It isn’t often enough that a video game completely catches my attention, sapping away days at a time while I venture through the game’s world, questing toward the climax. The number of such games likely barely scrapes a dozen, but I am pleased to be able to add yet another to that total:

Borderlands. I hadn’t heard much about the game prior to playing it. Indeed, my purchase of the game was more an impulse decision than anything. My brother was visiting for ten days, and halfway through the visit, I made a run to Walmart for some Coke. While there, I detoured through the game section — as is my way — and checked out a few new releases. Borderlands was one that I picked up, and while I didn’t look over the whole case, I caught two details which sealed the sale for me: it supported two-player local cooperative, and it was a role playing shooter.

I brought the game home, and we began to play it straightaway.

To say that we were both blown away would be an understatement.

We learned that we were playing the parts of Vault hunters on an alien world named Pandora. The Vault, so the legend goes, can only be opened every 200 years, but really no one’s even sure whether it exists or not. The planet itself is mostly abandoned, leaving only the residents of the abandoned prisons and a few more sociable folks to encounter throughout the lands. There’s plenty of local wildlife as well — wildlife that would be more than happy to eat you if given the chance.

At the onset of the game, we were presented with the choice between four characters — Brick, Mordecai, Lilith, and Roland. Each character has a different specialty, similar to other role playing games that may have priests, knights, and so on. I chose Lilith, whose focus was on dealing elemental damage. (Elementals in Borderlands consist of explosives, corrosives, incendiaries, and electricals.)

The game’s signature artistic style wowed us at the start, but over the next five days, it continually amazed us. The hand-drawn, cell-shaded, comic book styles set Borderlands apart from most other games out there, simply because it does not strive to be as realistic as possible. (When emulating reality, it’s only a matter of time before games start to be indistinguishable.) Still, there was moments in the game that we had to question what we were seeing because everything looked so polished, so beautiful.

Gameplay in Borderlands is pretty straightforward. The storyline is advanced through quests — of which there are well over 100 for you to indulge in — and these quests are received from a variety of sources, whether from the dancing Claptrap robots, town Bounty Boards, or slack-jawed locals such as Scooter. The quests ensure that there is always something to do in the game’s vast environments and are the quickest way to level up your character.

Perhaps most enjoyable, at least for my brother and I, was the game’s item system. The game has been promoted as having a “bajillion” guns, and we very quickly started to see what that meant. No two guns are the same, thanks to the game’s random item generating system. Even the appearances of guns is varied based on a variety of factors. And while most of these guns seem pretty run-of-the-mill, there are countless which are quite fantastical. Need a shotgun that fires rockets? A sniper rifle that can set enemies on fire? A pistol with an infinite clip? A rock launcher that launches five rockets at once? Borderlands has all this and more.

I’m going to seem morbid here, but I’d be remiss not to mention it due to us getting so much enjoyment out of it while playing: the death animations are great! Catch an enemy on fire, and you’ll see them jumping around, trying to pat the flames out. You may even hear them scream for their mommies. It’s all very crazy, but it is quite well done. Believe me, though, in Borderlands, it’s truly kill or be killed. Just wait until the first Psycho starts running at you screaming, “Split the flesh! Salt the wounds!” or perhaps, “More meat for me!” They’re just begging for a headshot, I think.

With a drop-in, drop-out multiplayer system (locally, over a local network, or over the Internet), Borderlands makes for a great party game. I’m actually not too excited about the single player, preferring to play it with someone else whenever possible. The nice thing about all of that, though, is that the save files aren’t “per game”; they are “per player.” In other words, I can take my character’s save file and use it wherever — online, in single player, or in a local multiplayer game. Items, experience, skill point attribution, and so on follower a character into whatever mode is being played, which is very nice.

If I were to rate Borderlands based only upon it’s single player, I’d give it 4 out of 5. If I were to rate it based solely on its multiplayer, it’d get 5 out 5. So, I’m going to split the difference and rate it 4.5 out of 5. If you are a fan of role playing games or first person shooters, I encourage you to get Borderlands. And if you happen to be playing it on the Playstation 3, feel free to add me as a friend, username KingdomGeek.

