in Proverbs is the man who believes that he is wiser than God. Even though he would never dare to utter such words, his actions reveal this is what he really believes. By his actions, he is calling God a liar as if he knows better. The fool trusts in his own understanding instead of in the one true God who is perfect in knowledge (Job 37:16).

The fool expresses his foolishness by his indulgence, inactivity, and passivity. While he might not sin openly and profanely, he tries to see how far he can go without breaking the letter of the law. There is no fear of God before his eyes and the Bible defines fearing the Lord as turning away from evil (Job 28:28; Prov 3:7; Eccles 12:13).[39] Fearing the Lord is a holy adoration of God that leads to action instead of passivity. Solomon warns this fool: “Can a man carry fire next to his chest and his clothes not be burned? Or can one walk on hot coals and his feet not be scorched?” (Prov 6:27-28). If you play with sinful fire, eventually you will get burned by falling into a greater sin than you expected.

Addiction is an example of pride because it is arrogant to think that you can satisfy yourself apart from communion with God. Pride is the sin that leads to all other sins. Pride was the first sin of Satan (Isa 14:13-16; Ezek 28:12-17). Pride drowns out the worship of God (Ps 10:4). No amount of worldly pleasure can prepare your soul for death. Therefore, do not envy the great sinners of this world (Ps 73:1-28). Our lack of trust in God can only bring wrath, not lasting pleasure (Rom 1:18). Because we have sinned against God, someone must pay the penalty for our sin. And that is why Jesus had to die.

Chapter 7

[1]Thomas Brooks, The Mute Christian Under the Rod, in A Mute Christian Under the Rod & Apples of Gold, ed. Jay P. Green (Mulberry, IN: Sovereign Grace Publishers, 2001), 98.

[2]Thomas Watson, All Things for Good (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1986), 71.

[3]See the article “Pain: A Secret Garden of Pride” by Marshall Segal at http://www.desiringgod.org.

[4]Thomas Brooks, Heaven on Earth: A Treatise on Christian Assurance (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1961), 223.

[5]Thomas Brooks, The Crown and Glory of Christianity, in The Works of Thomas Brooks, 6 vols., ed. Alexander B. Grosart (Edinburgh: John Greig and Son, 1866), 4:255.

[6]Charles Spurgeon, “Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled,” in vol. 13 of The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, in The C. H. Spurgeon Collection [CD-ROM] (Rio, WI: AGES Software, 2001), 35.

[7]Thomas Brooks, Smooth Stones Taken from Ancient Brooks, ed. Charles Spurgeon (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1996), 163.

[8]Brooks, Heaven on Earth, 123.

[9]Thomas Brooks, The Secret Key to Heaven: The Vital Importance of Private Prayer (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2006), 271.

[10]Brooks, Heaven on Earth, 120.

[11]Richard Baxter, Dying Thoughts (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2004), 17.

[12]John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad! The Supremacy of God in Missions, 2^nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 107.

[13]Thomas Brooks, Apples of Gold, in A Mute Christian Under the Rod & Apples of Gold, ed. Jay P. Green (Mulberry, IN: Sovereign Grace Publishers, 2001), 210.

[14]Brooks, Smooth Stones Taken from Ancient Brooks, 196.

[15]Brooks, The Mute Christian Under the Rod, 25.

[16]Richard Rushing, ed. Voices from the Past: Puritan Devotional Readings (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2009), 5.

[17]“We can trust Him too little, but we cannot trust God too much” (Norman P. Grubb, C. T. Studd: Cricketer & Pioneer [Fort Washington, PA: Christian Literature Crusade, 1982], 138).

[18]Horatius Bonar, ed. Words Old and New: Gems from the Christian Authorship of All Ages (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1994), 171.

[19]Arthur Bennet, ed. The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1975), 23.

[20]Rushing, ed. Voices from the Past, 277.

[21]Jodocus van Lodenstein, A Spiritual Appeal to Christ’s Bride, ed. Joel R. Beeke, trans. Bartel Elshout (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage, 2010), 123.

[22]Charles Spurgeon, “Simeon’s Swan Song,” in vol. 39 of The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, in The C. H. Spurgeon Collection [CD-ROM] (Rio, WI: AGES Software, 2001), 73.

[23]John Owen, The Glory of Christ, ed. R. J. K. Law (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1994), 2, 126.

[24]Richard Wurmbrand, In God’s Underground, eds. Charles Foley and Lynn Copeland (Bartlesville, OK: VOM Books, 2004), 71.

[25]Richard Wurmbrand, The Overcomers (Orlando, FL: Bridge-Logos, 2006), 58.

[26]Thomas Brooks, Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1968), 162.

[27]Brooks, The Mute Christian Under the Rod, 89.

[28]Brooks, Smooth Stones Taken from Ancient Brooks, 172.

[29]Ibid., 262.

[30]Brooks, Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices, 159-60.

[31]Charles Spurgeon, “Christ in You,” in vol. 29 of The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, in The C. H. Spurgeon Collection [CD-ROM] (Rio, WI: AGES Software, 2001), 353-54.

[32]Thomas Vincent, The True Christian’s Love to the Unseen Christ (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1993), 75-76.

[33]Samuel Rutherford, The Loveliness of Christ: Extracts from the Letters of Samuel Rutherford, ed. Ellen S. Lister (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2007), 86.

[34]As Corrie Ten Boom once said, “Hold everything in your hands lightly, otherwise it hurts when God pries your fingers open.” See the article “40 Powerful Quotes from Corrie Ten Boom” at http://www.crosswalk.com.

[35]Thomas Watson, “A Christian on Earth Still in Heaven,” in The Sermons of Thomas Watson, 2 vols. (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1990), 1:289.

[36]Brooks, Heaven on Earth, 122.

[37]Charles Spurgeon, “Christ the Glory of His People,” in vol. 14 of The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, in The C. H. Spurgeon Collection [CD-ROM] (Rio, WI: AGES Software, 2001), 571.

[38]Thomas Watson, The Christian’s Character: Showing the Privileges of a Believer, in The Sermons of Thomas Watson, 2 vols. (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1990), 1:127.

[39]I have written more on the fear of the Lord in my article “What Does It Mean to Fear the Lord?” at https://jamesattebury.wordpress.com.

Video Game Addiction and the Gospel – Chapter 5: Discovering the Beauty of God

We come now to the solution for video game addiction. In fact, it is the same solution for every addiction and sin. Every sin flows from the mistaken assumption that lasting satisfaction can be found in something in creation rather than God who made all things. That is why every sin is fundamentally an exchange where we trade God for something in this world that we think will make us happy. For Christians, addiction is always preceded by a lack of the spiritual disciplines of the Christian life as our love for this world eclipses our love for God. For those who are lost, the Bible teaches that they are morally unable to please God apart from his transforming power in the good news about Jesus Christ (John 8:34-36; Rom 8:5-9; Eph 2:1-10).

The Solution to What Ails You

The solution for addiction is not to be found in a three-step program, but in union and communion with the risen Christ as we worship God each day through the calling he has given us. But union with Christ first requires that we embrace him as our sufficient savior from sin. Paul writes in Romans 10:9, “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” To confess that Jesus is Lord means acknowledging that he is God and submitting to his lordship in faith and repentance when we ask him to save us. He came not only to save us from the punishment for our sins, but to radically change our life through the Holy Spirit so that we progressively no longer desire to sin. While this work will not be complete until eternity, we are called to imitate the sinless example of Jesus who denied himself for the sake of others.

Through the many quotations that follow, we will see that this solution to indwelling sin and addiction has been the consistent teaching of the Christian church. Instead of looking to modern psychology that does not have the gospel, we look to the biblical wisdom of the past. As Jeremiah tells us, “Thus says the LORD: ‘Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls’” (6:16). The wisest of the seventeenth century Puritans was Thomas Brooks who had an amazing understanding of the human heart and how to apply the Bible to every aspect of life. Brooks provides us with the golden key that unlocks the chest which contains the medicine for addiction:

“Sensual pleasures are but seeming and appearing pleasures, but the pains that attend them are true and real. He that delights in sensual pleasures, shall find his greatest pleasures become his bitterest pains. . . . Pleasures pass away as soon as they have wearied out the body, and leave it as a bunch of grapes whose juice has been pressed out. . . . Xerxes, being weary of all pleasures, promised rewards to the inventors of new pleasures, which being invented, he nevertheless remained unsatisfied. As a bee flieth from flower to flower and is not satisfied . . . men given up to sensual pleasures go from one pleasure to another, but can find no content, no satisfaction in their pleasures: “The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear with hearing” Eccles. i. 8. There is a curse of unsatisfiableness upon the creature. Honours cannot satisfy the ambitious man, nor riches the covetous man, nor pleasures the voluptuous man. Man cannot take off the weariness of one pleasure by another, for after a few evaporated minutes are spent in pleasures, the body presently fails the mind, and the mind the desire, and the desire the satisfaction, and all the man. Pleasures are Junos in the pursuit, and but clouds in the enjoyment. Pleasure is a beautiful harlot sitting in her chariot, whose four wheels are pride, gluttony, lust, and idleness. The two horses are prosperity and abundance, the two drivers are idleness and security, her attendants and followers are guilt, grief, late repentance, if any, and oft death and ruin. Many great men, and many strong men, and many rich men, and many hopeful men, and many young men, have come to their ends by her; but never any enjoyed full satisfaction and content in her. Ah! young men, young men, avoid this harlot, and come not near the door of her house. And as for lawful pleasures, let me only say this, it is your wisdom only to touch them, to taste them, and to use them, as Mithridates used poison, to fortify yourselves against casual extremities and maladies. . . . Augustine, before his conversion, could not tell how to live without those pleasures which he delighted much in, but when his nature was changed, and his heart graciously turned to the Lord, Oh! how sweet, saith he, is it to be without those sweet delights. Ah! young men, when once you come to experience the goodness and sweetness that is in the Lord, and in his word and ways, you will then sit down and grieve that you have spent more wine in the cup than oil in the lamp. There are no pleasures so delighting, so satisfying, so ravishing, so engaging, and so abiding as those that spring from union and communion with God, as those that flow from a sense of interest in God, and from an humble and holy walking with God.”[1]

Throughout the rest of this book, we will be examining the key themes that Brooks has raised for us and how the craving for more that always accompanies addiction must be replaced with the pursuit of God. All addictions are worship disorders. And really, addiction is just a fancy word for idolatry. We are always worshiping something, and if it is not God, it will be something in creation. You cannot not worship because you were made to worship. It is in your nature as one created in God’s image. Worship is your identity as a person and to turn from worshiping God is to become less than fully human.

John Newton, the author of the famous hymn “Amazing Grace,” was of the same mind as Brooks:

“The time is short; eternity is at the door; was there no other evil in these vain amusements than the loss of precious time (but alas! their name is legion), we have not leisure in our circumstances to regard them. And, blessed be God! we need them not. The gospel opens a source of purer, sweeter, and more substantial pleasures: we are invited to communion with God: we are called to share in the theme of angels, the songs of heaven; and the wonders of redeeming love are laid open to our view. The Lord himself is waiting to be gracious, waiting with promises and pardons in his hands. Well then may we bid adieu to the perishing pleasures of sin; well may we pity those who can find pleasures in those places and parties where he is shut out; where his name is only mentioned to be profaned; where his commandments are not only broken, but insulted; where sinners proclaim their shame, as in Sodom, and attempt not to hide it; where at best wickedness is wrapt up in a disguise of delicacy.”[2]

The solution for video game addiction is not simply telling those who are in bondage to it, “Stop playing games so much and grow up,” but to point them to Jesus Christ, the ideal man, and show them how to imitate his example. As we do this, the things of this world and its desires will grow strangely dim when we cultivate a deeper love for Christ and a desire to spend time with him in prayer, worship, and meditating on Scripture.[3]

The Expulsive Power of a New Affection

What we need most is a fundamental change in our desires.[4] We are called to crave for communion with God as the deer pants for water (Ps 42:1). Only the craving for God can drown out the craving for sin. What we love controls our desires. And what we desire controls our actions. Therefore, we need a new love to replace the idolatrous love for those things which enslave us. But for our love to be changed, we need a new heart with new affections and desires. It is only then that we can love what God loves and hate what God hates. Our love for God must outweigh our love for all other things. This love expresses itself in desiring to see God glorified in our life and the lives of others. We not only want our life to be changed, but for the lives of those around us to be changed as well. That means Christian counselors must deal with the underlying cause of the depression that leads to addiction.

