I was talking with a student yesterday and he was amazed that I play video games. He seemed to think that as an adult I shouldn’t play video games. I told him that I’m not much of an adult but, even as a 31-year-old man, I do love playing me some video games.
I was always a little scared of growing up and, even now, there are some days I wish I could go back to my younger years.
Every time I write a check for rent I wish I were younger.
Every time I have to have a difficult conversation with a parent or friend I wish I were younger.
Every time I have to go to work instead of sit at home and play video games I wish I were younger.
The student seemed to agree with me that getting older is a little scary. In his mind getting older means not getting play video games. For us who are actually adults, it means not getting to play as many video games and probably a lot more.
We can sit and dream about the days when we were younger and didn’t have as many responsibilities. We can fantasize about days spent sleeping in on summer vacation and hours wasted on video games. We can idealize when we had nothing more to worry about than what friends we were going to hang out with and getting home before the street lights came on.
We can think and dream about being younger, but it doesn’t change the reality that got wants us to grow up and he wants us to change.
Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. – 1 Corinthians 3:1-2
Paul wanted the Corinthians to grow and change. He was bemoaning the fact that even though they had gotten older they still hadn’t grown up. They were still drinking milk like babies even though they should have moved onto solid spiritual food.
God has the same desire for our lives that Paul had for the Corinthians. God wants us not to just get older but he wants us to grow up. He wants us to mature from spiritual babies into spiritual adults, better equipped to do his work in this world. Doing that work sometimes means putting down the Xbox controller and getting to work. As spiritually mature adults, though, we can also recognize the need to relax, decompress and slay some dragons or smoke some noobs.
Being a grown up doesn’t mean never playing video games, it just means intentionally choosing when to start and forcing ourselves to stop.
What nerdy holdovers from your childhood do you still cling to?
Reading fanfiction and staying up till 6 o’clock in the morning. Also the continuous hours of catching up on anime or tv shows. And allowing myself to read a book in less than a day. Who knew it was a luxury and not just something to brag about.