Copyright © 2009, Rick Beckman. Some rights reserved. Originally posted at KingdomGeek.

On the way up to Ft. Wayne to take my brother home yesterday, I came up with* the idea of open-sourced navigation.

Half a decade or more ago, I was a huge fan of Microsoft Streets & Trips. Streets & Trips, unlike any other navigation tool I’ve ever used, had one feature to rule them all: up-to-date detour/construction information.

In other words, when I opened Streets & Trips, I could run its update to get the latest construction information, allowing the system to be smart enough to direct me to Marion or Indianapolis without worrying about the construction on Indiana 1 or Central Avenue or whatever. Because let’s face it, having a navigation system smart enough to direct you to another interstate or highway right from the start may save hours when compared to following the detour routes laid out roadside by the transportation departments of the world.

But Streets & Trips is old hat. Nowadays I get my directions from Google Maps directly, if I even get directions at all. My wife Alicia has a GPS device in her car which is indispensable for unfamiliar traveling.

But it’s not smart enough to know about detours, road blocks, or other travel nuisances. That would have been handy coming home from Ft. Wayne yesterday, actually; it decided to direct us back a different way than we had come, and the new route home just happened to have a little detour, which itself was rather poorly marked.

So my idea is an open, community-edited map. Perhaps this could be built on Google Maps — why anyone would use any other mapping setup online is a bit beyond me — and perhaps also be tied into Google Earth. But it would only truly be useful if the information was available to the Garmin and TomTom devices of the world (not to mention the smart phones).

When detours are put up in an area, it would only take one user going in and adding it to the map, perhaps drawing out the detour recommended by the transportation department. Map programs and navigation devices could then use that information to plot the best possible course.

But detours are just one possible application of a community-driven map database. Truck routes could be accurately drawn in. Bridges or other height- and weight-limiting elements could be factored in, which would allow devices to ask you how tall and heavy your vehicle is so that it can plot a safe course. Non-existent roads could be marked for removal (Google Maps and many others show a road next to where my mom lives that simply doesn’t exist). Speed limits, stops, and other such things could be added in, allowing devices to take them into account when determining fastest routes, arrival times, and so on.

I’m picturing something akin to the Wikipedia, allowing for the community to map the world. I’d be surprised if such an endeavor wouldn’t be successful. If Wikipedia has taught us anything it’s that such efforts are at least mostly accurate, and the more people who use it, the more peer review it is bound to receive. Actually, I’d be surprised if such a project wasn’t currently underway somewhere.

Google Maps already allows you to reposition addresses to be more accurate, which I had to do for my house — it displayed my house number about a block away from its true location. I like that I was able to fix that. But that doesn’t help navigation systems. Yesterday, for instance, our navigator had us arriving at destination a full block before we were actually there. It’d be nice to be able to hop onto a website, fix the location, and know that everyone else using a device compatible with the database has access to that tiny bit of more accurate information, should they ever be headed to the same place.

Copyright © 2009, Rick Beckman. Some rights reserved. Originally posted at KingdomGeek.

If any of you are crazy enough to be playing World of Warcraft and you just happen to be playing on the Rexxar server, feel free to add me to your friends list. My avatar’s name is Asohka (what? an admission that I named a character after a Star Wars character in a post that follows a rant about the aforementioned series? that’s just how I roll. note that it’s an animated series character.), and I’m still a fairly low-leveled warlock. Send me a note in the in-game mail system so I know who you are, and I’ll see you in Azeroth.

Copyright © 2009, Rick Beckman. Some rights reserved. Originally posted at KingdomGeek.

When I was a teen, many of my friends bragged about how awesome Star Wars (the whole trilogy) was. They’d so how awesome it would be to have huge ships that could go such-and-such a speed or how awesome Boba Fett is… I’d say how awesome it was to have just seen Captain Picard go Roarin’ Twenties gangster on a couple of Borg, and they’d chime in, “I hate to interrupt you, and I’ma let you finish, but Jabba the Hutt is one of the best gangsters ever.”