The martyr Savonarola teaches us that there is a godly kind of withdrawal from the world:

“When any one begins to enjoy the Holy Spirit, he is glad to be alone, and immediately separates himself from other comforts and corporeal recreations, which would not be, if he did not feel within his heart greater consolations than those he refuses.”[5]

It is not withdrawing from others, but withdrawing from those things which might distract us from the most important thing. This supernatural desire is proof of the truthfulness of Christianity. As Thomas Watson noted, “The stars vanish when the sun appears.”[6] When the sun of righteousness appears in his glory to us, all other things are shown to be insignificant in comparison.

We are called to redirect our appetites for the glory of God. The Lord has given us desires for food, intimacy, entertainment, and sleep for our good and to point to our need of him. Each appetite is good within its respective realm. Fire in the fireplace is a good thing, but outside of it, fire destroys. It is the same with the appetites. Satan and temptation twist each of our appetites into idols which make us forget about God. We think we can find lasting joy and peace by indulging in food, sex, and games by abusing the good things God has given us. A good thing becomes a bad thing when it becomes a god thing.[7]

Because sinners do not know God, they turn the world into their god. As Brooks saw, “The main reason why many young men doat upon the world is, because they are not acquainted with a greater glory.”[8] That is why we can only deny ourselves sinful pleasures when we are taken up in love with Christ (Matt 16:24). Watson tells us the secret to self-denial:

“We shall never deny ourselves for Christ until we see a glory and a beauty in Him. Christ is all marrow and sweetness. He is better than life, estate, or heaven.”[9]

I believe the degree to which we enjoy God in this life will influence the degree to which we will enjoy him in eternity (Dan 12:3; Matt 6:20; Eph 2:7). Why would we want our eternal joy to be stolen over something as frivolous as a gaming addiction? We overcome this addiction by discovering something that is infinitely more beautiful than pixels on a screen and a narrative more captivating than any man-made story.

We flee addiction by removing everything from our life takes our affections off of Christ. John Piper explains how God’s desire for us to enjoy him is for our good:

“If God loves us the way the Bible says he does, then he would surely give us what is best for us. And what is best for us is himself. So if God loves us, God must give us God, for our enjoyment, and nothing less.”[10]

When God becomes our supreme desire, no sacrifice is too great for him.[11] Sin blinds us to the beauty of God. Because of sin, we live nearsighted and myopic lives that cannot see eternity.[12] Though we may profess to be Christians, we can live as practical atheists where the gospel has no connection to our daily life. We can end up living for today instead of investing in eternity, as if there are no treasures in heaven. Our indwelling sin hinders communion with God and lasting joy.[13] Is your life so empty and your view of God so low that you think you can fill it with something else besides him?

Our Never-Ending Quest

Everyone wants to be happy. Each of us want to live life to its fullest. But as Ezekiel Hopkins reminds us, true happiness can only be found in God:

“Our great desire is happiness, and our great folly is to think we can obtain it by the enjoyments of this world. This makes men pursue pleasures, hoard up riches, and court honours and promotions because they believe these can make them truly happy. But this is to seek the living among the dead. They are leaky cisterns that cannot hold living water. In our perverted fancy, we look upon them as stable, permanent, and satisfactory. We consider them as the goal when they should only be used by us in our pilgrimage. We expect much more from them than they can yield, and so the vanity is not so much in the object but in our affection for it. To enjoy something is to cleave to it in love for its own sake. This should only belong to God. We ought to use things of the world only that we might arrive at the Creator. We may use them for our benefit, but we must alone enjoy him. . . . Fancy and custom have conspired together to cheat us. The truth is, the world is much better in show than in substance. How vain is the world at the hour of death! Nor can these earthy pleasures free us from our cares and crosses. In him alone can be found true rest and satisfaction. Let us cast our cares and burdens upon him who promised to sustain us. Let us turn the stream of our desires heavenward, where alone we can find permanent and satisfactory good. Let us walk humbly with our God.”[14]

We are deceived by Satan and self-deceived by our sinful desires into thinking that anything in this world can give us lasting comfort. Hopkins continues:

“The god of this world has blinded man’s eyes and cast a strange mist before them so that they cannot discern what is very evident: namely the instability and vanity of all earthly enjoyments. Whatever God has made is good, but if it is considered the greatest good, it turns into vanity. It is vain to expect happiness and contentment from the world whose crosses are greater than its comforts. There are two seasons especially when the soul needs relief and comfort: when the conscience is troubled and in the hour of death. In each of these the world is vain and useless. Should the never-dying soul be neglected? Alas! Most busy themselves to heap up temporal riches. But this is giving the soul husks. Our Saviour brands the rich man a fool when he stuffed his barns with corn at the neglect of his soul. What folly it is to purchase a vain world at the loss of our precious souls! What great losers they are to gain the world, and then at last lose the world with their souls!”[15]

And how much more foolish this is when it is only a digital world that exists in our mind!

God must be the treasure of our heart before we can be satisfied. Everyone is chasing after a treasure. As Jesus said, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matt 6:21). If God is our treasure, then we can be content in any circumstance (Phil 4:11). Watson expresses the same truth: “The nearer the soul comes to God, who is the fountain of life and peace, the nearer it approacheth to happiness.”[16] But we not only crave happiness, we long for purpose, identity, community, and belonging. All sin flows out of the lie that these things can be found in something or someone else besides God.

By seeking rest where no rest can be found, we walk in darkness and end up destroying ourselves. Man has been cast out of paradise. Therefore, do not expect to find a paradise here on earth apart from God. Only in holiness is true happiness found. To be godly is to be like God who is perfectly happy. And he invites us to share in his happiness which consists in holiness or conformity to his image. God must be our all-consuming desire and treasure. Those who are lost have never experienced the life of God in their soul.[17]

Only God can bring lasting satisfaction because only he is infinite. Everything in creation is finite and therefore the satisfaction and joy they give can only be finite. As Brooks tells us, we were made for God:

“The whole world is circular, the heart of a man is triangular, and we know a circle cannot fill a triangle; yea, if it be not filled with the three persons of the Trinity, it will be filled with the world, the flesh, and the devil.”[18]

If there is no God, then man must find his satisfaction elsewhere. But he will have no peace within and fears without.[19] You will always be miserable until you surrender to Christ.

The great sin of our time is contentment without God.[20] This was the sin of the rich man in Luke 16 who was oblivious to his need of salvation. He wrongly assumed that his great riches were a sign of blessing from God and that the poor man outside his gate deserved his miserable estate because he was cursed by God. The rich man numbed his pain with food and pleasure while leaving the poor man to die.

But in eternity, we will see that outward prosperity is not necessarily a sign that God favors the rich, but only an expression of common grace before they are sent to hell. Rather, God’s favor rested upon the poor man because in his poverty he sought God. It is more difficult for those who are poor to be content without God because they have fewer things they can turn into idols. They are unsatisfied with this age and therefore can more easily look forward to the age to come. This is one reason why the majority of the early Christians were poor:

“For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God” (1 Corinthians 1:26-29).

But it is to those who are poor to whom the lure of addiction appeals most strongly because they are looking for another world in which they can be content. Because they cannot be content in this world, they will either flee to God and his kingdom or to one of their own making.

Pleasure can be a sweet poison. For the addict, what they desire will only make their situation worse. It is like a sick man who wants wine instead of medicine. It is a desperate attempt to find joy and satisfaction in a fictional world that only exists in their mind. But the gospel tells us that God’s glory and our desire for happiness are not at odds with each other. As Piper explains:

“The chief end of God is to glorify God and enjoy his glory forever. Since his glory is magnified most in the God-centered passions of his joyful people, God’s self-exaltation and our jubilation are one. The greatest news in all the world is that God’s ultimate aim to be glorified and man’s aim to be satisfied are not at odds.”[21]

This is the same desire which motivated the Puritans to pray:

“Help me never to expect any happiness from the world, but only in thee. Let me not think that I shall be more happy by living to myself, for I can only be happy if employed for thee, and if I desire to live in this world only to do and suffer what thou dost allot me. Teach me that if I do not live a life that satisfies thee, I shall not live a life that will satisfy myself.”[22]

True happiness is found in the forgiveness of sins and the peace of conscience which flows from it: “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin” (Rom 4:7-8). The Lord’s steadfast love is better than life (Ps 63:3). Fullness of joy is only obtainable in the presence of God (Ps 16:11; 21:6). It is a greater joy than having great riches (Ps 4:7). Only by delighting in the Lord can our hearts be satisfied (Ps 37:4). But sinners have instead forsaken God by turning this world into an idol (Jer 2:13).

Addiction and sin are inherently selfish, destructive, and narcissistic. Idleness steals our joy by taking from us the calling God has given us so that we can be satisfied in him. Our cry to God should be, “Give me joy, or I shall die” as Rachel cried out, “Give me children, or I shall die!” (Gen 30:1).

To find lasting peace, we must cut out everything sinful in our life that robs us of joy. Then, we must follow after Christ as we submit our will to his lordship. We find joy by telling others about the joy we have found in him. As David said, “Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed” (Ps 34:5). The world will know that we are different because we do not take delight in sin as they do. We have a hidden and secret source of joy. This joy should motivate us to live for him as Watson teaches:

“He who loves God is unable to find contentment in anything without him. Give a hypocrite corn and wine and though he pretends to love God, he is content without him. He who loves God hates that which separates him from God, and that is sin. You cannot love health without also hating poison, and you cannot love God without hating sin, which destroys your communion with him. If we have true love in our hearts for God we are grieved at the things that grieve him. Love is greatly grieved when it loses God’s sweet presence. Beg of God to give you a heart of love to him.”[23]

The Life of Faith

We now live by faith: “For we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor 5:7). It is a life begun, as Jonathan Edwards put it, by “a divine and supernatural light immediately imparted to the soul.”[24] This comes through the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit in the gospel message (1 Pet 1:23-25). We live in imitation of Christ by trusting God to provide for us as we work for his kingdom (Gal 2:20; 1 Cor 11:1). While we cannot build heaven on earth, we can experience communion with Christ who is in heaven. We believe by faith that in eternity future, God will be all-satisfying to us on that day. That gives us motivation to fight for joy every day.[25] We must begin heaven here through union with Christ or else we will never enter it at death.[26]

Idleness is dangerous because it leads to prayerlessness. As our life becomes consumed with entertainment, the worship of God is choked out. It’s hard to pray when your mind is consumed by entertainment. Prayer is how we express our faith in God and is a foretaste of heaven. That means true faith will motivate us to remove all competition for Christ in our life. With our abundance of wealth and the many different entertainment options we have access to, it’s all too easy to neglect what is most important in life. As Watson relates, people can be so focused on a gift that they forget about the giver: “It is sad when the husband sends his wife a jewel, and she so falls in love with the jewel that she forgets her husband.”[27] We forget about God when we turn his gifts into idols. But none of these things died for me.

Nothing in this world can give you lasting satisfaction or contentment. Watson expresses the same truth this way:

“If you do not love God, you will love something else, either the world or sin; and are those worthy of your love? . . . If the globe of the world were yours, it would not fill your soul. And will you set your love on that which will never give you contentment?”[28]

Brooks was in perfect agreement with him when he said, “A man may have enough of the world to sink him, but he can never have enough to satisfy him.”[29] The infinite desires of man can only be filled by the infinite and eternal God. The longer you rebel against him by trying to find happiness in this world which is passing away, the more you prove this to be true.

Christ invites us to communion with him. He is knocking on the door of the church and calling his people back to him to experience the love they had at first:

“For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me” (Revelation 3:17-20).

It is love for Christ that distinguishes true Christians from hypocrites. Those who have no love for him are cursed (1 Cor 16:22). As Watson explains, the best way to love ourselves is to love him: “And he is sure to dwell with God in heaven, that has God dwelling in his heart. So that to love God is the truest self-love; he that does not love God, does not love himself.”[30]

God offers us happiness in this life and eternal life in the age to come. Therefore, pray that God would replace the false joys of sinful pleasures with true joy and peace in Christ. We are called to set our minds on things above:

“If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry” (Colossians 3:1-5).

