One of the nice things about having an 8 year old son is that I still get to play with action figures on a regular basis. Last week he alternated us between Star Wars (in which “one of the best characters ever” Ahsoka got a Nikto padawan, much to the disgust of Anakin and Obi Wan who thinks she’s too young to do anything by herself) and Imaginext (in which The King and Batman have been stuck trying to figure out why the cats won’t stop laughing and how to stop the giant bag snake from knocking over the entire village). This week he’s switched us back to my old box full of D&D miniatures (wherein “THE DWARF” is still trying to find a place to relax away from his three Kobold stooges and an Owlbear who thinks it’s a rooster. Oh, just in case you didn’t know, Pees-A-Piddy-Pye is apparently Elvish for Cock-A-Doodle-Doo). It’s great, it’s like living in an episode of Axe Cop for two hours a day.
Now if you don’t happen to have a child running around your home to provide you with a convenient excuse to drag out your old toys, there’s still a way you can do so without being accused of succumbing to extended adolescence. Just turn on a camera, move the figures around a bit, add some some music and, voila, you’re not playing… you’re being artistic and creative. Take, for example, this video for the Zombie Zombie song, Driving This Road Until Death Set You Free…
Okay, so after watching that, the first thing that came to mind was, wow, Zombie Zombie must really like John Carpenter (and they do, as this CD proves). But the second thing was to wonder if a grown man should really be getting such a kick out of this kind of stuff? After all, there is that famous quote from 1 Corinthians 13, “When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things.”
Fortunately, that verse isn’t really addressing the issue of men who play games with their children, or even men who keep the occasional toy on their own desks. (Just for the record, I prefer not to think of my six inch tall Godzilla as a toy, but rather as a symbol of my individuality and my belief in personal freedom. Or, wait, maybe I’m thinking of Nick Cage’s snakeskin jacket in Wild At Heart.) That particular passage, while full of meaning on its own, is actually the coda for the even more famous first part of 1 Corinthians 13 which goes “Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, (love) is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.”
You see, while Jesus himself said “unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven” (meaning we are to humbly accept the guidance and admonishments of our trustworthy Father), He also expects us to develop a love for others that grows in strength and maturity. And how do we know if our love is mature? Well, one of the oldest tricks in the book is to take that first part of 1 Corinthians 13 and replace every occurrence of Love with our own names. I am patient, I am kind, I am not jealous, etc. If we can’t do that without thinking “Yeah, I’m so sure!”, then we’ve still got some childish things to put aside. And, mercifully, those things have nothing to do with the occasional action figure that ends up on our desks or shelves.
Which is a relief, because if they ever become available for sale again, I am so getting one of these babies…
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