TADB 050: Real Life Monopoly

Board games may be going the way of the dinosaur, but Monopoly will always be the icon of the genre.  One version of the origin of the game goes something like this:

Living at the time of the Great Depression, Charles Darrow was jobless.  Sitting around the family table at night with lots of time on his hands, he came up with an idea for a new family game.  Cutting out a large cardboard square, he lined the perimeter with names of streets that were connected to Atlantic City’s Boardwalk, added some railroads, dice, buttons, and some hand-carved houses and hotels…along with the illusive bank that never ran out….the game of Monopoly was born.

His neighborhood friends enjoyed playing it so much that Charles took his idea to Parker Brothers hoping to sell it.  After a corporate evaluation they rejected it saying it would never sell because it violated 52 guidelines for a good “family game” including it should not take more than 45 minutes to play and the winner should be decided after one trip around the board.

Now some 90+ years later, over 200 million copies have sold worldwide.  Monopoly is the most popular board came of the 20th century with multiple versions and advertising schemes. 

Reflecting on the popularity of the game I’ve pondered why it has been so successful.  To the original generation it was obvious.  It offered a fun way to pass the time; it provided a dream of getting out of the poverty of the depression.  I grew up playing the game with neighborhood friends to pass the long dreary winters in Iowa.  Our games could last for days depending on how much real life cheating and scheming went on.

But why has it been so popular in succeeding generations and even overseas?  Then it hit me.  It captured what we normally think of as success.  Where else can you go and in a few hours (days) live in a world where you can:

• Get rich

• Bankrupt your competition and

• Dominate the world?

In Monopoly success is defined by how many possessions (money and property) you can acquire with little responsibility for charitable giving (Community Chest).   Round and round you go in strategic pursuit of the “good life” of accumulating wealth, avoiding jail and rent.  Monopoly is a metaphor of the life we are born into where the prevailing assumption is that success and happiness are found in what we achieve and acquire. 

Writing in the 5^th century, St. Augustine recognized the world’s “game of life” is the result of original sin and the human desire to control, possess, and dominate, whether by ruling an empire or controlling a family.  However, the gospel offers another way to live in this fallen world.  It is the way to freedom:  a transference from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of His Son (Col. 1:13).  In his treatise, The City of God, Augustine saw the Christian faith as a new way of life, spiritually living in the City of God while physically living in the city of the world.  The former is primary and eternal and the later secondary and temporal. 

Unfortunately, the Christian faith often seems to be little more than a “get out of jail free” card acquired when landing on “Chance” during one our many trips around the board.   We simply store our “get out of hell free” card among our possessions with the plan to pull it out when the time comes.  Rather than our faith being a transfer from one kingdom to another, it is more like an addition to our current life.  We may even exchange church and Bible study for Baltic and Mediterranean since they have minimum value anyway.  Essentially life goes on much the same as it always did and faith becomes syncretistic:  a futile attempt to live by two opposing worldviews. 

Repentance and belief in the gospel is not designed to be an “add on” but to lift us out of our 2-dimensional, treadmill world into a 3-dimensional experience with Christ and His kingdom.  The gospel defines our new reality through the lens of faith…more like 3-D Monopoly!  (Maybe someone will invent a 3-D Christian Monopoly game.  Hey, there is already a 3-D Scrabble!).

In the kingdom of light our success is not measured in what we accomplish or possess, but in WHO we know!  Contrary to our view of eternal life as a condo in heaven with a lake or ocean view, Jesus said eternal life is all about knowing Him:

And this is eternal life that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent (John 17:3). 

In Matthew’s record of the “Sermon on the Mount”, Jesus gives a clear warning. 

Not everyone who calls out to Me, ‘Lord! Lord!’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Only those who actually do the will of My Father in heaven will enter.  On judgment day many will say to Me, ‘Lord! Lord! We prophesied in Your name and cast out demons in Your name and performed many miracles in Your name.’  But I will reply, ‘I never knew you. Get away from Me, you who break God’s laws‘ (Mat 7:21-23 NLT).

Our faith does not remove us from living in a Monopoly world, but it should free us from playing the game in the same way.  It should add a new dimension of reality that is intentionally developed through a lifestyle of apprenticeship/discipleship to Christ and His kingdom.

Questions for reflection:

1.  What other similarities does Monopoly have with life in the current world system?

2.  How should adding a third spiritual dimension change how we live in a 2-D world?  What does not change?