As Watson exclaimed, “Oh how sordid is it for him that hath his hope in heaven, to have his heart upon the earth!”[31]

C. S. Lewis once said, “The Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next.”[32] Because our hope is secure, that gives us confidence to take risks for Christ and his gospel. We do this by closely following those who follow the savior. David Brainerd was one such man who served God as an evangelist to the Native Americans. As he was dying of tuberculosis at the age of 29, he gave one of the most profound testimonies to the Christian faith ever uttered:

“And as I saw clearly the truth of those great doctrines, which are justly styled the doctrines of grace; so I saw with no less clearness, that the essence of religion consisted in the soul’s conformity to God, and acting above all selfish views, for his glory, longing to be for him, to live to him, and please and honour him in all things: and this from a clear view of his infinite excellency and worthiness in himself, to be loved, adored, worshipped, and served by all intelligent creatures. Thus I saw, that when a soul loves God with a supreme love, he therein acts like the blessed God himself, who most justly loves himself in that manner. So when God’s interest and his are become one, and he longs that God should be glorified, and rejoices to think that he is unchangeably possessed of the highest glory and blessedness, herein also he acts in conformity to God. In like manner, when the soul is fully resigned to, and rests satisfied and contented with, the divine will, here it is also conformed to God. I saw further, that as this divine temper, whereby the soul exalts God, and treads self in the dust, is wrought in the soul by God’s discovering his own glorious perfections in the face of Jesus Christ to it, by the special influences of the Holy Spirit, so he cannot but have regard to it, as his own work; and as it is his image in the soul, he cannot but take delight in it. Then I saw again, that if God should slight and reject his own moral image, he must needs deny himself; which he cannot do. And thus I saw the stability and infallibility of this religion; and that those who are truly possessed of it, have the most complete and satisfying evidence of their being interested in all the benefits of Christ’s redemption, having their hearts conformed to him; and that these, these only, are qualified for the employments and entertainments of God’s kingdom of glory; as none but these have any relish for the business of heaven, which is to ascribe glory to God, and not to themselves; and that God (though I would speak it with great reverence of his name and perfection) cannot, without denying himself, finally cast such away. . . . My heaven is to please God, and glorify him, and to give all to him, and to be wholly devoted to his glory: that is the heaven I long for; that is my religion, and that is my happiness, and always was ever since I suppose I had any true religion: and all those that are of that religion shall meet me in heaven. I do not go to heaven to be advanced, but to give honour to God. It is no matter where I shall be stationed in heaven, whether I have a high or low seat there; but to love, and please, and glorify God is all. Had I a thousand souls, if they were worth any thing, I would give them all to God; but I have nothing to give, when all is done. It is impossible for any rational creature to be happy without acting all for God: God himself could not make him happy any other way. I long to be in heaven, praising and glorifying God with the holy angels: all my desire is to glorify God. My heart goes out to the burying place; it seems to me a desirable place: but oh to glorify God! that is it; that is above all. It is a great comfort to me to think that I have done a little for God in the world: oh! it is but a very small matter; yet I have done a little; and I lament it that I have not done more for him. There is nothing in the world worth living for, but doing good and finishing God’s work, doing the work that Christ did. I see nothing else in the world that can yield any satisfaction, besides living to God, pleasing him, and doing his whole will.”[33]

His dying testimony, together with that of the Moravians, became the inspiration for the modern missionary movement and the work of William Carey who took the gospel to India.

The Spiritual Disciplines of the Christian Life

If the solution to addiction is communion with God, then how do we grow in our relationship with him? These are called the means of grace or the spiritual disciplines of the Christian life.[34] These include prayer, fasting, reading Scripture, meditating on God’s Word, singing hymns to God, family worship, active participation in a local church, listening to sermons, and fulfilling the calling God has given us. We live in a bookless generation where the internet has almost replaced the local library. And that’s a problem because God has given us his written Word in the form of a book. To be illiterate is to be ignorant of God’s special revelation to us.

If we truly love God and delight in him, we will want to spend time with him in prayer and worship. As Thomas Manton explains:

“Those who enjoy God are in pursuit of still more. They are always breathing after him, and desire to enjoy more communion with him. The wicked are always running from God and seek refuge away from his company. The whole tendency of our soul towards God is expressed by verbs of motion: running, our earnestness to enjoy God; and seeking, our diligence in the use of means. The great care of our soul is to find God, that he may direct, comfort, strengthen, sanctify, and teach us to sweetly enjoy his grace. If we are to find him, we will find him where he is to be found: in his Word, prayer, and in the assembly of his people. Enjoying fellowship with Christ is the goal of all our effort. To serve God is one thing, but to seek him is another. To serve God is to make him the object of worship, to seek God is to make him the end of worship.”[35]

We are transformed through the disciplines of the Christian life as we behold the glory of God: “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Cor 3:18). We see the glory of God when we look upon the face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor 4:6).

As we “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,” we grow in our happiness (2 Pet 3:18). Richard Sibbes explains the relationship between our happiness and our being transformed into the image of Christ:

“Man’s happiness stands partly in communion with God, and partly in his conformity and likeness to God. This conformity is shown as springing from communion – ‘We all behold the glory.’ Now, reconciled in Jesus Christ, that beholding works conformity.”[36]

Our hearts should long to sing praises of joy to the God who has rescued us from our sin (Ps 84:2). Heaven is the perfection of the Christian’s joy in this life. As we walk with God, we grow in our love for him. Jesus taught that if we love him, we will obey his commandments (John 14:15). True happiness comes through obedience to the Word of God. If we want heaven on earth now, it can only come through a close walking with God. This was the message Charles Spurgeon preached:

“For if heaven is to be with Christ, then the nearer we get to Christ here, the more we shall participate in that which makes the joy of heaven. If we want to taste heaven’s blessed dainties while here below, let us walk in unbroken fellowship with him – so we shall get two heavens, a little heaven below, and a boundless heaven above, when our turn shall come to go home.”[37]

We find satisfaction by putting to death those sins which lie closest to our heart. Every time you sin, you are calling God a liar with your body because you are trying to find lasting satisfaction in this world rather than in him. This is why Ecclesiastes ends with these words: “The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil” (12:13-14). Disobedience to the commands of God always leads to misery, fear of judgment, and a guilty conscience. But peace of conscience is found through confessing and forsaking our sin and turning in faith to the only one who can forgive us (Prov 28:13).

Can God Satisfy?

The Israelites doubted time and again that God could fill their appetites: “They tested God in their heart by demanding the food they craved. They spoke against God, saying, ‘Can God spread a table in the wilderness?’” (Ps 78:18-19). You might be wondering the same thing. Can God really satisfy me? He satisfies us through the true bread that came down from heaven (John 6:32). None who come to him leave hungry:

“Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out'” (John 6:35-37).

He is the living water who gives us himself so that we will never be thirsty again (John 4:14). He is the fulfillment of the call of Isaiah 55:1-3:

“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.”

But the addict can never be satisfied because he never has enough. Ecclesiastes 5:10 is a perfect picture of addiction: “He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income; this also is vanity.” He who loves sexual pleasure will never have enough. He who loves fame and fortune can never get enough attention. She who loves shopping can never buy enough. He who loves video game achievements will never have enough. Christ will never be all you need, until you realize he is all you have.[38] As Spurgeon once said, “You will never know the fullness of Christ until you know the emptiness of everything else but Christ!”[39] You do not truly love Christ if you love anything more than him.[40]

Do not be like Esau who traded his birthright for a bowl of soup. He was a man who was controlled by his appetites, both physical and sexual (Heb 12:16-17). This is why false teachers are described as having their god as their stomach (Phil 3:19). As Brooks explains, their faith was hypocritical because “the things of the world and their carnal relations had taken up so much room in their hearts and affections, that they had no stomach for heaven’s delicacies.”[41] This means we need to cultivate our appetite to enjoy that which is healthy instead of destructive. We do this by praying to God that he would open our eyes to the deceptive nature of sinful pleasures which deprive us of lasting joy:

“Convince me that I cannot be my own God, or make myself happy, nor my own Christ to restore my joy, nor my own Spirit to teach, guide, rule me. Help me to see that grace does this by providential affliction, for when my credit is good thou dost cast me lower, when riches are my idol thou dost wing them away, when pleasure is my all thou dost turn it into bitterness.”[42]

Sin is the most destructive force in the universe because it alienates us from God who is the source of all blessing and happiness. It is only when we see sin through the lens of the illuminating work of the Spirit that we come to hate it, not just because of the harm it brings, but because it is contrary to God’s nature (Ps 51:4). That is why, as Brooks reminds us, God must make “a separation between sin and peace, between sin and joy, between sin and assurance, between sin and the light of his countenance.”[43] Were it any other way, God would be giving approval to sin. And what good did your sin ever do you? (Rom 6:21). Its end is sorrow, misery, enslavement, fear, and death. Every time a Christian sins, he is grieving the Holy Spirit who dwells within him (Eph 4:30). And why would you want to grieve the only one who can make you happy? Your happiness and personal holiness are intimately tied together.

Do Not Be a Circassian Christian

Life is short. The addict and the faithful Christian both agree on this. But they each draw radically different conclusions from it. One says that we should live for the moment because we may not have tomorrow while the other says we should live for eternity. But some who call themselves Christians try to walk a middle road. Brooks tells us about such a group:

“The Circassians, a kind of mongrel Christians, are said to divide their life betwixt sin and devotion, dedicating their youth to rapine, and their old age to repentance.”[44]

This is the same attitude of many today and the driving force behind the debauchery of Mardi Gras. They think they can live like the devil while they are young because they always have tomorrow to repent. They are happy as long as they don’t go to hell and therefore only desire to do the bare minimum they think is required of them to go to heaven. But this is a strange combination of libertinism and legalism that is foreign to biblical Christianity.

The Apostle Paul would say to such people, “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you? – unless indeed you fail to meet the test!” (2 Cor 13:5). Not everyone who claims to be a Christian actually is one. Jesus will say to many on the day of judgment:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness'” (Matthew 7:21-23).

Those who are true Christians are marked out by their obedience to God (1 John 2:3-4). Being a member of a local church does not save you, but if you are saved, you will desire fellowship with other Christians (1 John 3:14). You cannot love the brothers and sisters of Christ if you are never with them in the local church. I encourage you to slowly read through 1 John and ask the Lord if you are truly saved in light of the teachings of this book. Then read the Gospel of John and look to Christ alone for your righteousness instead of thinking that you can earn or merit God’s favor (2 Cor 5:19-21; Phil 3:7-9). The only thing that can cover our sins is the blood of Christ (Eph 1:7; Heb 10:14; 1 John 1:7).

If God does not exist, then there is nothing inherently wrong with addiction or any other sinful behavior. Without God, no one can definitively say what is wrong and what is right. That’s why we need a lawgiver in order to have an objective basis for morality. While the law of God cannot save us, it shows us our sins and our need for a savior (Rom 3:20). But we not only need the Word of God to tell us how to live, we need an example to follow. And that example is Jesus Christ in whom we are called to trust.

Chapter 6

[1]Thomas Brooks, Apples of Gold, in A Mute Christian Under the Rod & Apples of Gold, ed. Jay P. Green (Mulberry, IN: Sovereign Grace Publishers, 2001), 159-60.

[2]John Newton, Cardiphonia; or, the Utterance of the Heart, in the Course of a Real Correspondence (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1857), 379.

[3]See the hymn “Turn Your Eyes upon Jesus” by Helen H. Lemmel.

[4]See the sermon “The Expulsive Power of a New Affection” by Thomas Chalmers at https://www.monergism.com.

[5]Horatius Bonar, ed. Words Old and New: Gems from the Christian Authorship of All Ages (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1994), 59.

[6]I. D. E. Thomas, The Golden Treasury of Puritan Quotations (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1977), 148.

[7]See the article “Identity in Creation” by Paul David Tripp at http://www.paultripp.com.

[8]Brooks, Apples of Gold,189.

[9]Thomas Watson, The Duty of Self-Denial and Ten Other Sermons (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 2001), 35.

[10]John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad! The Supremacy of God in Missions, 2^nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 225.

[11]Richard Wurmbrand, The Overcomers (Orlando, FL: Bridge-Logos, 2006), 191.

[12]Paul David Tripp, A Quest for More: Living for Something Bigger Than You (Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2007), 22.

[13]Thomas Brooks, The Unsearchable Riches of Christ, in The Works of Thomas Brooks, 6 vols., ed. Alexander B. Grosart (Edinburgh: John Greig and Son, 1866), 3:127.

