R.P.G.

“Father, do you play DOTA?” Young Raven asked.
“Nope, but I watched this year’s the finals in Youtube with friends.”
“You don’t like RPG (Role Playing Games) games?”
“Not really. It’s more like I don’t like playing online games.”
“Why not?”
“First, I want to play without depending on the Internet; second, I prefer playing with the computer ‘coz I’m scared of a real person who can out-strategize me; and third, I like FPS (First Person Shooter) games more.”
“But having an evolving role in an RPG is sooo exciting,” Raven explained.
“True, but you also have a role in FPS games, right?”
“But it focuses more on the shooting than the adventure,” he said.
“Dude, I guess I can’t really tell the difference, besides it’s been a looong time I’ve played any of these games. But just between you and me, I do play RPG with someone.”
“With whom, Father?”
“With God!”

* * *

I explained to Raven that playing RPG with God means: Really Praying with God. He was amused and asked me how the ‘game’ was played. What follows, obviously, isn’t what I explained to the boy but a further reflection on the subject.

Many young people find it hard to pray. Not because they don’t want to pray, but simply because they find it difficult to connect with the dry method and content of prayer itself. Instead, they easily connect with video games because their external senses can immediately grab on to something.

For example, their fingers touch the keyboard or their hand holds and clicks on a mouse. Their eyes are locked on to the colorful, pulsating and shifting world presented to them by the power of digital art, their ears absorb the attractive and powerful sound effects of a game.

Prayer, on the other hand, is an interior exercise of the mind and will. These faculties do not render something immediately gratifying and meaningful compared with getting points, coins or jewels, enjoying the addictive music of Candy Crush and feeling the tension of attacking another player in Clash of Clans and getting an ego bonus boost by sharing one’s progress over Facebook or Twitter!

If at all, the young are often confined to formula prayers they have memorized from childhood and are more familiar with prayers of petition: I need to pass my exam, that my prom date accepts me, etc. Prayer comes to them because they are in need of something, but are yet unable to grow and mature in a need for prayer itself.

So how can we make the need for prayer grow in the soul? There are many ways, but the path must gradually strip one’s dependence on external consolations that for the person make prayer ‘meaningful’, ‘peaceful’, or ‘joyful’. It is so easy to unconsciously seek oneself in prayer rather than to encounter Someone through it. Prayer is a means to meeting Christ, and not an end to simply find some respite or escape to our needs, trials and sufferings in life.

Really praying to God takes place with another meaning for RPG. First, when one strives to acquire a taste or longing for a Relationship. One goes to prayer to meet our Lord. This cannot take place if we don’t find a time and a place to meet Jesus. For any relationship to grow commitment is indispensable. And the end of this encounter is to know, love and serve the Other.

Processing or Practice comes next. We cannot spend the entire day just ‘mentally praying’. We also have to work, study, play sports and socialize. It is through these rich human realities that we process what we have received from our relationship with Christ. Here we try our best to live the virtues — especially in serving others and society — which are effective channels of the gifts we have received from our relationship with God.

Finally, Giving yourself. Every person’s meeting with Jesus Christ cannot leave him within a comfortable plateauing state of goodness. The person, if he or she is sincere and docile, will feel our Lord’s call: Come follow me! This is when the vocational component of this relationship takes place, when one unconditionally surrenders himself to become Jesus’ disciple.