This work is an attempt to present kingdom truth in such a way as to provoke mankind men in particular to realize that it is not hopeless. "Even for the least among us". This actual text covers approximately seventy years of life as a living piece on a game board. Deep truths on how to traverse the board are simply displayed, perhaps some answers to, some age old questions.
'Like an episode of Black Mirror written by Stephen King' John Marrs, bestselling author of The One 'Immersive, claustrophobic . . . addictive' Guardian Win and All Your Dreams Come TrueTM! ;) Charlie and his friends have entered the God Game. Tasks are delivered through their phones. When they accomplish a mission, the game rewards them. Charlie's money problems could be over. Vanhi can erase the one bad grade on her university application. It's all fun and games - at first. Then the threatening messages start. Obey me. Mysterious packages show up at their homes. Shadowy figures start following them. Who else is playing this game, and how far will they go to win? As Charlie looks for a way out, there's only one rule he knows for sure. If you die in the game, you die for real. 'Smart, propulsive and gripping' Harlan Coben, #1 Sunday Times bestselling author
Everyone knows the God who keeps the rules, and tells us to keep them, too. But most have never met the God who breaks the rules, and breaks them to bring us close. Religion needs an updated understanding of God. We have defined God and put Him in a box—when it is God who wants to define us. God is not satisfied with our living a limited life with a limited view of Him, full of confusion, hampered by doubt, and clouded despite the hundreds of thousands of churches, pastors, and sermons. Whether your rules are personal, religious, environmental, or societal, if He has to break them to get to you, He will. God will do whatever it takes to clarify you, call you, prepare you, and promote you. He broke the rules for David, for Abraham, for Moses, for Joshua, for Rahab, and He will break them for you too, if you let Him. Because when you’re ready to rediscover God, there’s not a single rule that can get in the way.
The president of New York University offers a love letter to America’s most beloved sport and a tribute to its underlying spirituality. For more than a decade, John Sexton has taught a wildly popular New York University course about two seemingly very different things: religion and baseball. Yet Sexton argues that one is actually a pathway to the other. Baseball as a Road to God is about touching that something that lies beyond logical understanding. Sexton illuminates the surprisingly large number of mutual concepts shared between baseball and religion: faith, doubt, conversion, miracles, and even sacredness among many others. Structured like a game and filled with riveting accounts of baseball’s most historic moments, Baseball as Road to God will enthrall baseball fans whatever their religious beliefs may be. In thought-provoking, beautifully rendered prose, Sexton elegantly demonstrates that baseball is more than a game, or even a national pastime: It can be a road to enlightenment.
Helps readers to understand what matters most in life--their relationships with God and people--by using personal stories, humor, and metaphors about popular games, which show Christians how to focus on winning "the right trophies" in life.
After years of living with a set of religious demands that he could never live up to, Fil Anderson found himself spiritually bankrupt and emotionally drained. Following a crash-and-burn in professional ministry, he experienced relief in learning to be with God rather than doing for God. Instead of desperation, he found healing, and a rich new life with God.In Breaking the Rules, Fil invites us to explore what happens when good religion turns bad. At such times we are weighed down with expectations of what it takes to be "right with God"--whether it is the expectations of others, holding up under pressure, fixing what's wrong or accomplishing big things for God.When we set aside this false agenda, we find the courage to confess our fears and insecurities. We taste the depths of God's love for us. Here is an opportunity to quit trusting in your own ability to live for God, and simply trust in God instead.
What might Heidegger say about Halo, the popular video game franchise, if he were alive today? What would Augustine think about Assassin’s Creed? What could Maimonides teach us about Nintendo’s eponymous hero, Mario? While some critics might dismiss such inquiries outright, protesting that these great thinkers would never concern themselves with a medium so crude and mindless as video games, it is important to recognize that games like these are becoming the defining medium of our time. We spend more time and money on video games than on books, television, or film, and any serious thinker of our age should be concerned with these games, what they are saying about us, and what we are learning from them. Yet video games remain relatively unexplored by both scholars and pundits alike. Few have advanced beyond outmoded and futile attempts to tie gameplay to violent behavior. With this rumor now thoroughly and repeatedly disproven, it is time to delve deeper. Just as the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan recently acquired fourteen games as part of its permanent collection, so too must we seek to add a serious consideration of virtual worlds to the pantheon of philosophical inquiry. In God in the Machine, author Liel Leibovitz leads a fascinating tour of the emerging virtual landscape and its many dazzling vistas from which we are offered new vantage points on age-old theological and philosophical questions. Free will vs. determinism, the importance of ritual, transcendence through mastery, notions of the self, justice and sin, life, death, and resurrection all come into play in the video games that some critics so quickly write off as mind-numbing wastes of time. When one looks closely at how these games are designed, their inherent logic, and their cognitive effects on players, it becomes clear that playing these games creates a state of awareness vastly different from when we watch television or read a book. Indeed, the gameplay is a far more dynamic process that draws on various faculties of mind and body to evoke sensations that might more commonly be associated with religious experience. Getting swept away in an engaging game can be a profoundly spiritual activity. It is not to think, but rather to be, a logic that sustained our ancestors for millennia as they looked heavenward for answers. As more and more of us look “screenward,” it is crucial to investigate these games for their vast potential as fine instruments of moral training. Anyone seeking a concise and well-reasoned introduction to the subject would do well to start with God in the Machine. By illuminating both where video game storytelling is now and where it currently butts up against certain inherent limitations, Liebovitz intriguingly implies how the field and, in turn, our experiences might continue to evolve and advance in the coming years.
Using game theory and examples of actual games people play, Nobel laureate Manfred Eigen and Ruthild Winkler show how the elements of chance and rules underlie all that happens in the universe, from genetic behavior through economic growth to the composition of music. To illustrate their argument, the authors turn to classic games--backgammon, bridge, and chess--and relate them to physical, biological, and social applications of probability theory and number theory. Further, they have invented, and present here, more than a dozen playable games derived from scientific models for equilibrium, selection, growth, and even the composition of RNA.