[14]Richard Rushing, ed. Voices from the Past: Puritan Devotional Readings (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2009), 108.

[15]Ibid., 109.

[16]Thomas Watson, The Christian’s Character: Showing the Privileges of a Believer, in The Sermons of Thomas Watson, 2 vols. (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1990), 1:3.

[17]See the book The Life of God in the Soul of Man by Henry Scougal which is available at https://www.ccel.org.

[18]Brooks, Apples of Gold,189.

[19]See the hymn “Just as I Am” by Charlotte Elliott.

[20]Brownlow North, The Rich Man and Lazarus: A Practical Exposition of Luke 16:19-31 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1960), 43.

[21]Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad!, 231.

[22]Arthur Bennet, ed. The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1975), 304.

[23]Rushing, ed. Voices from the Past, 221.

[24]See the sermon “A Divine and Supernatural Light” by Jonathan Edwards at https://www.monergism.com.

[25]See the article “How Shall We Fight for Joy?” by John Piper at http://www.desiringgod.org.

[26]Thomas Watson, “A Christian on Earth Still in Heaven,” in The Sermons of Thomas Watson, 2 vols. (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1990), 1:287.

[27]Ibid., 1:285.

[28]Thomas Watson, All Things for Good (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1986), 92.

[29]Thomas Brooks, Smooth Stones Taken from Ancient Brooks, ed. Charles Spurgeon (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1996), 64.

[30]Watson, All Things for Good, 91.

[31]Watson, “A Christian on Earth Still in Heaven,” 1:287.

[32]C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, HarperCollins Edition (San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), 134.

[33]Jonathan Edwards, ed. David Brainerd: His Life and Diary (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1949), 352-53, 365-66.

[34]See the website of Donald Whitney at http://biblicalspirituality.org for a list of resources that will help you grow in grace.

[35]Rushing, ed. Voices from the Past, 122.

[36]Richard Sibbes, Glorious Freedom: The Excellency of the Gospel above the Law (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2000), 101.

[37]Charles Spurgeon, “For Ever with the Lord,” in vol. 19 of The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, in The C. H. Spurgeon Collection [CD-ROM] (Rio, WI: AGES Software, 2001), 708.

[38]Paraphrased from Corrie Ten Boom: “You can never learn that Christ is all you need, until Christ is all you have.” See the article “40 Powerful Quotes from Corrie Ten Boom” at http://www.crosswalk.com.

[39]Charles Spurgeon, “Thrice Happy Day!,” in vol. 54 of The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, in The C. H. Spurgeon Collection [CD-ROM] (Rio, WI: AGES Software, 2001), 4.

[40]Brooks, The Unsearchable Riches of Christ, 3:195.

[41]Thomas Brooks, The Secret Key to Heaven: The Vital Importance of Private Prayer (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2006), 96-97.

[42]Bennet, ed. The Valley of Vision, 167.

[43]Thomas Brooks, The Crown and Glory of Christianity, in The Works of Thomas Brooks, 6 vols., ed. Alexander B. Grosart (Edinburgh: John Greig and Son, 1866), 4:251.

[44]Brooks, Apples of Gold,148-49.

Video Game Addiction and the Gospel – Chapter 4: How Do Video Games Display the Glory of God?

The last two chapters have been rather dark. But they were necessary in order to peel back the curtain of video game addiction and expose its bankruptcy to satisfy. But are there any positive benefits to gaming? Can video games in moderation be reconciled with biblical Christian living? That is the question we will explore in this chapter.

What Is the Glory of God?

We say the word, but don’t really understand what it means. God’s glory is his worth or value which is infinite. The Hebrew word for glory is kavod which describes the weight of an object. The more a precious metal weighs when placed on a scale, the more valuable it is. God’s glory is closely associated with his radiance, magnificence, splendor, majesty, fame, and honor. To glorify God is to acknowledge his worth and worthiness to be praised in light of who he is and what he has done. When we worship God, we are not adding to his value, but recognizing it.

What we delight in most is what we worship because we praise that which brings us the most joy. As C. S. Lewis explains:

“I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. . . . The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is ‘to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’ But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.”[1]

We are commanded to do all things to display God’s worth to the world: “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor 10:31). We are called to display the value of God in everything we do, even in our entertainment. We are also called to avoid everything that diminishes his power to satisfy, either because it is inherently sinful, or because we have turned it into an idol. So, how do video games demonstrate this glory?

To Display Common Grace

Common grace describes the kindness and love God shows to all of creation, including those who are not Christians. Psalm 145:9 declares, “The LORD is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made.” His kindness is meant to lead us to repentance (Rom 2:4). He does not bring us into judgment the moment we sin, but is patient and merciful (2 Pet 3:9). God is kind to sinners by allowing them to experience pleasure before they are sent to hell for their sins. Though they never once lifted a finger to worship or honor him, God demonstrated his love for them through creation and his providence in their lives. But they responded to his kindness with ungratefulness (Luke 6:35). Some of them even pretended as if he didn’t exist (Rom 1:21).

Video games are an expression of common grace because they bring joy and happiness, even if it is a fading one. The pleasures of this life: marriage, sex, entertainment, and food are truly pleasurable. It is pointless to pretend as if they’re not. Ecclesiastes tells us to take delight in everything God has given us:

“There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? . . . So I saw that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his work, for that is his lot. Who can bring him to see what will be after him? . . . Go, eat your bread in joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do. Let your garments be always white. Let not oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun” (2:24-25; 3:22; 9:7-9).

Some Christians fight against temptation by telling themselves that sinful pleasures really aren’t pleasurable. But sinful pleasures are pleasurable for a time because they are a twisting of God’s original good design for creation which was made for man to enjoy. Instead, we should recognize that it is only a temporary pleasure which leads to a guilty conscience, misery, fear, pain, and shame. The desire to sin must be replaced by a desire for fellowship with Christ and finding satisfaction through the means he has provided. The Book of Proverbs tells the man who is tempted to have an affair:

“Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love. Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?” (5:18-20).

Christians who are married are commanded to engage in regular sexual activity to avoid the temptation to adultery (1 Cor 7:5). The mistake of asceticism is not only in going beyond the teachings of Scripture by binding the consciences of men to man-made rules (1 Cor 4:6), but by denying the goodness of the created order. The Apostle Paul writes:

“Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God. If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations – ‘Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch’ (referring to things that all perish as they are used) – according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh” (Colossians 2:18-23).

Fighting against temptation is not merely a matter of abstaining from sin, but practicing disciplines which give rise to a higher degree of pleasure than sin ever could. Sin and idolatry may initially be pleasurable, but they rob people of lasting joy and ultimately lead to death and hell. The preacher W. M. Taylor put it this way:

“The first stage of iniquity is riotous joy. We must not keep that out of view. There is a pleasure in it, of a sort; for if this were not so, men would not be found indulging in it at all. There must be some kind of exhilaration in the flowing bowl, or in the wild thrill of sensual gratification, or in the gains of dishonesty. In every sin there is something of riot. “Stolen waters are sweet,” just, perhaps, because they are stolen; but the sweetness does not last long. It turns to bitterness in the belly; for, see, as the next result, the waste which it occasions. It wastes money, it wastes health, it wears the body to decay; but that is not the worst. These things here are set forth as but the outward indications of the waste of the soul. And, in truth, what a blasting thing sin is on the human spirit! How many who, in their youth, gave high promise of mental greatness, are now reduced to the merest drivellers, unable either to speak or write save under the influence of opium or alcohol! There is nothing in iniquity that can give contentment to the spirit. . . . Oh! shall we never become wise? Shall we never learn that there is nothing but misery while we are away from God? Ye who are seeking after happiness in earthly things, forbear. Ye are pursuing a quest more visionary than that of the child, who sets out to catch the pillars of the many-coloured rainbow in the far horizon. Never, never can you obtain what you are seeking, save in God. Turn, then, and beseech Him to give you that which you desire.”[2]

To Reflect the Image of God

The image of God in man is a reflection of all of the ways that man is similar to God. The image of God in Genesis is defined primarily in terms of Adam’s rulership over creation as God’s representative on earth (Gen 1:26). We are called to imitate God as those made in his image (Eph 5:1). As God worked for six days and then rested, man was created to work and exercise dominion over the earth. Video game development is one of the ways that we display the creative talents God has given us. We create and build things because God is the builder of all things. Our innate desire to create is patterned after God’s work of creation. But unlike God, we do not have the ability to create out of nothing (Rom 4:17). As God not only created the earth, but the billions of galaxies in the universe, game design reflects this through its own world building.

The desire to explore is a fundamental part of what it means to be human. God has not only created the world, he made us to be the explorers of it. Exploration is a key part of game design and some games are built entirely around this concept. This innate desire to explore points to our need to explore who God is and enter into a relationship with him. Our greatest need is to know who God is so that we can be saved from ourselves.

But video games can become a sinful replacement for true work. Because we need work to be complete human beings, those who are not working or unsatisfied in their work can replace that work with a virtual one. We were created by God to be goal-oriented. By completing objectives and tasks in games, this can temporarily fill that void. The kind of work that players do in MMOs is surprisingly similar to the work people do in real life. This chore-based gaming has consumed the life of many people.[3]

Gaming also produces communities of people who have the same interests and values. These communities reflect a longing for family and fellowship. We all need social interaction and being deprived of this interaction can drive us mad. In the internet age, we live disconnected lives. Digital technology has both the potential to alienate us from those living closest to us and bring people together who otherwise never would have met. The concept of community also reflects who God is. The one true God exists as three distinct persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit who exist in eternal fellowship with one another (Matt 28:19; John 1:1-3; 17:5; Heb 1:3-12; 9:14). We have been created to have fellowship with God and one another. The potential danger of video games is that they can become a kind of pseudo-church that takes the place of the main community God has created us for.

To Point to A Greater Glory

God has placed within each of us a desire for eternity (Eccles 3:11). We don’t know when to stop. We are never content. Never is never enough. We know that we have been made for something greater than the life we now live.[4] It’s not fair that we are restrained by the shackles of this mortal body. We want to fly and explore the galaxy. There’s got to be more to life than this. We want to have it all and experience everything. Video games give us the ability to quench this desire by entering into another world where we are not bound by the limits of our dying body. Gaming, especially in virtual reality, is the closest thing we have to the holodeck from Star Trek.

The inability to fulfill our dreams is one reason why we live vicariously through others. Gaming is one way to live out our fantasies by doing things that we never could in real life. The popularity of open-world games such as Grand Theft Auto lies in the freedom to do whatever you want in a world that is similar enough to our own to be believable.[5] And people not only live vicariously through games, they live vicariously through watching others play games. This is why gaming montages have become so popular. The skill-gap of certain games is so high that only a small percentage of players can do great on a consistent basis in online multiplayer. This, in turn, creates an industry of tips and tricks videos that many gamers have turned into a full-time career.

We long to know that our lives matter to others. When we are gone, we want there to be evidence that we existed and made a difference in the world. That is why people write books so that they can speak for them long after they are gone (Heb 11:4). We want to be able to influence others after we are dead. Now, with the internet, what we put on it is there forever. Every article you write and video you upload to it has the potential to influence future generations. We yearn for transcendent meaning in life. We want our lives to have value. And remember, glory is an expression of value. Our realization that this life matters assumes that our lives have inherent dignity and value. But without God, how do we ground this dignity in something that is objective, unalienable, and unchanging which no government has the right to take away?

To Point to Our Need for a Savior

Every story has a hero. As Sgt. Johnson says in Halo 2, “Folks need heroes, Chief. To give ‘em hope.” We know that because this world is broken, we need a savior. We need to be rescued because we are not strong enough to save ourselves. While we would like to be the hero of our story, we can’t even save ourselves from our own addictions, fears, illnesses, and depression. A world without God as the hero would be a hopeless one indeed. Where God is rejected, the government takes his place. This is what we see in communist countries throughout history where the government and its leaders must be followed without question. If God does not give us identity, meaning, purpose, and value, then something else will.

Paul describes those who are not Christians as having “no hope and without God in the world” (Eph 2:12). This is because Jesus is the only way to God: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Jesus is the exclusive savior from sin because he alone died for sinners on the cross and rose again. No other religion provides a way to be reconciled to God which also upholds the justice of God since a just judge must punish sin (Rom 3:24-26). God is able to justify, or declare us righteous, because his justice was perfectly satisfied in the cross of Christ when he was punished in the place of all who trust in him.