Now that I’ve seen the trilogy (both of them), I’m left to wonder… What the heck was so awesome about any of it? For instance, Boba Fett was pretty much useless. He did very little of interest the entire time — certainly never anything to live up to the “greatest bounty hunter in the galaxy” epithet — and when he did get his big chance to save (wreck?) the day, he gets outwitted by an amateur Jedi and a decades-obsolete astrodroid. Super.

Can I just say it? The only time anything in Star Wars lives up to the hype is in the Clone Wars animated mini-series. Only in it did the Jedi really shine as soldiers that could wipe out entire armies single-handedly. Only in it were enemy forces halfway effectual at being a threat. Only in it did Anakin put his angsty teenage boo-hooery aside to stand out among all the others as someone who could really threaten the entire galaxy.

In the original trilogy, the only thing that lives up to the hype is the Death Star. And even it gets blown up.

Twice.

Just had to get all that off my chest. I feel better now.

Copyright © 2009, Rick Beckman. Some rights reserved. Originally posted at KingdomGeek.

I have heard people say, “Oh I try to read the Bible, but it is confusing. But when I hear you teach the Word, it comes alive, and I understand it so much more.” To the boastful pride of the flesh, this sounds great, but in a spiritual dimension it is grievous. Do not be complimented by such a statement; instead, be saddened. Think of all the lives that were sacrificed so that this person can have the Scriptures, only to find them not enough. Organic Church: Growing Faith where Life Happens, Neil Cole, p. 67

I’ve said this a lot lately, but you’ll notice that the sermons recorded in the Scriptures are quite short, and they are heavy laden with quotations from the Scriptures.

We need to drop the gimmicks, drop the “well-formed intro, 3 alliterated points, conclusion” sermons, and give place once again to the reading of the Scriptures.

Only the Word of God — not the words of man, whether they be in sermon, tract, or book form — is the seed from which the kingdom may grow, and we are to share that Word of God indiscriminately, casting it as seed upon all kinds of soil.

Christiandom is today filled with people who are increasingly unfamiliar with the Word of God — that oh so precious foundation of the kingdom — that there is an increased perceived need of talented preachers and teachers. Movements are built not around the Word of God but around those who are best at presenting their own teachings, whether those teachings are derived from the Scriptures or not.

But while we are commissioned to teach the Word of God, we ought to do so by teaching the Word of God. Beginning our sermons with “today’s text” isn’t enough. The Word of God must be spread. It doesn’t need our help to be efficacious, for God is the one who gives the increase.

Sow the seed.

Copyright © 2009, Rick Beckman. Some rights reserved. Originally posted at KingdomGeek.

Why did Jesus so often in His dealings with those who would come to Him simply tell them to go, repenting of their sins? Why, with rare exception, did He not invite people to follow Him, joining His assembly?

Why did the apostles, in their dealings with the people they encountered, not spend time inviting people to particular churches, even after they believe?

Why did Phillip, after baptizing the Ethiopian, send the man on his way? Isn’t baptism supposed to be the entry ritual to organized churches?

Why are today’s evangelistic tactics so often formulated in such a way as to not share Jesus Christ but to instead share an invitation to an organized church?

Why are we content to let evangelism completely miss the point? Why do we introduce ourselves as representing the First Baptist Missionary Church of the Lutheran Assemblies of the Church of God in America rather than introducing ourselves for what we are, ambassadors of Jesus Christ. Is it that we are more comfortable representing a brick and mortar organization that people can see, touch, and participate in rather than representing Jesus, whom most consider either “the invisible man in the clouds” or simply a long deceased Nazarene?

Why do we organize gimmicky promotions within organized churches which reward putting butts in the pews rather than encouraging true evangelism and godly living so that treasures may be heaped up in Heaven?

