Last year I chipped in a few bucks to help Wil make a new season of Tabletop. I am a longtime podcaster who understands the process of creating stuff and tossing it into the abyss that is the internet. Plus I like the show and I feel like I owe the guy some scratch for coming up with that whole Wheaton’s Law thing. Just last week, only a few days after Christmas my backer rewards came. I got a pin which is now on my gaming go bag. I got a sticker which will go on a game box just as soon as I decide which one. And I got something unexpected… a booster pack… for Cards Against Humanity.
Fast forward a few days. It is fast approaching midnight on New Year’s Eve. Several friends fill my house. Kids are sleeping in just about every nook and cranny we have including a tent set up in the front room. I am happily lubricated with whiskey and a pina colada. Someone says, “Hey I brought Cards Against Humanity!”
Now I have a problem.
My friends seem to genuinely love the game. I have this cool booster pack that I am sure would deeply impress them. The problem? It is a vile game. Sorry if you like it. I am right though. So, since I am old enough to not have to be the cool kid any more, I shut down the idea on the quick. I did save some face though by reminding the many parents in the room that several of our children were “sleeping” in a tent one room over.
Fast forward a few more days. The holidays are over and our home is in that post Santa has been here and left enough toys, boxes and ribbon to build a respectable fort state. I find across the booster. What to do with it? I could throw it away. That would probably be the right thing to do. But instead I plop down at this computer and check eBay. It was sold in less than an hour. For enough to buy two very good games which I am sure I will be talking about on the next episode of your very favorite podcast. (It is right?) Seventy bucks. Someone spent the equivalent of a full day of minimum wage labor to buy a single booster pack of cards. I guess people really like this game. I am still right though.
One of the more popular topics with our listeners is the question of playing evil characters. We’ve covered the topic quite extensively so I will just summarize by saying we are for it. We find that by trying to imagine how evil thinks and acts we can see our own sin a bit more clearly and be a bit more gracious to others. Cards Against Humanity isn’t pretending, it is an excuse to be crass, vulgar and downright mean. The truth is I already know how to be crass, vulgar and downright mean. I’m pretty good at it really. I get lots of practice. But we all know that as believers in the one who was never sinful we ought to, as best we can, rise above vulgarity. We are different. We are holy. We are not holy because we are different, we are different because God has made us holy through the cleansing blood of His Son. By His grace we rise above to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives.
For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope–the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good. – Titus