To Show Us That Evil Really Exists

People don’t just need heroes, they need enemies as well. Every story has a conflict that requires resolution. The villain of the story serves as the embodiment of evil who causes the conflict that gets the story moving. Without a villain, there would be no need for a hero to save the day. A savior assumes something to be saved from. Only by asserting that evil exists can violent games justify having the player kill bad guys. This seemingly never-ending struggle between good and evil reminds us that evil is real. Many people believe that this world is an illusion and that sin and death are not real.[6] Postmodernists have been taught that everything is relative and that there is no basis for objective morality. But we can only come to this conclusion by pretending as if evil doesn’t exist.

But sometimes, the villain isn’t a person. The game That Dragon, Cancer tells the emotional true story of the child Joel who is dying from cancer. Playing through the game allows the player to feel the pain of his parents, but also their hope in Christ. Scripture calls death “the last enemy to be destroyed” which one day God will abolish from the earth (1 Cor 15:26; Rev 20:14). The Bible teaches that death is the result of sin which still dwells within us (Rom 6:23; 7:23-25). It is the evil inside of us that is our greatest enemy.[7]

To Prove the Legitimacy of Metanarratives

We live in the age of postmodernism. Jean-Francois Lyotard famously defined postmodernism as “incredulity toward metanarratives. . . . The narrative function is losing its functors, its great hero, its great dangers, its great voyages, its great goal.”[8] A metanarrative is an overarching story that gives meaning and purpose to life. We pass on our beliefs and values through story-telling. Some of them, like John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, are fictional, while others, such as the biographies of famous Christians like George Müller, are real. But in postmodernism, because there is no metanarrative, everything is relative because there is no one story we can point to that defines for us our identity and how we are to live.

We therefore create our own fictional metanarratives to replace the metanarrative of Scripture. But because we know the stories we create are not real, they cannot give us transcendent meaning. We are longing for a story that makes sense of the world. And this longing reflects God’s image in us that remains unsatisfied until we find this story. Our experience of nostalgia is telling us to look back to the past to find our answer. Games reflect the worldviews of those who make them. If they are made by Christians, they can reinforce the themes of Scripture and help those who are suffering.

To Prove That This World Cannot Satisfy

If games were truly satisfying, then you would only need to play one and then feel satisfaction for the rest of your life. But because they don’t satisfy, we constantly look forward to sequels and run from one game to the next seeking happiness in what can only be found in God. Every gamer who has beaten a great game has experienced this feeling of emptiness when the credits roll. This experience is designed by God to point you to him who alone can satisfy. Lewis said it best:

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing.”[9]

The Closest Comparison to Gaming in Scripture

While the Bible does not mention electronic entertainment of any kind, I believe the closest parallel to it in Scripture is drinking wine. Believe it or not, drinking wine is not a sin. Jesus turned water into wine (John 2:7-10) and was wrongly accused of being a drunkard because he drank wine (Matt 11:19). Paul told Timothy to drink a little wine for his digestion (1 Tim 5:23). However, becoming drunk with wine is a sin: “And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit” (Eph 5:18). Consuming alcohol becomes sinful when it leads to intoxication or becomes an addiction. It is the inability to distinguish between the two that leads to either asserting that drinking wine is inherently sinful or dismissing drunkenness as not that big a deal. The same inability is prevalent today in failing to distinguish between video games and video game addiction which results in either video games being outlawed altogether or the crisis of video game addiction is ignored.

In Christian ethics, just like Christian theology, the truth is often more nuanced than we are comfortable with. Walking along the path of truth is a delicate art and we can easily fall off one side or the other into heresy. Errors come in pairs of two.[10] Just as Newton’s third law of motion states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, Newton’s law of theology teaches that for every theological error, there is an equal and opposite error that overreacts to it.[11] We can become tempted to build a fence around the law in order to protect it by making our rules about what is not allowed equal to the authority of Scripture.

I try to abide by what is known as the “Billy Graham Rule.” This rule states that no man should ever be alone with a woman he is not related to in order to avoid the temptation to sexual immorality. If every person followed it in person and online, it would put an end to extramarital affairs. But it is an example of a fence around the law. Nowhere in Scripture does it command men to do this. In fact, Jesus flagrantly violated it in John 4:7-8 when he was alone with the woman at the well. Did I mention she was also sexually immoral? But Jesus was there because he knew his mission: to preach a message of hope and repentance to those who need it most. I also do not drink any alcohol, not because I believe it is inherently sinful, but because I do not want to take the risk of becoming drunk. We must never force on others the walls that we have built for ourselves which go beyond the teachings of Scripture (1 Cor 4:6).

Some people should apply a similar principle to certain forms of entertainment. For them, video games should be avoided because they are prone to turn it into an idol. But for others, they are not tempted to become addicted by it because they have their priorities straight. Some people should avoid watching sporting events because they would be tempted to turn rooting for their favorite team into a religion in competition with God. Some people should not have access to the internet or a smartphone. When anything in this world consumes our life or makes us neglect our calling, it becomes an idol. We should also be thinking about others in the lifestyle choices we make. As Paul tells us, “Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble” (1 Cor 8:13). If our actions are tempting others to sin, we must cease, even if that action is not sinful in itself.

If drinking alcohol is the closest comparison in Scripture to playing video games, working in the video game industry is comparable to working in the brewing industry. Some people will take what you make and turn it into an idol while others will enjoy your product in moderation without sinning. The difference between the two outcomes lies in the person who is consuming it. And according to Scripture, it is only Christians who have the ability to live a life that is pleasing to God because of the indwelling work of the Holy Spirit (Rom 8:7-9). How a person can go from being a rebel against God to having peace with him is what the gospel is all about and the focus of the rest of the book.

Chapter 5

[1]C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1958), 95-97.

[2]W. M. Taylor, “The Nature and Consequences of Sin,” in The Biblical Illustrator on Luke 15 available at http://biblehub.com.

[3]See the 2008 documentary Second Skin which tells the story of several MMORPG addicts.

[4]For an exploration of this theme, see Paul David Tripp, A Quest for More: Living for Something Bigger Than You (Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2007).

[5]For a similar analysis of the game, see the article “Grand Theft Auto IV” at http://www.critical-distance.com.

[6]An example of this is seen in the writings of Mary Baker Eddy who founded the religion of Christian Science. She was influenced by Eastern ideas such as the Hindu belief that the world is Māyā or an illusion where the world is not as it seems.

[7]See the video by Paul David Tripp “The Evil Inside of Me” at http://www.paultripp.com.

[8]Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapois, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), xxiii.

[9]C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, HarperCollins Edition (San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), 136-37.

[10]Ibid., 186.

[11]Laurent A. Cleenewerck, His Broken Body: Understanding and Healing the Schism between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches (Washington, DC.: Euclid University Consortium Press, 2007), 320.

Video Game Addiction and the Gospel – Chapter 3: Trapped in a Skinner Box

At its heart, video game addiction is driven by goal replacement. Instead of working hard to accomplish goals in real life because they seem impossible or outside of our control, we seek to fill this void with virtual goals that have no real-world benefit and consume our precious time. The video game industry is constantly looking for new ways to hook their customers and the psychology of the past is a fertile ground for new ideas.

What Hath Behaviorism to Do with Silicon Valley?

Behaviorism is a field of psychology that specializes in understanding how our conditioning influences the decisions we make. Behaviorism is best known for its iconic “Skinner box” or operant conditioning chamber designed to study the response of animals to different stimuli.[1] These experiments were motivated by the hypothesis that the behaviors of these animals could be controlled through positive and negative reinforcement. The box could be designed so that every time a rat pulls a lever, food comes out of the dispenser. Eventually, the rat learns how to do this and now has more food than he knows what to do with. But what happens when the box is changed so that it now takes five presses from the lever to get food? The rat will eventually adapt and learn how to press the lever more often. But what if the lever is turned off completely? The rat will keep on pushing the lever even though no food comes out because he has been conditioned to believe there is a causal relationship between the two. The rat is now an addict.

The same experiments are carried out on pigeons as well. A skilled scientist can train pigeons through reinforcement to think that turning around, ringing bells, and pecking at disks will cause a food slot to open. Is there any real purpose behind these experiments? Or maybe researchers just think it’s funny to see pigeons bobbing up and down because the animal thinks there is a necessary relationship between what they are doing and receiving food. The important takeaway from these experiments for understanding addiction is that people can be trained to believe there is a necessary causal relationship between their actions and receiving rewards. This is the same psychology that is used in slot machines. The attitude is, “If I just pull the lever enough times, I can win back all my money.” Rather than treating their time and money spent on these addictions as a sunk cost, they keep on pouring money down the drain.

Hence, game developers seek to reinforce positive behavior (spending as much time and money on the game as possible) and punish negative behavior (not playing their game). The longer you stay away from the game, the more your skills deteriorate making it harder to get back into it. If you want to be “fraggin’ like a pro,” you need to spend as much time playing it as a pro gamer. And the more you play, the better you become and the more satisfaction you receive as you move from being a noob to a veteran gamer. Gaming addicts have been conditioned by the constant in-game rewards they receive to believe that the more time they spend gaming, the higher the degree of pleasure they will receive. And when this causal relationship is broken, this creates gamer rage. Because the game no longer gives me the satisfaction I believe I deserve for spending all this time and money on it, it becomes my enemy and I go in search for a new idol that will bring me pleasure.

Not only have gamers been conditioned to believe that there is a causal relationship between games and pleasure, they are also being taught that the more difficult the game, the greater the sense of satisfaction they will receive when beating it. The harder the achievement, the greater the sense of accomplishment. And these goals are always obtainable because obtaining them is simply a matter of time. Even if you are not the most skilled gamer, you can eventually achieve them if you just put in enough time. This is one reason why skill-based ranking systems are being replaced by experience-based ones in online multiplayer.[2] Not everyone can be in the top 10% of the Bell Curve in terms of skill, but everyone can get a perfect score if they just spend enough time doing extra-credit assignments. Unlike the real world, in the world of gaming, everyone can be a winner if they just spend enough time at it. This sense of accomplishment then helps to numb the pain of being unable to achieve goals in real life that are based on skill.

What the addict really wants is to make time stop. This is why casinos don’t have clocks on the wall.[3] People want to forget about the problems of tomorrow and just enjoy the time they have now. By tuning out from the world, we can enter into a world of our own imagination that has no real existence except in our mind. If we are just biological machines, then who has the authority to tell me that my world of fantasy is less real than the one we live in now? This world could just be a simulation or an illusion. You may not even be real. But gaming addicts know that they cannot hide behind a virtual identity forever. One day we must face reality, and that thought is terrifying.

Over time, games cease to be challenging. So, to recreate the initial adrenaline rush we experienced when we first started playing, gamers create new challenges for themselves: beat the game without dying a single time, beat the game as fast as possible, or limit the weapons and tactics you can use. The game eventually becomes a job that replaces the one we have in real life. Gaming addicts do not want to leave the game they are playing, because the moment they do, they are reminded of the emptiness of their real life. When the virtual world replaces the real one, it can result in a neglect of personal hygiene: not shaving, showering, or exercising. Why does it matter whether or not I have shaved when I’m never going outside? Having to shave is a reminder that the real world is still real when I am forced to look at myself in the mirror. Why do I need to care for and love others when they don’t give me the same sense of satisfaction that I get from playing games?

In the land of video games, you always win. If you just put in enough time and money, you will eventually achieve victory. You never have to face permanent failure and you always have an extra life. But the same things you need to win in real life (time and money) are instead wasted in a virtual world. If addicts would just take all the time they spend consuming entertainment and instead invest it in working, learning, and applying for jobs, there would be far less unemployment and poverty among America’s youth. Like the drug “soma” in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, we are medicating ourselves out of existence with digital entertainment.

We have become overstimulated. The old games and pleasures no longer give us the same rush of excitement they once did. Instead, gaming has become a chore or replacement job that we feel obligated to do to retain our identity. Our hobby has turned into a job. This is the paradox of online multiplayer addiction: you must spend a great deal of time at it to be good enough to have fun and not get destroyed by other players, but the more time that is spent playing it, the more time it takes to get back to that initial rush of excitement when you first started playing because you are becoming desensitized to the pleasure of the game through overfamiliarity. Video games are an amazing diversion, but a cruel taskmaster. No gaming achievement can ever bring you lasting satisfaction. If it did, there would be no need to keep playing them.

