Written by T. M. Suffield |
Saturday, September 2, 2023
Discipleship is slow. Gamification is all about quick wins and rewarding incremental progress. Discipleship, the lifelong obedience towards God that transforms us into the likeness of his son, is often incremental, but it’s never quick. If anyone suggests a quick win for an issue of character or obedience, run away from them.

I was speaking to a friend and he suggested a startling thought: we want our discipleship to be gamified.
On the face of it I could shrug it off, he and I are millennials, gamification is a Gen Z problem. They’re the generation that sees progress in terms of levelling up. We’re the I’m amazing, I don’t have a problem generation.
Ah.
By gamified we mean having clear achievements, progress meters and rewards for levelling up: life being like a video game, and one where I beat the game instead of the other players. When I last worked in the private sector I ran graduate programmes at Rolls-Royce, and it was touted as the next big thing to include in graduate programmes and development activities, there was a desire to gamify to ensure that young talent was kept motivated and engaged through their training. I would be surprised if they got that far, the engineering industry would itself be resistant, but it was thinking ahead of its time.
Then, in the early 2010s all of our graduates were Millennials, the ‘participation trophy’ generation. Now, all of their graduates would be Gen Z, the ‘level up’ generation.
I see this in my own life. I track what I read on a website called Goodreads. I found it helpful to keep a log of how much I read in a year, and to easily look back at what the books were. It both encouraged me that I read more than I think and gave me a tool to review a year’s reading to see if I want to make changes to what I read the following year.
I do wonder how much my reading output increased once I started logging it though. Things change when we observe them, that’s basic quantum physics, and basic human behaviour too. There’s something motivating about my annual target (I’ve pitched for a lower 52 books this year, but the homepage helpfully tells me that I’m ‘7 books ahead’). I stopped logging how far through a book I was because I wanted to mark down the next page number rather than read the book, I wonder if the reading challenge has a similar effect (Ed: in the last two years I’ve stopped doing this, for this reason).
Have you ever found yourself wanting to finish a book to say you’ve finished it rather than to enjoy its pages? That’s gamification. When we remember that Goodreads is owned by Amazon, we might also see why they might desire me to finish more books.
Technology changes us in ways we might not expect. It’s difficult to throw useful tech away in monastic pique because it either is, or masquerades as being, useful. Telling the difference is harder than you might think, and your soul needs you to.
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Written by David S. Steele |
Friday, July 7, 2023
We fail to meet the divine standard. The Divine Representative stands in our defense. All these things clear the path for the divine accomplishment, which John unfolds in 1 John 2:2 – “He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2). When the gavel falls, a verdict will be rendered. Will you bear the weight of your sin and thus, endure 10,000 degrees of white-hot wrath? Or will you trust Jesus to stand in your defense? 

It has been said that one of the greatest problems that plagues contemporary people is unresolved guilt. Sin squeezes the life out of unwitting victims. Sins of omission, sins of commission, sins of regret, neglect, fear, ungodly anger, broken relationships, and insubordination pose a massive threat to the well-being of well-meaning people.
No one is excluded from this sinful parade. We have all committed sin. We are sinners by nature and by choice – and as a result, guilt rears its ugly head. Sometimes the guilt waits to surface until we’re all alone. For some of us, guilt is a constant note on the musical score sheet of our lives. For others, the only time we feel guilt is when we hear a preacher remind us about our sin.
Here is the problem: Apart from the grace of God, we all stand before the bar of God’s justice – and we stand condemned. Apart from the grace of God – we are guilty.
The sound of the gavel is unmistakable in a courtroom setting. When the gavel falls, it reminds us that a verdict has been reached. It announces the guilt or innocence of the defendant.
In 1 John 2, the apostle John ushers us into the celestial courtroom and answers the question, “What is the greatest need of sinners when the gavel falls?” As we enter the heavenly tribunal, I invite you to encounter the divine standard and the divine representative.
The Divine Standard
If you ever have the opportunity to attend a trial in a courtroom one of the first memories you will have is when the Judge enters the courtroom. The bailiff announces, “All rise!” John the apostle introduces the presiding Judge of the universe in 1 John 1:5. He writes, “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.”
The Presiding Judge of the Divine Standard
He is the majestic God of the universe. The psalmist proclaims, “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens” (Ps. 8:1, ESV). Moses says, “Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?” (Exod. 15:11).
He is the transcendent God of the universe. “For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite” (Isa. 57:15).
He is the sovereign God of the universe. The psalmist reminds us, “Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases” (Ps. 115:3,).
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Slow down. Reaffirm that you put your trust in your Father who judges justly. Pray that the Spirit would anoint you with wisdom and grace, as you remember the grace that you have received from Christ. If you have missed this path, you have yet to find the place that Paul gives to righteous indignation.

Ephesians 4:26–27 makes room for anger that is not sin.
Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. (Ephesians 4:26–27)
The problem is that we are happy to exploit what seems to be a legal loophole. Anger, in its very nature, is self-justifying. My anger is righteous; your anger is not. So if we are to find some righteous wiggle room here, we must proceed very carefully.
Let’s begin with what is clear. The passage names anger as a close neighbor of the devil. At a moment’s notice, anger can drift toward his murderous ways, and we transform into something less than human. With this in mind, Paul also writes, “Let all… anger… be put away from you” (Ephesians 4:31). Our anger, therefore, puts us on high alert. Best to put ourselves in chains until it passes.
Since Paul’s words in Ephesians give no specifics on anger without sin, we turn to the illustrations on which he relied. We turn first to Jesus who, indeed, could be angry without sin. He was angry when money changers interfered with the Gentiles’ worship of God (John 2:13–16). He was angry when children were kept away from him (Mark 10:14). He was angry with Pharisees who opposed a healing and preferred to use the law to place a burden on the people (Mark 3:1–6). He was angry when his disciples wanted judgment rained down on a Samaritan village rather than mercy (Luke 9:5–55). Paul, too, could be angry in his rhetoric against those who hoped to put Christians under the law of Moses (Galatians 5:12). What these and similar passages have in common is that this anger was never in response to personal attacks, but it was on behalf of those who had been wronged. What did Jesus do with personal attacks? He followed the ways of the psalmists and entrusted judgment to his Father (1 Peter 2:23).
The Ephesians passage is a quote from Psalm 4:4—a reference that might give more insight.
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