My wife and I have been together for 13 years.  Last Friday we celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary.   Every year on our anniversary I can count on 3 things.

1) I’m gonna get a gift.

2) She’s gonna get a gift.

3) We’re gonna get into an argument.

Every year for the last 10 years we’ve had a minor blow out about something inconsequential and meaningless on our anniversary.  Nonetheless in the heat of the moment we both stake out our positions and commence firing shots at one another.   We speak in coded language.   We flash old battle scars.   Eventually our arguments disinegrate into an adult version of “I know you are but what am I?”  We begin to talk past each other.  Refusing to hear the other side.  Only concerned with voicing our own. 

In a conversation with my Pastor I shared with him about this scenario to which he responded “You fight because the expectations for that day are so high.  One missed step and it all comes crashing down.”   Sadly he’s right.  I have expectations on my wife and she has expectations on me.  If either one of us doesn’t live up to the others expectations we begin to defend our right to have those expectations.  Unfortunately this is counter productive to the unity of our marriage.

Over the last week I’ve witnessed a similar scenario play out in the comments on this blog.  In fact if you follow the blog rabbit hole you can see what I call the “ripple effect”.   Someone lobs a rock into the CRN.info pond and then the ripples spread all across the blogosphere lake.   Those that agree with whatever point was made applaud and cheer the beauty of the ripple from their respective vantage point.   Then another rock is lobbed and on it goes. Rocks get lobbed at ET, Old Truth, Camp on this, etc…   Spiraling further out of control and looking less like Jesus the further it goes.  An adult version of “I know you are but what am I?”

When I argue with my wife the one thing that I am most deeply convicted of every time is “Husbands love your wife like Jesus loved the church and gave his life for it.”   Most days I fail miserably but on the rare occasion I grasp the breadth of that command I watch my wife radiate, secure in what God had intended when he ordained marriage and called it good.

The church that Jesus loved and gave his life for is also commanded to live in unity.   For we are all of the same body.  All given certain gifts.  The hand can not say to the foot I don’t need you. 

Brothers and sisters the expectations are very high.  Because of that let us all walk in the bond of unity that God commanded for the church.  That it may radiate the beauty of Christ.  

I don’t know that we’ve ever discussed role-playing, etc. on CRN.Info – a cursory search doesn’t pull up anything that looks like it.  Having been involved with it in the past, along with being a bit of a sci-fi geek, all of the 80’s panic around D&D seemed so… silly … kind of like backmasking.

With that in mind, I’m reposting a video I tossed up on my personal site a few days ago – which demonstrates what happens if you take something harmless to an extreme (as these apparent LARP’ers did (or at least staged it to look so)).