The Pinball Difference

The Pinball Difference--August 12, 2016

"And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you." [Ephesians 4:32]

You know what is really underrated these days?  Pinball.

And not just as entertainment; pinball is woefully underappreciated as a source of theology.

There's an activity center for kids at our local mall--a good place for young children to climb and bounce and play for a special treat on a rainy or slushy day.  And while my kids are most excited about the bouncy castles and ball pit there, I am excited most of all for them to get to see an actual functioning pinball game there.  (They are increasingly rare, after all, since shopping malls and video game arcades seem to be lost relics of an earlier age, and since anybody with a smartphone has the potential to be carrying an arcade's worth of games in their pockets.)

I want my kids to see a pinball game--and, yes, I will admit that I like to get a game in if I remember to bring some quarters on our occasional outings there--not just for the nostalgia of it, but because there is something unique about a pinball machine.  It is real.  That is to say, what you see happen in a pinball game is the real live dance of physics being played out before your eyes.  The rules of momentum and velocity, the arc of a trajectory, the elegant balance of action and reaction as the ball bounces off of one object and ricochets off in another direction--all of that is real, rather than simulated.  In a video game, even if there are realistic algorithms going on to code how your character's laser gun shoots, or even if there is some resemblance to how gravity works when Mario jumps, you know that it's all entirely artificial.  Sometimes the rules in a game world look very similar to the rules of physics in the real world, and sometimes they are deliberately skewed, with characters able to leap impossibly high, or able to punch enemies so hard they go flying.  And sometimes, there are things in a video game that just don't react at all--the go-cart will knock into some trees or lampposts along the road, but can't get any further off course than that, because the coders writing the game just didn't allow for that kind of sophistication.   All of those things remind me that a video game, as flashy as it looks or as photo-realistic as the graphics may be, is all a construct, and none of it is really happening.  A pinball machine, on the other hand, is a celebration of the real--when the ball hits your little flipper, you are seeing what really happens when an object with such-and-such mass smacks into an object with a different mass at a given velocity and direction. Every time the ball smacks into something in the pinball machine, there is a reaction, and the ball is sent off in a new direction, channeling the energy it got from the moment it shot out of the starting chute.

Now, aside from my personal preference for the "real" over the "simulated" in general, that quality of realism--the pinball difference, so to speak--is important for theology.  And this is why.  In a pinball game, the very same "power" or energy that shoots the ball out at the start is the very same kind of power that keeps the ball bouncing all over the game's surface.  It's all physics--action and reaction, velocity and momentum, and the way motion and energy keep on going, just in slightly different directions, as the ball keeps pinging and ponging through the obstacles. In a video game, it's all arbitrary--this red splotch of pixels makes my character go super fast, and that rainbow colored object on the screen makes me fly.  Why?  Who knows?  Boredom in the programming office as much as anything else.

And here is where theology comes in.  The New Testament makes a strong connection between the way God in Christ relates to us, and how we are now called to relate to one another.  The common translation here from Ephesians 4:32 says, "forgiving one another as God in Christ has forgiven you," but an even more literal translation would say, "gracing each other as God has been gracing you."  That includes forgiveness.  That includes welcome and acceptance.  That includes undeserved goodness and love without condition.  All of that is grace.  And the New Testament doesn't let us pull any sleight-of-hand or bait-and-switch with that grace, either.  The same grace that has been extended to us is the kind of grace we are called to bounce back at the world around us.  There are no different rules of engagement for my "horizontal" relationships with other people that operate differently than my "vertical" relationship (to be crude about direction here) with God.  There is no saying, "Well, I am cool with God because God just forgives me by grace, but I get to be a total jerk with you, because that's just different."  No--it's pinball.  It's all the same motion, just bounced in new directions. It's all the same kinetic energy of mercy, going first from God to me, and then seamlessly from me to everybody else in my world. It's pinball.

We have a way, sneaky loophole seekers that we are, of acting like there are two different sets of rules.  It's funny how I can be all about God's amazing grace when I'm talking about me... but it all shrivels up or evaporates when I think of other people.  Sure, God has blessed me--graced me, in the words of Ephesians--with an abundance of good things beyond my deserving or earning... but then I get all in a snit when I look at someone else getting assistance for their own needs, and I start huffing and complaining about how "they" are milking the system? Can I not see the hypocrisy in being ok with God's grace to me but demanding that everybody else has to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps?  Can I not see that if God has accepted me while I am a mess of selfishness and chickenheartedness, that I am called to accept other people with their own weak places and messiness, too? 

Somehow or another we got it in our heads that God's grace toward me stops with me--that I am an endpoint in the economy of mercy, rather than a channel, meant to pass it along in a new direction. Somehow or another we imagined ourselves to be the hero, the POV character in a video game where all the rules are made just for us, but everybody else is just a flourish of animation off to the side, rather than seeing ourselves as part of a great unfolding chain reaction of divine goodness that shoots out in one direction, bounces off a bumper, hits a flipper, and goes around the loop all over again.  But the New Testament makes it clear that the same grace we have first received from God is the kind of grace we are called to extend to one another.  And if we really do believe that God has loved us without condition, while we were still enemies, without earning checkmarks or pretending we are perfect peaches, then that is the way we are called to grace other people. It's all the same motion of mercy, just bouncing from one direction into a new one. It's pinball.

Today, what if I was honest about the ways I have been holding a double-standard--looking down on other people for being no more dependent on grace than I am, and pretending that I am somehow above it all. What if I looked at the people I have the strongest disagreements with, the people who frustrate me the most or push all my buttons, and considered that God has put up with my self-centered garbage and loved me as I am, before I choose angry words for someone else in my life? What if, before every action, every word, and every choice of how I spend my minutes in this day, I asked, "How does this resonate with the way God ha loved me first?"

In short, how can I make it my goal in this day that the motion of mercy doesn't end at me with a dull thud, but bounces off of me and passes through me to send grace shooting off at everybody else in my life... yes, including the folks I have the hardest time loving?

That's the goal today--pinball. The graceful momentum of pinball.

Lord God, help us see the connections today between the way you have loved us and the ways we grace others around us. Let it be all of one movement.