Why do we expend so much time, effort, and money in organizing, building, and promoting organizations (churches, falsely so called) rather than living and experiencing an organic, spontaneous faith that results in communion among saints wherever they may be? Remember that it was something like three centuries before Christians started building churches and the like; it was around that same time that the church ceased to be an organic, living organism and became an institution, not all that dissimilar from the world’s businesses or governments. The Roman Catholic Church evolved out of that shift, and while the Reformation saw the rescue of many precious teachings, our churches are still brick and mortar, and we still endow those buildings with entirely too much reverence and respect. We treat them as “holy places.”

For all the emphasis today’s Christians place upon buildings, attendance, and formal membership, not a jot of Scripture is wasted on such things. Christian community goes beyond to what it is usually constrained. It must go beyond it.

Copyright © 2009, Rick Beckman. Some rights reserved. Originally posted at KingdomGeek.

Do people at your church greet each other with a kiss? If not, why? Do you not know everyone intimately enough? If that’s the case, perhaps your church is too big. Are you afraid of perverts or germs? Perhaps you don’t fear the Lord enough.

I mention this because as I’m giving an increasing amount of thought to house churches, it occurs to me that greeting one another with a kiss would be much more practical in that situation.

Holy kisses: Just another element of “church” — along with baptism, the remembrance meal, and foot washing — that Jesus and/or the apostles called for. Why have we let it fall by the wayside?

Notes:

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  The kiss doesn’t have to be a mouth-on-mouth liplock, but can be something as simple as a peck on the cheek. A kiss is a kiss, of course, of course.

  
  


• 
  

  There is no biblical limitation on who may kiss who. In other words, fundamentalists who are terrified of men so much as shaking hands with a woman before they are married need not apply. They’re already missing plenty of fun anyway. But this also means that men should kiss men and women can kiss women. Sexual insecurity be damned.

  
  


• 
  

  Many cultures throughout the world still greet each other with a kiss. Who in America first thought it was a good idea to drop that? Now I feel as though I can’t even hug my friends because I think everyone takes that sort of thing the wrong way these days. Absolutely lame, all around.

  
  


• 
  
  
  

Copyright © 2009, Rick Beckman. Some rights reserved. Originally posted at KingdomGeek.

Just a reminder, dear Christian readers, that American politics and economics ought to matter to you as much as Roman politics and economics mattered to the early church: not very much at all.

Paul repeatedly reminded Christians that we are a set apart people, that we constitute a “holy nation,” and that though we are obligated to submit to government should we break its laws, it is better for us to obey God rather than man. John went so far as to portray the Roman economic system as “the mark of the beast” and Caesar not as the god the Romans worshiped him as, but as a sinister servant of Satan!

Friends, not much has changed. Put your priorities on heavenly things. If you are a true believer in Christ, know that He has saved you not only from sin but from this world’s empires, ushering you through rebirth into a kingdom not of this world.

The Scriptures reveal that Satan is the prince of this world — its empires, kingdoms, and economies. We are expressly told that Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world.

And we are sent as ambassadors of that kingdom and are unequivocally told to live in a manner becoming of our King, to the point that we are conformed to His image.

Whether it be through little things like growing your own food so that you don’t have to participate in Rome’s markets or through larger things like refusing to vote for the rulers of kingdoms which you are, in the eyes of God, not even a citizen of, each and every one of us can subvert Satan’s kingdom. (If you thought evangelism and doctrinal training were the only ways to do this, you have been taught a woefully incomplete view of the Scriptures. Those things are great — foundational, even! — but they are by no means the whole picture.)

Each day that you live, you are given a choice: serve God or serve something else. You cannot serve two masters, and you most definitely cannot please the King when you spend all your time getting comfortable in this world. To be friends with the Christ is to be enemies with the world. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.

Copyright © 2009, Rick Beckman. Some rights reserved. Originally posted at KingdomGeek.

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to pin down just what I believe. Well, let me rephrase that: I believe in Jesus Christ and in the Scriptures as His testimony. And while I am fairly conversant in Scriptural theology, I sometimes wonder how that’s supposed to affect me.

