Life as a Game of Chess

Imagine I’m a knight in a chess game. I don’t know the rules of chess or even the whole board in the beginning. It’s like the life sized game in Harry Potter. In life I’m trying to figure out how I’m supposed to move. I try different things but it’s hard to find the way im supposed to move. I try moving straight and diagonally but I keep hitting a wall and im not allowed to move like that. Just like in life, when we’re young we’re trying to find our gifts and our callings. We move but we end up getting pushed back to where we started because our knight isn’t built to move like a rook or a bishop. We also don’t have full view of the whole chess board (no single game piece does). Only the grandmaster playing the chess game does (God). Our job early in life is to figure out the move best suited for us (an “L” as a knight in this chess analogy). In reality this is us finding and refining our God given gifts. How can I impact the world in a way that only I can? How can I move in my local chess board based on the pieces that are around me that I have virtually no control over? How can I move while maximizing the satisfaction of my moves?

Eventually we learn our move in the grand chess game. But we still don’t have full view of the board still, only God does. We can see only one move ahead of us (maybe 2), and even then, just the pieces surrounding us. We don’t have the ability to see past the pieces around us and anticipate 2 or 3 or 10 moves ahead. We must put our trust in God that he is a grandmaster and is moving the game forward in our view as well as outside of it and that he is setting up the moves for our game pieces that will help us win the game. As the game moves forward, we move based on the moves we figured out early on (“L”). We get better and better at figuring out what to do in the board around us. As we move through the board, we see more and more of it and begin to understand the grandmasters plan a little more, bit by bit, by witnessing other moves happening around us. God acts around us and through us, using our gifts to set up our next move and the moves of the pieces around us as well. It is our responsibility to perform like the best knight possible so that we can set up the other pieces around us for ultimate victory. The grand master sets up assists for us to create opportunities for others, and sometimes he must sacrifice pieces in order to create a greater play somewhere else.

Victory in this game of chess is the final goal. All the pieces want to win. We’re all on the same team. The grandmaster also wants to win. Victory is eternal life, eternal joy and deep fulfillment. The fulfillment of knowing that the moves you made contributed to ultimate victory in our game. Victory is love and willing the good of the other throughout the game. Fulfilling your duties as a knight so that you can set up small victories for those around you who will ultimately also improve your local game board so that you can create even greater success, all based on the grandmaster’s game plan.

Some people may want to play so that they can win locally. They may assume it is them against the whole rest of the chess board and lack the high level vision of the game that the grandmaster has. And maybe they do show some local victories against those pieces around them. However, without working in concert with the other pieces around the board, ultimate victory can not be won. Your knight can be the winner of one corner of the chess board, but ultimately, that is where the knight will stay. Greater victory only comes from working in concert with the grandmaster and with the other pieces around you.

And this view of the game may even be logical. Maybe you’re a pawn that has bad placement and will be sacrificed early. Why not try to go out with a bang and try to win locally as fast as possible? Because the underlying assumption of the game of chess is that you want the player to win. If you and all the game pieces around you play to the best of your ability, then victory in the end is much more likely. If you don’t have the underlying assumption of the game as overall victory for the grandmaster and you have comfort or local victory as your goal, the thing that is lost is the ultimate fulfillment of your duty as a knight or pawn or whatever your game piece is. Ultimate satisfaction, or “justification” in theological terms, comes from the knowledge that you fulfilled your destiny to the best of your ability. You didn’t settle for comfort or the path of least resistance. You fought hard to figure out what game piece you are and figured out the best way to move, and then you used that knowledge to improve the game board around you so that you and those around you can also contribute maximally towards ultimate victory for the grandmaster.

Not enough people go through the tough work of figuring out how your piece is supposed to move. Most just fumble around and trick themselves into comfort and inaction. It’s easier to make plans and imagine how the game will play out instead of bumping into the walls and and following the movement pattern that the game architect has created for you (the fully formed knight sure in his L-shaped move trajectory).

And of those who figurine out their move, the ones who use the moves they learned (through lots of trial and error) for ultimate victory instead of local victory or improving the local game board for their own benefit is even less. It takes a high level view of the world as a chess board to make this step. It requires some amount of faith and trust in a higher power.

You can personally see this analogy in one of two ways: ultimate insignificance or extreme significance. On one hand, you are just a pawn playing the table around you without much effect on the game around you. You’re stuck seeing that you can’t affect change around you much at all. Which makes sense if you only take the view of the pieces around you. On the other hand, you can take the view that even small moves you make can have massive implications on the game around you and even areas of the game board completely unobservable to you. Small things you do, kind words, thoughtful gestures can cause significant ripple effects to those around you and you can choose to see your life on the whole game board level as having extreme significance.

You can also see the negative side of this. Criminals can have huge affects on the world around them. They ruin entire lives and entire families around them. Small actions have ripple effects. In the positive and the negative. All of this comes from gaining greater perspective of the world around you and the game board we’re all sitting on.