Ever used a video game to illustrate a concept? Your group doesn’t have to be a bunch of gamers for this to be an effective attention-getter. See how I used gameplay footage from Lego Indiana Jones to kick-off a discussion on faith and reason for my recent “Frequently Asked Questions” workshop (5 minute video clip):
:: Regeneration Youth Conference at Biola University ::
[Partial Transcript] When my family and I got our first Xbox 360 set up a couple of years ago, it came with Lego Indiana Jones. And so we played that as a family. That was really fun. In that game, there’s a part where you have to cross an invisible bridge—I think there’s actually two or three invisble bridges. But essentially what happens is you have to do something crazy, where it feels like you’re going to kill your character: You’re gonna make Indiana Jones run off a cliff. Really, there’s an invisible bridge there and you have to just do it. That’s how you progress in the game to go get the Holy Grail. What I want to do is show you a little video clip of that scene right now. Take a look at this.
[Play Video Clip] So there’s a chasm right there. There’s no bridge there. There’s nothing there. It looks like you’re just about to kill your character but you just have to go ahead and do it and run across nothing—look at that! Nothing…to get to the Holy Grail. Now, in the movie where this comes from, Indiana Jones has a conflict. Does he follow the directions in his father’s diary and step out into what feels like nothing or does he trust his judgement? He kind of has a conflict. He’s a professor and he’s interested in the Holy Grail in an academic way. He wants to go get there, but does he step out into nothingness? It feels like taking a “step of faith” goes against his better judgement—his reason. It seems like giving up his intellect.
That’s something that I think we in the church struggle with a little bit. Some students have this idea: “Do I hold reason or do I hold faith?” or “Do I have to chuck the faith to keep my reason or do I have to ditch reason just to have faith?” I don’t know if any of you have struggled with that before. We’re gonna talk about that a little bit today—what it means to have faith–a biblical view of faith.