Yeah, it’s nice to be able to explain in detail just what was going on in the events described in Genesis 6. It’s nice knowing how to reconcile apparent contradictions in the Bible. It’s nice knowing any number of theological nuggets.

It’s nice to know those things intellectually. Nicer still is having faith in the substance of those truths: Jesus Christ.

But faith without works is dead, or so taught the apostle James.

Think for a moment about the Christian websites you’ve frequented. Just how many of them have a doctrinal statement or “statement of faith”? (Hint: If you’re reading this, you’ve been to at least one.) How many are loaded with doctrinal articles — either standalone articles or articles in response to what the creator of the site considers to be false beliefs? (Again, KingdomGeek is one such site.)

Now think of just how many sites are testaments to the “works” side of things. No doubt we need true, scriptural faith. No doubt we need to continually refine our beliefs, weeding out the leaven of falsities which threaten to silence the truths.

But what about our works, our activities, our conversation… our actual lives? Are we testifying only of faith as an intellectual concept or are we testifying to a living, breathing faith which infects every part of our being, tearing us asunder from this world and enabling us to live in the light of another kingdom, a kingdom not of this world?

That’s where my beliefs are being challenged: In light of my faith, how then should I live? I wrote a few days ago on the world hating us. Commenters Robert & Brandon both asked for examples of what we could be doing. Truthfully, I don’t have any — at least not from personal experience.

In Jesus for President (buy it, library it, borrow it… whatever it takes to read it), numerous examples were given on how Christians should be living in this world. Some examples were of responding to adversity, such as the recounting of one guy who, when threatened, stripped naked and danced around like a chicken, effectively disarming the adversaries without resorting to violence.

Or on a more daily basis, we might choose to only buy local food — or at least food that is certified to be produced by fair labor practices. Or perhaps we could choose to reject diamonds and other gemstones mined by labor forced to undergo extreme conditions for paltry wages. (Ditto coal products.)

I’m reminded of the Think Globally tee-shirt, which states, “Think Globally: Act within Local Variable Scope.”

The message of that shirt is fairly profound. Globalization is bad. I’ve always believed such to be the case theologically — anytime people got together in the Scriptures, they tended to reject God as a result (think Tower of Babel or just about any of the world’s empires… Egypt, Babylon, Rome… America). And as a result of that, people suffer. Providing cheap plastic trinkets for adults and kids alike might seem worth it, but not if it comes at a loss of local jobs… or the employment of those oversees who could scarcely afford to buy the product they’re producing.

It’s all a culmination of a breakdown of community. Perhaps the Internet has exasperated that. (Did I really just say that?) Human connections have been reduced to the basest of conversations spread across thousands of miles, while all the while there are those around each party that are desperate for love.

Yet they are merely nameless faces in the crowd, not much different at all from those half a world away assembling the gadgets, trinkets, and gizmos that add to the illusion of significance in your life.

So I’m at this place in my life where I’m unsure of what to do, really. And it seems like every church that comes close to similarity with my beliefs at the same time seems fairly “dead.” We cannot simply relegate the works of “faith without works is dead” to evangelism, but that is what the vast majority of churches restrict their ministries too. Elsewhere in his epistle, James said that pure religion was caring for such as widows, for the sick… I believe that the “works” he spoke of are the same things Jesus so often spoke of: feeding the hungry, giving water to the thirsty, giving clothes to the naked… All those rubber-on-the-road activities which Hyper-Dispensationalists often relegate to the Millennial Reign or the period prior to Pentecost. I have read studies from some who would relegate the entire epistle of James to such a future time period as well.

It seems as though the churches are comfortable with evangelism and that’s that. And as a result, they’re getting stale. Their missing the living, breathing ministries which we’re called to as Christians.

And I admit that it’s quite difficult to maintain such beliefs when the only people I know who seem to agree are, well, authors of a book I read. :\

Copyright © 2009, Rick Beckman. Some rights reserved. Originally posted at KingdomGeek.