Hunting for Whales

A “whale” in the language of video game development is a euphemism for a person who spends an inordinately large amount of money on in-game purchases.[4] These are not people who buy lots of different games, but those who spend incredible amounts of money within the game itself. Many of these whales are children who do not understand that they are spending real money.[5] This business model exploits the insecurities and addictive tendencies of certain gamers who feel like they need to spend money to achieve happiness. It is the same addiction that drives compulsive shoppers, except that you can actually wear shoes and clothing. By spending money in the game, they are able to beat it more easily or do better against other players. Free-to-play ends up becoming pay-to-win.[6]

This is made easier because the game uses a made-up currency instead of real dollars so you never realize how much you are spending. Casinos use the same trick, except that they allow you to convert their made-up currency back into dollars whereas games do not. To keep you hooked, these games progressively become more difficult so that the only way to continue making progress is by spending money. At first, the addict only spends a small amount convincing himself that this is all he will ever need to spend. But eventually, the spending becomes out of control as those small amounts add up over time.

Creating Heaven on Earth

The traditional model of retirement is that you work hard from childhood till you’re sixty, and then you get to retire and enjoy the rest of your life. But the youth of today know this is a raw deal. Why wait until you are old, frail, sick, and unattractive to enjoy life? They are instead getting their retirement now while they are young. They know that the best way to enjoy heaven on earth is to do so while they are still young, healthy, attractive, and sexually potent. And when they are old, the government will just take care of them. By that time, they will be someone else’s problem. Postmodernists have grown up believing that they are victims of a system over which they have no control. The only alternative is to rage against the machine and live for pleasure like there’s no tomorrow. Since I only have one life, I am going to use it to maximize the amount of happiness I can achieve.

They want to forget that we live in a fallen world, to pretend as if we will never die, and believe that we will always be able to play the next sequel of our favorite game. For video game addicts, gaming becomes the thing they live for. For others, it is drugs, sex, shopping, eating, gambling, the internet, their smartphone, or work. But God uses suffering as a means to wean us from our attachment to this world and look to him for lasting joy. In response, sinful man tries to create a heaven on earth where we can be content without God rather than embracing the redemptive reality to which suffering points.

Video games are an attempt to bring heaven down to earth and escape from the curse of the fall: to create nirvāṇa right here and right now.[7] If there is no future heaven to be gained and no hell to be avoided, then we should work to build heaven on earth. And that heaven doesn’t need to be one that corresponds to reality. In our world of fantasy, we can pretend as if there is no suffering, death, or lack of purpose. If this life is all there is, then there is no higher end than to maximize our pleasure. As the old Schlitz Beer commercial put it, “You only go around once, you gotta grab for all the gusto you can.” But the irony is that addiction only ends up making us more miserable.

Each game is like its own religion with followers and a redemptive story with a clear beginning but no end in sight so sequels can always be made. And you are the hero of this story who alone has the power to save the world. This is why the leading role for most games is a young white male so that the average gamer can read himself into the story. Just as Christians look forward to the second coming of Christ, gamers look forward to the great eschatological hope of the yearly Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) when all the new games are announced. These games will be our new saviors who will create in us such satisfaction that we will permanently forget about our misery. We wait expectantly for their arrival by listening to the stories of the chosen few in games media who were given the rare opportunity to sample these new drugs before their release. Their opinion helps the addict decide which new religion to adopt and which idols to buy.

Games allow people to forget about God and the things of religion. In the universe of gaming, there is no God except for the one we make for ourselves. It is difficult to pray or worship God while we are engaging in entertainment. This is one reason why Bible games always fail.[8] True religion draws our gaze upward to God while entertainment is self-focused. Every game tells a story. But the story of Scripture is offensive to the world because it calls them to repentance. People run to entertainment to avoid thinking about the ultimate questions of life. But there is no pleasure strong enough that can make you permanently forget about the pain of life.

Imagine a man who has everything. A beautiful wife, fancy car, big house, and great wealth and health. Why would he be tempted to become an addict? There’s no incentive for him to drown his sorrow in substance abuse because everything appears to be going great. But there are many wealthy people who are addicts because their great wealth enables them to purchase those addictions which the poor cannot afford. Now imagine a man whose wife has left him and has lost his job. The appeal of addicting and sinful pleasure is now so much stronger than when everything was going well. Video game addiction is appealing because it promises to create a fantasy world where all our problems can be forgotten. Addictions appeal most strongly to those who are poor and suffering.

Stranded on Pleasure Island

Video game addiction has often been called a form of “Peter Pan Syndrome.” That is, men refuse to grow up and take responsibility for their life. Rather than settling down and getting married, they continue to act like children by playing games past adolescence. While this criticism is valid in many cases, it assumes that video games are simply toys for children. The reality is that there are a wide variety of different games that appeal to people of all ages. We are all gamers now in one form or another. Gaming has become universal. Making fun of people in an attempt to get them to change will most likely only make them mad at you. I believe a better description for addiction is “Pleasure Island Syndrome” taken from Pinocchio.

Pleasure Island is a place that promises to fulfill your wildest fantasies. Youth are drawn to it by the promise that there are no restraints to keep them from doing whatever they want. It is a land where the moral taboos and rules of our parents don’t apply. Freed from moral restraint, they can indulge in every lust for pleasure and power that is forbidden to them. But over time, its inhabitants come to realize that they have been betrayed. By consuming the beastly feast of their unrestrained appetites, they become beasts themselves. They become what they worship (Ps 115:8). Thus, in a cruel twist of irony, by acting like animals, they become animals. By the time they realize what they have become, it is too late. And so it is with the way of an addict. By indulging in sinful rebellion, he becomes like a demon.

Gaming addicts are locked in a Skinner box on Pleasure Island and don’t know how to get out. The pleasure which promised freedom has become an enslaving idol without which they do not know how to live. While gaming promises pleasure, this can only last for so long before the feeling of emptiness returns. And when it does, they will be rudely awakened back into reality before being sucked down again. And no matter how many new games are played, the emptiness always returns. The fire never goes out.

While we want to flee pain, the digital content we consume is filled with it. As Richard Wurmbrand saw, “Societies that flee pain in all circumstances turn to horror movies and violence to compensate.”[9] We do not want to see pain and suffering in real life, but we strangely want to see an illusionary form of it in entertainment. Gaming provides the best way to experience this illusion. It’s like a magic trick that we know isn’t real, but pretend is anyway.[10] In magic, no one really gets sawn in two. In games, you don’t really save the world or get the girl. But the magic trick of gaming is far more impressive than any magician’s illusion because it results in millions of real people sitting for hours on end in front of digital screens. Because the illusion is so real, people are willing to forfeit large portions of their precious time. The entertainment industry has created a world where we are never bothered with thoughts of eternity and where the grim spectre of death is pushed to the back of our mind. There is no room for the gospel in a mind that is consumed with entertainment and the insatiable appetite for more. And how long a game can keep this illusion going is the mark of success.

Starving to Death

Our society is living on a binge diet of entertainment. We are trying to be healed, but don’t know what the problem is. As John Piper reminds us, “False comforts lead to artificial healing. But the truest diagnoses lead to the deepest cures.”[11] The false comfort of addiction is not our seeking after God, but our rejection of him. Addictive and enslaving behaviors are actually an expression of anger directed toward God because he is not satisfying our desires. But the problem is not with God, but with us. We are to blame for our sin, not God:

“Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God,’ for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. . . . You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (James 1:13-15; 4:2-4).

Many video game addicts know that they have a serious problem, but they don’t know what to do about it. So, they take radical action that only causes more harm. An extreme example of this is seen in the story of a man in China who cut off his own hand to cure his internet addiction.[12] But addiction is a problem of the heart, not the hand. Hacking off bodily limbs does not change our desires. The inability to commit a sin does not stop the desire for it. It is out of the heart that evil thoughts come (Matt 15:18-19). Some people, such as the church father Origen, have made a similar mistake by misunderstanding the words of Jesus in Matthew 5:28-30 and castrate themselves:

“But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.”

Jesus was not literally suggesting that we tear out our eyes with our own fingernails, but that we must take radical action to do away with the sinful desires that dwell within us. It is a form of metaphorical over-exaggeration for the sake of emphasis. If we had to choose between going to hell and cutting off our own limbs, then cutting off our limbs would be preferable because hell never ends. Not having access to the internet would be the modern equivalent of cutting off your hand.

Gamer Rage

There are many angry gamers out there. In fact, there has been an explosion of videos on YouTube of people raging at games from which they can derive no satisfaction. This is because the causal link between gaming and the release of dopamine has been broken contrary to how they have been conditioned by gaming to expect a constant stream of rewards. When their idols fail to bring them pleasure, the idol becomes an enemy. And woe to any game developer who releases a game that is broken, frustrating, or boring.

For gaming addicts, buying a game that doesn’t live up to their expectations is the equivalent of getting ripped off by a drug dealer who mixes the drug you want with dangerous chemicals. The final product is often not what was advertised.[13] The game that people thought would bring them happiness and joy has now become their enemy. The only way they can get satisfaction from it now is by tearing it down on the internet. Addicts also turn on their false gods in anger for the enslavement that addiction brings. When the blindfold is removed after the high runs out, the false god is seen for what it is until a new one comes out. When games fail to live up to expectations, the addict realizes that the god in which he trusted has betrayed him and taken his money. He is now left with only the old worn-out gods who have outlived their usefulness. This results in a temporary waking up out of the dream of fantasy which reminds him of his pain when he is forced to face reality.

Sinners become furious when their idols are taken away from them. Many parents have found this out the hard way. The sorrow from having one’s entertainment taken away can be parallel to the sadness of losing a loved one. Anger and grief flow out of them because part of them has just died. Their identity as a person was tied to their games and the pleasure derived from them. Without them, their life has become meaningless. But without a change of heart, idolaters will just choose new idols that may be even worse. We must choose God or else we will be exchanging one addiction for another.

Gamer rage also occurs in online multiplayer when players do poorly. They blame everything but themselves. Their poor performance was because of a bad connection, campers, cheaters, broken game design, or built-in randomness to make the noobs feel better about themselves. As it has been said, violent video games don’t kill people, rage caused by online lag kills people. This is why angry gamers will break controllers or put holes in walls as a way to cope with the anger they are feeling.

Father Simulators

Some video games have been called “father simulators” because they appeal to the fathering instincts of young men by putting little girls in danger. The plot of the story then revolves around protecting or rescuing this child or woman.[14] The Bible teaches that men are called to protect women and children (Exo 22:22; Deut 22:27; Prov 24:11; Jas 1:27). Husbands are called to provide for and lead their family in worship (Deut 6:6-7; Eph 6:4; 1 Tim 5:8). The trope of the damsel in distress has been a common theme in fiction because it speaks to what we inherently know is true of the calling of men. For those who are not fathers, these games provide the illusion of fatherhood and an opportunity to be the hero of the story. But after the credits roll, you realize that the woman you just spent so much time rescuing is not your wife or daughter.

Your princess is in another castle. If you are married, your wife and children need your time far more than any digital woman. If you are not married, you must be working for your future wife and children. By not doing so, you are risking never getting married. The out-of-control appetites that gaming addiction encourages is one reason why obesity is so prevalent among gaming addicts. A sedentary lifestyle in front of a digital screen for hours on end can be fatal. And once the game is over, you will either choose to play a new game to numb your pain or you will choose to work hard to overcome your struggles in real life. You cannot remain in a fantasy world forever.[15]

Killing God

A common theme found in Japanese games is that of killing God or deicide.[16] If the amount of satisfaction derived from a game is determined by how difficult the final boss is, then what boss could be more difficult to defeat than God? To give some examples of this, in the game Final Fantasy VI, one of the forms of the final boss is a statue of Jesus and Mary based on Michelangelo’s Pietà with a cross behind her. The final boss of Final Fantasy XIII-3 is God himself with another character from the game appearing to be hanging on a cross in front of the boss.[17] The main character, Lightning, tells him, “We don’t need God anymore.” In Final Fantasy XIII, the character Vanille tells us, “Miracles are things we make for ourselves. Here, and now.” As the critic Yahtzee Croshaw jokes, “A JRPG just isn’t a JRPG unless it ends with teenagers using the power of friendship to kill God.”[18]

The underlying message is that God cannot help us because he either does not exist or he is not on our side. We must therefore believe in ourselves. It is a message of empowerment that tells me, “I am the master of my fate, the captain of my soul.”[19] It tells the hikikomori of Japan that they must believe in themselves because they have the power to change their life. Without God, we must become God. We must become our own saviors because there is no God who can save us.

