Chess and Checkers

Our vision starts as a game of checkers, we see life often as only having a limited number of moves, one team against the other. We can only jump over the other piece and move forward. On the other hand, we can become kings or queens. And only then can we move anyway and where we desire.

However, God himself plays chess. He sees all the pieces and how they move, He plays against the adversary. Although not equals in power, God plays with pieces that are live, pieces that make their own decisions. God often recommends actions and moves to us, and he sees the board and all the other pieces on it. However, in our vision, we see one way of moving.

Often, I will say, in human life, we think about truth and love. Some people focus on truth, others focus on love and even then people have their own experiences of what these are and how they should be implemented in life. They see the world as a checker’s board. People focus on the truth and morality of the situation, yet they view it with one type of movement. This can be the same with that of the Pharisees, “we must keep up the standard” We must follow the Torah word by word, and fill in the blanks of what we think they are. Were they morally wrong for doing so, difficult to say, in one aspect they had wisdom and understanding and focused on the scriptures, more than your usual fisherman? They also, however, often would base life on their philosophical arguments of scripture, on their own thoughts and righteousness. The trouble is that we challenge our ideas against God. We try to shove our checkers’ pieces into God’s chess game. This conversion does not usually work.

So how do we play chess? or do we even try to play chess, or do we focus on what our piece, being a horse, does in God’s game of chess? How do we learn to view and see things happening around us from God’s perspective? How do we carry our cross yet also pass the yoke to Christ? From a morality standpoint, and a belief perspective, this could be contradictory from the site of a checkers board. But from a chess perspective, this is much different. In a game of chess, this is looking at the unselfishness of a checker’s board, in comparison to Love, a game of chess.

We are to both pick up our cross and pass the Yoke to Christ simultaneously in our lives. An extremely paradoxical view of the world. But notice, one speaks of the cross the other speaks directly of Christ himself. Both are aiming at Christ, that’s the end goal. So when we play chess in our lives, we must look at what points to Christ, not just the morality or law of the situation. Not just what is compassionate and empathetic of our present moments, but of what is Christ-centered. And even this is like playing 10 games of chess at once.

That being said, we are not God himself. We are images of God, yet fallen into sin. This is a challenge, a chess game against itself. Your sin versus your temple self. Constantly moving, taking pieces from one another in an attempt to navigate life. Yet even this chess match is one of the many God is playing and would love to enter into and use it for his plan.

So is there an answer? I have no clue, go ask the Father, The Son, and the Holy Spirit, because I am but a dude, a dude in a world of craziness, a man stuck in a game of checkers, stuck in my own view of life. I am proud of my thoughts, yet these thoughts are fleeting and are pearls cast to pigs to be trampled and eaten. The value of my words or zero. Only does the value become whole, one, if God is lifting them, and if people choose to wear the pearls I speak. This is the same with scripture, scripture can be the ark of Eli’s sons, Pearls cast among pigs, we the pigs, if we do not choose to value and wear these pearls. But that is for another story, a time of the future.

Remember, these are the ramblings of a mad man, a broken man confused with the word and speaks of jibberish in hopes that the Lord hears and answers or that others would pick up these possible pearls and wear them, or point to my words are vomit and that I am a dog, constantly returning to them.