Tired of the Hippos--February 18, 2022

Tired of the Hippos--February 18, 2022

"Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and you do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts." [James 4:1-2a]

Games are always about more than just fun in the moment.  Games have a way of teaching skills, strategies, and critical thinking even when we don't realize it.  Don't tell my kids this (yet), but an awful lot of family game nights are actually learning in disguise.  Whether we realize it or not, the games we play teach us how to see the world in particular ways, and then they ingrain in us the skills necessary for "winning" in those realities.

The point of chess may appear just to be getting your opponent's king in a check-mate position, but chess also helps us develop the skills for strategy, for long-range thinking, and for learning to read the other player's thought processes from their moves. All those childhood games of chess with my grandfather or father at least held the potential for me to learn critical thinking.  Board games like Monopoly or a family favorite, Settlers of Catan, teach us how to manage resources, how investments can pay off over time, and how our choices interact with random events (like the roll of the dice) to lead to different outcomes from comparable starting points--even if they can become tedious as they wear on. And of course, the silly word games my daughter and I play waiting for the doors to open at her school aren't just about killing time.  They're my secret attempt to beef up her language skills and spelling, just like my parents and grandparents did for me once upon a time.

At an even deeper level, the games we play (or at least the ones we play most regularly) have a way of shaping how we see the world around us.  If you have played a lot of team sports, for example, you're more likely to approach problem-solving as a cooperative enterprise, where each person's area of expertise and excellence can contribute.  If you are used to games that take a long time to progress through--whether long-form storytelling quest video games or those marathon sessions of Risk or Dungeons and Dragons from once upon a time--you are more likely to be willing to spend a longer time with a problem or situation to bring resolution.  And conversely, if you only have the attention span for tic-tac-toe or Paper-Rock-Scissors, you're more likely only to look for short, fast, simple fixes.

And then... there's the fast-paced feeding frenzy of a game like Hungry, Hungry Hippos.

In case it's been a few years since you've played (or in case you've never had the opportunity), yes, this is the game where up to four players face off against each other pulling a lever on their own plastic hippopotamus to open and shut its jaws and grab white marble-sized plastic balls in their mouths.  It's basically a free-for-all of chomping and grabbing until all the marbles are captured, and then you just count them up to see who wins.  No strategy.  No turn-taking.  Definitely no language or math skills learned.  And no patience required, either.  Just a quick burst of plastic gluttony so you can find out who won.

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't mean to suggest it's sinful, bad, or wrong to play "Hungry, Hungry Hippos."  There was a time when that was just the right speed for my kids, and its simplicity works.  That said, I do kind of think we sometimes get stuck in a mindset that says that life in the real world works the same way.  In fact, I think we've built a system and a whole national culture on the twin premises that success in life is getting as much as you can for yourself, and that consequently, we can and should do whatever we have to in order to get more for ourselves.  When that's called "Hungry, Hungry Hippos" we dismiss it as a child's game.  When we teach our children graduating from school that it's the goal of life, we call it "the American Dream."  But what if that's all a losing game, no matter what we call it?  What hope is there for us who are tired of the hippos?

This, I believe, is exactly where James meets us today.  He points out how easy it is for us, in any time or culture, to slide into Hungry-Hungry-Hippos thinking, where the goal of life is for me to get as much as possible for myself, and therefore it is fair game to do whatever I have to in order to get it.  Now, whether there were literal murders happening within the congregation or church groups to whom James was writing or not, he is definitely aware of the power of avarice, once we give it a toehold, to let us justify terrible things in the name of getting what we want. 

And that's just it: once we tell ourselves that the goal of life is just to get "more," and that there are no other rules limiting how we get it, well, yeah, we're trapped in Hungry, Hungry Hippos mode.  There's no concern that after I get some, you should be able to have some--we tell ourselves, "That's not how the game works!"  There's no limitation to whether it makes sense for me to have more than I can possibly use while others go... well, hungry.  There's nothing prohibiting me from nudging, pushing, or elbowing the others out of my way, either.  James sees that as a disaster--not just waiting to happen, but already unfolding like a train-wreck in slow motion, right before our eyes.

James surely knew his biblical history as well, and knew plenty of stories where powerful people lived like they could simply take what was someone else's because they wanted it and they could.  From King David's exploitation of Bathsheba and murder of Uriah to King Ahab using royal pressure to acquire Naboth's land to the well-connected powerful classes during the days of prophets like Amos and Micah, James knew the stories of how people who claimed to live in God's ways still operated like they could endlessly take from others without consequence.  And James knew that kind of Hungry-Hungry-Hippos mentality destroys peace and justice.

Will we recognize it in ourselves?  Dare we take an honest look at the ways we get coaxed into the very same mindset?  Can we recognize the ways we've already been taught to see life as a game of endless consumption with no rules other than "whoever has the most in the end wins"?  And once we see how we've been playing that game and elbowing neighbors out of our way so we can acquire even more, will we be brave enough to break out of that mindset and try something new?   

Could we unlearn what decades of life in a Hungry-Hungry-Hippos kind of culture has taught us about always wanting "more," and envision James' alternative where success looks like everyone having enough, and all can live in contentment and peace?

I'm willing to take James up on this dare, because--as I imagine you may be, too--I'm tired of the hippos.  I'm ready to be done with that game-playing.  How about you?

Lord God, teach us new ways of living in this world with one another--your ways.  Help us to see our fulfillment in life shared with one another rather than hoarding.  And help us to know when to ignore the voices around us teaching us to be forever unsatisfied.