But this desire is a reflection of the fantasy of Satan. The devil wishes that he could kill God so that he can avoid being thrown into the lake of fire on the day of judgment (Rev 20:10). Mankind instinctively knows that God is angry with them for their sins and therefore we must take him out before the day of judgment. They would kill God if given the chance. Therefore, they fantasize about something they know they are powerless to do.

Entertainment is appealing to fallen man because it allows him to create a world where God does not exist and where they will never be called to account for their sins. This desire reflects an innate fear of God’s judgment because we love our sins too much to give them up. We know that it is insane to try to resist God, but we do so anyway. This desire to kill God also reflects a clash of worldviews. In Christianity, we need to be rescued from our sin by God himself and are powerless to save ourselves. But in Eastern religions, our greatest problem is a lack of knowledge and we have the power to better ourselves and be our own savior.

Now, here’s the ironic part: God already has been killed in the person of Jesus Christ in order to rescue people from their sins. We are saved from the wrath of God by the love of God.[20] You can’t kill God because he was already killed for sinners and has risen again never to die again (Rom 6:9). While the demons hate God because there is no salvation for them, salvation is now available to every man or woman who turns from sin and trusts in Christ. The death of Christ was not an accident, but part of God’s eternal plan (John 3:16; Acts 4:27-28). There is no greater demonstration of love than for a man to lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13). And why would you want to kill someone who has only shown kindness to you?

Chapter 4

[1]See the article “Skinner – Operant Conditioning” at http://www.simplypsychology.org.

[2]See the videos “The Truth about Skill Based Matchmaking in Call of Duty Advanced Warfare Multiplayer Gameplay” and “Advanced Warfare Vs Destiny (Destiny Advanced Warfare Comparison)” by BDobbinsFTW on YouTube for some great insights into the psychology of online multiplayer. See also the video “The Skinner Box – How Games Condition People to Play More” by Extra Credits.

[3]See the article “9 Tricks Casinos Use to Make You Spend More Money” at http://www.businessinsider.com.

[4]See the article “Chasing the Whale: Examining the Ethics of Free-to-Play Games” at http://www.gamasutra.com.

[5]See the story “Belgian Teen Spends $46,000 in Free-to-Play ‘Game of War: Fire Age’” at http://www.techtimes.com.

[6]See the article “This Is What Candy Crush Saga Does to Your Brain” at https://www.theguardian.com.

[7]This is a theme in the talks of Jesse Schell. See “The Secret Mechanisms” and “When Games Invade Real Life.”

[8]For some examples, see the video “Bible Games – Angry Video Game Nerd – Episode 17” on YouTube which contains a bit of vulgarity.

[9]Richard Wurmbrand, The Oracles of God (Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image, 1995), 117.

[10]See the talk by Randy Pitchford “Video Games Are Magic.”

[11]John Piper, When the Darkness Will Not Lift: Doing What We Can While We Wait for God – and Joy (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2006), 50.

[12]See the story “Chinese Teen Chops Hand Off to ‘Cure’ Internet Addiction” at http://www.telegraph.co.uk.

[13]See the video “If Video Game Commercials Were Honest – Honest Ads” by Cracked on YouTube.

[14]See the article “Lara Croft Attempted Rape Will Make Tomb Raider Players Want to ‘Protect’ Her” at http://www.eurogamer.net.

[15]See the video “Trans Woman Lives Her Life as a Six Year Old Girl” for an extreme example of believing that we have the ability to define our own reality.

[16]See the article “Killing God in Video Games” at http://www.huffingtonpost.com. For more extensive references, see the entry “Kill the God” at http://tvtropes.org.

[17]See the video “Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII – Bhunivelze Final Boss Fight (A Legend from Times Past)” on YouTube.

[18]As recorded in the entry for “Earthbound” at http://zeropunctuation.wikia.com.

[19]William Ernest Henley, “Invictus.”

[20]See the article “Seven Theses on Penal Substitution” by Douglas Wilson at https://dougwils.com.

Video Game Addiction and the Gospel – Chapter 2: Numbing the Pain

Addiction is man’s failed attempt to build heaven on earth. Because, let’s face it, this world is broken. It is filled with death, suffering, disease, aging, accidents, poverty, famine, natural disasters, hopelessness, depression, suicide, cancer, unemployment, discouragement, failed relationships, cheating spouses, failing grades, terrible bosses, dead-end jobs, rush-hour traffic, oppressive taxes, debt, insurance companies, war, terrorist attacks, slavery, evil governments, criminals, gambling, stealing, substance abuse, economic crashes, homelessness, and obesity. We know inherently that this was not the way it was meant to be. We were made for so much more than this. The evil that exists in the world is caused by man’s rebellion against God and his perfect law. We are broken because of sin and are born into a world at war with God. We turn to idols in a fallen world thinking that they can bring us lasting satisfaction and joy when only God can. Addiction is a coping mechanism to numb the pain of life and the consequences of our sins rather than repenting of them.

At its heart, addiction is an eschatological problem. Eschatology is the Christian doctrine of the future and the second coming of Christ. People fall into addiction because they believe they have no future, no hope, no purpose, no meaning in life, no friends, no family, and nothing worth living for except the release of the next high. No child ever wakes up and says to himself, “I want to become a drug addict when I grow up.” Rather, addiction develops over time as a response to the pain of life and as a way to find lasting satisfaction. As C. S. Lewis observed, human history is “the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”[1] The first step to recovery is to admit that you have a problem and stop trying to find something apart from God that will give you perfect happiness.

Living as a Hikikomori

A hikikomori is a person who withdraws from the rest of the world and isolates himself from others. There are thousands of hikikomori living in Japan who are paralyzed by fear of the future. They choose to stay indoors because of the anxiety of meeting others, facing failure, working at a job, or going to school. We live in a world where the youth are stressed out about the future and cannot cope with the heavy demands and expectations that are required of them. Given the diminishing prospects of finding a good job, they give up ever trying to find one. They believe their condition is hopeless and that it is futile to even try. For those who do try, they often take extreme measures to ensure success such as studying while hooked up to IVs to help their concentration.[2] Their identity is tied to their success as a student and failure is not an option.

But what happens when you do fail? If your identity as a person is determined by your grades and job prospects, then failing in them results in hopeless depression. This is why many teenagers commit suicide because they believe their life is a failure because they do not meet the arbitrary standards that have been placed on them.[3] Others, instead of killing themselves, withdraw from society and become hikikomori. They may still be alive, but they are dead to the world. Video game addiction is often associated with this withdrawal because it gives them a sense of satisfaction that they cannot get from the real world which they believe has rejected them.

I know firsthand what this feels like. After graduating from seminary, I was paralyzed by the fear of never being able to find a ministry position because I am not married. The competition for pastoral positions is extremely competitive with the average church going through eighty resumes over the period of eight months before finding a pastor. Why would any church ever hire me when there are multitudes of people with more experience than me who are married? If two pastoral candidates are equally qualified and one is married and the other is not, the one who is married is almost always going to get the job. So many pastors have fallen into sexual immorality that singleness is seen as too great a risk for churches to take.

Even after I knew I wanted to write a book on video game addiction, I have been rejected many times because I am not married. Two weeks before I was scheduled to preach in view of a call at a church in Kansas, the church voted to reject my candidacy because I am not married. Even though they did not know me personally, they were afraid that I could not handle myself appropriately around the single women of their community.

When I was in college, a professor once said to me after I told her that I wanted to go into the ministry, “Well, you’re going to be as poor as a church mouse aren’t you.” And here I was, without a job and living in an apartment with cockroaches despite my amazing academic achievements. Before I was called to preach to others, I wanted to be a medical doctor. Imagine how much money I could be making and how much I could give away to support world missions! In my sinfulness, I was bitter toward God and frustrated with myself which only made me more unhappy, anxious, and depressed. This created in me a fear of godly men for my laziness and lack of love for others. I did not want to be rebuked for my sin and did not believe that anyone could help me.

My depression because of my circumstances displayed an incredible lack of trust in God. The irony here is that I was a strong believer in the sovereignty of God over all things. If God had called me into ministry, he would provide a way for me and it was my obligation to pursue the use of means to accomplish that end. God’s sovereignty, rightly understood, is one of the greatest blessings for the Christian. I should have sought out the wisdom and counsel of others instead of isolating myself and listening to the lies of Satan that kept me depressed and without hope for change. But today, I am a doctor of souls as I serve as a missionary and pastor in Nevada. In comparison to others, I may be as poor as a church mouse, but I have become rich beyond all splendor in Christ.

The Allure of Video Game Addiction

And here’s where video game addiction comes in: gaming provided an outlet for me to achieve a temporary sense of satisfaction in spite of circumstances that I believed were beyond my control. I could not control what search committees and employers thought of me, but I could control my destiny in the games I played. Completing achievements, increasing my gamerscore, and beating games on the hardest difficulty temporarily filled the void in my soul that longed for satisfaction and identity. The release of dopamine that corresponded with accomplishing goals in the games I was playing numbed the pain of my lack of fulfillment.

Video games gave me an identity with a unique gamertag and virtual trophies for which I could be proud. But addiction to video games is a vicious cycle: the joy caused by the release of dopamine wears off and the addict must go in search of new games to play in a vain attempt to find lasting satisfaction. This makes gaming an expensive hobby because in order to play the best games, you must own every game console since each console has games that are exclusive to it. Every addiction has its price and some are more expensive than others. The pleasure that comes from drugs is so powerful that people are willing to blow thousands of dollars on them in a single day. All sin is irrational and self-destructive. The drugs that promise us pleasure end up killing us or leaving us empty. While video game addiction may not be as expensive as drug addiction, it kills time which is the most valuable thing we have.

Video Games Save Lives

One night when I was staying up late playing Gears of War 2, I received a message from one of my friends on Xbox Live telling me that he was going to kill himself because his girlfriend had broken up with him and that there was no point in keeping him on my friends list. In a state of panic, I sent him a message telling him that I wanted to talk. He replied and I gave him a listening ear as he told me his story. His girlfriend had told him to “kill himself” and he decided to do it out of spite as a way to get back at her. This woman had been his life and now he didn’t know how he could live without her. I told him that one day he would look back on this moment and laugh at how silly the idea of killing himself was when there are so many other women out there. I reminded him of all the people who loved him, warned him of hell, told him about Jesus, and instructed him to contact a Christian pastor who could help him. At the end of the conversation, he told me that he was not going to kill himself and we have played together many times since that day.

But here’s the thing, if I had not been addicted to video games at that moment, I would have been asleep because gaming was destroying my sleeping schedule. If I had not been playing video games at that time, my friend might be dead now. Does that mean video game addiction is a good thing? No, it means that even in the midst of my sin God still wanted to use me. We cannot comprehend the providence of God and are called to be faithful to the revealed will of God in Scripture. It is true that if I had never fallen into video game addiction this book would not exist, but that is no excuse for my sin. The same is true for others who have overcome their addictions and are using their experience to help others who are in bondage to the same sins they once were.

Video Games and Depression

The relationship between video games and depression is paradoxical. On the one hand, there are many testimonies from people who have overcome depression because of video games. Gaming gave them confidence to meet others, conquer challenges in real life, and do hard things. On the other hand, video game addiction can exacerbate the depression by allowing people to ignore the root cause of the depression. Video games both attract people who are depressed and cause depression for those who become addicted to them.[4]

We see a similar phenomenon in the explosion of adult coloring books. Entertainment allows people to take the focus off their problems and forget about the pain of life. While consuming these fun activities, they can empty their minds and not worry about tomorrow. But we are not called to forget about our pain, but to bring our pain and suffering to God in prayer (Ps 50:15). He alone can take the burden off our back and give us purpose and meaning in life. Entertainment cannot give us lasting satisfaction because we must go back to it again and again after the high wears off.

And people are not just addicted to video games, they are addicted to breaking news about new games that are coming out. When a new game is announced, game forums and comment sections go crazy in anticipation of playing it. But when the game finally comes out, it rarely lives up to the hype and expectations surrounding it. After the game has been fully consumed and all the achievements have been completed, a pervading feeling of emptiness comes over the addict. Then people complain about the game and reminisce in the nostalgia of the previous games in the franchise and how they were so much better than the new one (Eccles 7:10).[5]

The Shame of Video Game Addiction

Video game addiction brings with it a unique form of shame. I do not believe there is anything shameful in video games themselves, but gaming is shameful when it becomes an obsession and interferes with real-world responsibilities. Gaming accomplishments, whether they be virtual or real, are not worth sacrificing your family or job for. Video game achievements can’t be put on a résumé unless you are applying to be a video game reviewer. Why should something so trivial consume your life?

There is an awkwardness when adults play video games because we think that video games are just toys for children. It would be awkward to see a thirty-year-old playing with toys designed for toddlers for hours on end. When children play games that are made for them, there is no shame in it. Gaming has evolved beyond being toys for children and now games are made specifically for people who do not have the time they once had to have their life consumed by them. This can promote a kind of extended adolescence where the maturation of the content in the games is designed to blunt the force of the awkwardness that comes from adults playing them for extended periods of time.

But Christians are called to be mature in their faith and conduct. As Paul says, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways” (1 Cor 13:11). As mature men and women, we do not have the time to waste our lives by indulging in entertainment that takes our focus off the calling we have been given by God. If we are seeking to find our treasure, joy, and happiness in any form of entertainment, we have made our pleasure an idol that we must turn from in repentance. All sin brings with it shame, guilt, and fear. And each type of sin has a unique manifestation of these three consequences of sin.

Jesus perfectly embodied what it means to be a man and demonstrated true headship by serving others and laying down his life to provide eternal life for all who follow him. Jesus made provision for his bride by his death and we as men are called to provide for others by working hard and dying to our own self-interests. We are called to deny ourselves and follow after Christ who served others gladly in perfect obedience to his Father (Matt 16:24). If that means we have to put away video games to focus on providing for and loving our family, then so be it.

God has created us to work. Through our labor, we accomplish goals and find satisfaction in using our gifts to fulfill the calling God has given us. We are therefore miserable unless we are actively working to fulfill the calling God has given to us. To do otherwise is to live contrary to the purpose for which we were made. Living outside of God’s purpose for us can never bring lasting joy or satisfaction. When we are unable or unwilling to work, we create replacement callings to numb the misery we are experiencing from not working to provide for ourselves. And even if we are working, if our work is not satisfying to us, video games offer the promise of satisfaction through completing artificial tasks and challenges that we make for ourselves. In the land of video games, we can be our own boss, set our own schedule, and choose for ourselves which challenges to tackle to maximize that sense of accomplishment we so desperately crave.

A Real Drug Addiction

I have learned much about addiction from the time I have spent preaching the gospel to homeless men and women in Houston, TX. Contrary to popular belief, most homeless people who are drug addicts did not become homeless because of a drug addiction, but they became drug addicts after becoming homeless to numb the pain of their seemingly hopeless condition. It is the same with mental illness. It is not so much that people become homeless because of mental illness, but that they develop mental illnesses because of the horrible condition they find themselves in. The drugs and mental illness are a result of a loss of purpose and identity. And the same was true with me except that I replaced drugs with compulsive gaming.

The difference was I didn’t realize that I was suffering from a drug addiction. The dopamine released from accomplishing goals in gaming was my drug to fill the emptiness I was experiencing. But the lack of lasting satisfaction only fueled a greater addiction for playing more games. The wide variety of games to choose from is like the variety found in the different types of drugs you can buy. Each gamer has a different taste in what games bring him the highest release of dopamine. Discovering which game franchises and genres bring the most satisfaction is part of the draw of video game addiction. When you get bored of one type of game, you can just move on to another. By constantly alternating between games, it is possible to never get bored.

Our society is medicating itself to death and each addict has his own drug of choice. Pharmaceutical companies are making a killing off selling antidepressants that never address the real reason behind the depression.[6] The thing about pain numbing is that there is no incentive to try it if everything in your life is going great. But when hardship comes, our real self is exposed. How we respond to adversity reveals the true condition of our heart. Will we flee from God to drugs or will we flee from sin to God? All addiction is sinful because it is enslaving and controlling. To be enslaved by anything is sinful in God’s sight (1 Cor 6:12). Addiction is a self-inflicted wound that can only bring us harm.[7] As Jeffrey D. Johnson elaborates:

“We have traded hope for despondency, life for death, meaning for emptiness, truth for nihilism, love for selfishness, and God for a bowl of Esau’s soup. But the exchange cost us everything. We wanted to be left alone, and now we have discovered the desolation of our own isolation. We were naïve to think we could travel alone and not feel lonely and miserable when we finally arrived at our destination. But here we are – addicted to our psychotropic, antidepressant medications. . . . With God pushed aside, external values and meaning are pushed aside as well. How to live and what to live for are not questions that have external answers. Mankind is left alone to discover or create these answers. ‘If God is dead,’ then, Muggeridge concluded, ‘somebody is going to have to take his pace. It will be megalomania or erotomania, the drive for power or the drive for pleasure.'”[8]

Video games provide the illusion of power and pleasure. Unlike passive forms of entertainment like movies, television, and music, I am in control of the gaming experience. This is even more true in competitive multiplayer where I have complete control of my character. The end of the story has not been written yet. Because this is my story, I have the power to decide my own fate. But when this happens, human dignity suffers as well because this addiction takes the place of God. And without God, there can be no image of God and thus no basis for human dignity. The real world is replaced by a virtual one which seems even more real than the one we live in now. The people we play against online are not seen as real people, but only exist for our satisfaction when we get a killing spree on them. It is no coincidence that B. F. Skinner, whose psychology has been hugely influential on the gaming industry, also wrote a book called Beyond Freedom and Dignity where he makes the case that we are biological machines whose behaviors are determined by our conditioning.

The Purpose for Our Pain

Pain and suffering are the result of the fall of man into sin. But pain is also part of the providence of God because he is planning to bring a greater good out of the pain of this world. Christians believe by faith that God has a good purpose for the suffering of this world and that one day he will do away with all suffering and evil when Christ returns. The mistake of the “problem of evil” as used against Christian theism is in demanding that God must abolish all evil right now instead of allowing him to do it in his timing.[9] The Bible teaches that both good and bad come from God (Lam 3:37-38). God “works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Eph 1:11). Christians know “that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Rom 8:28). If suffering and death had never existed, then Jesus never could have been crucified for sinners. And the cross of Christ is the eternal plan of God and the theme of heaven and earth (Eph 1:3-7; 3:11; 1 Pet 1:20; Rev 5:9).

God uses suffering to test us and grow our faith in him. As Job was tested and came out with an even greater faith in God, we are called to imitate his faith in the midst of suffering. After the death of his children and the destruction of his property, he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD” (Job 1:21). As the Puritan Thomas Brooks noted, “If God’s hand be not seen in the affliction, the heart will do nothing but fret and rage under affliction.”[10] God uses suffering as a means to discipline us for our good that we may share in his holiness (Heb 12:10). The testing of our faith in suffering is a means God uses to grow our faith in him (Jas 1:2-4; 1 Pet 1:6-7). In the midst of your suffering, remember that this life is the closest unbelievers will ever get to heaven, and the closest Christians will ever get to hell.[11] The addict is getting his heaven on earth now while the Christian looks forward to heaven while denying himself sinful pleasures.

Suffering exists to remind us that we live in a fallen and broken world (Job 36:15). As Lewis says in The Problem of Pain, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”[12] Every death points to the evil of sin. But it is not just this world that is broken, we are broken by our own sin. We must be weaned from the world and its pleasures so that we can take greater pleasure in worshiping God and working to build his kingdom. Because affliction is a tool used by God to wean us from our love for this world that is passing away, those who are in rebellion against God try to numb this pain through sinful pleasure rather than using it as a means to see their need of salvation. The world seeks to silence the voice of God in suffering instead of putting sin to death by trusting in Christ.

Affliction teaches us that this word cannot satisfy. We respond to suffering by either running to the kingdom of Christ or by trying to escape into another one of our own making. In this fictional world of fantasy and pleasure, we never have to confront the evil that is in us. But the truth is there is more evil in the least sin than the greatest affliction (Job 36:21).[13] Suffering and pain should drive us to change. With David, we should say, “It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes” (Ps 119:71). The pain you are experiencing may be the result of your sinful decisions. Without this pain, you would have no motivation to change. But the pain you are experiencing now is not the pain you deserve.[14] Each of us deserve to be in hell right now for our sins because we have sinned against an infinitely holy God (Rom 3:23). The pain you are experiencing could be so much worse. And by sinning in response to your suffering, you will only make your situation worse. As Brooks explains:

“For by attempting to sin yourselves out of your trouble, you will sin yourself into many troubles, as Jonah and Jacob did; and by labouring to sin yourselves out of less troubles, you will sin yourselves into greater troubles, as Saul did; and by endeavouring to sin yourselves from under outward troubles, you will sin yourselves under inward troubles.”[15]

Afflictions give rise to temptation. They are an occasion to doubt the promises of God. By sinning, you are attempting to get back at God for not giving you what you think you deserve. Emotional pain, mental illness, and depression are often the result of turning from God and trying to live independently of him. They are the consequences of our rebellion against God which result in fear of judgment for our sin. That is why we must look to Christ in faith believing that he has perfectly satisfied the justice and wrath of God for all who trust in him. We do not need to fear God or other Christians or excuse or lie about our sin because it has been dealt with at the cross. We are crucified rebels. His death was our death and his life is our life. You may feel that you are “weary of living, and yet afraid of dying.”[16] But in Christ, we have more than enough hope because he gives us the strength to face tomorrow (Rom 15:13).

This fallen world is not our home. And we glorify God by yearning for the one to come in which there will be no more pain or sadness (Rev 21:4). But the pain you experience now is an opportunity to put to death those secret sins which lie closest to you. Seek deliverance for these sins from the one who has overcome death. When we compare the pleasure of sin to the glory of Christ, the deceptive allure of sin is seen for what it truly is. The Christian world is filled with many testimonies from those who have come out of the bondage to sin, and I pray that your voice will be one of them.[17] In the next chapter, we will look at why video game addiction is so difficult to overcome.

Chapter 3

[1]C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, HarperCollins Edition (San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), 49.

[2]See the story “Chinese Students Use IV Amino Acids to Study for High-Stakes Tests” at https://www.washingtonpost.com.

[3]See the article “Why Do So Many Japanese Schoolchildren Kill Themselves?” at http://www.newsweek.com.

[4]For an example of this, see the video “Draw My Life” by Boogie2988 on YouTube.

[5]This phenomenon is known as the Call of Duty cycle: 1. Go crazy over how good the new CoD is; 2. Enjoy the game; 3. Hate the game like everybody else; 4. Say that the older game is now the best game; 5. Go crazy about the next CoD trailer.

[6]See the video “If Antidepressant Commercials Were Honest – Honest Ads” by Cracked on YouTube.

[7]For an illustration of this, see the story “Doctors Remove 40 Knives from Man’s Stomach in India” at http://www.cnn.com.

[8]Jeffrey D. Johnson, The Absurdity of Unbelief: A Worldview Apologetic of the Christian Faith (Conway, AR: Free Grace Press, 2016), 198-99, 205.

[9]For the best treatment of the problem of evil, see Randy Alcorn, If God Is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil (Colorado Springs, CO: Multnomah Books, 2009).

[10]Thomas Brooks, The Mute Christian Under the Rod, in A Mute Christian Under the Rod & Apples of Gold, ed. Jay P. Green (Mulberry, IN: Sovereign Grace Publishers, 2001), 19.

[11]See the article “Perspectives for Those Who Are Suffering and Feel They’re Going Through Hell” by Randy Alcorn at http://www.epm.org.

[12]C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, HarperCollins Edition (San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), 91.

[13]Brooks, The Mute Christian Under the Rod, 39.

[14]Ibid., 49.

[15]Ibid., 44.

[16]Thomas Brooks, Heaven on Earth: A Treatise on Christian Assurance (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1961), 311.

[17]For some examples of testimonies from those who have been freed from the bondage of sin, see the videos “Why I Am a Christian” by David Wood, “The Plot: Ninja Turtle/Mortal Kombat Star Gets Saved” by Jeff Durbin, and “A Liar and a Coward” by Paul Washer.

James Attebury

Christian Theology and Apologetics

Category: Video Game Addiction and the Gospel