Board Games and the Church?

Kasey Olander: 

Welcome to The Table Podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture to show the relevance of theology to everyday life. I'm Kasey Olander. I'm the web content specialist here at the Hendrick Center, and today our topic of conversation is board games. We have two esteemed guests with us. One of them is Dr. John Adair. He is a professor of theological studies here at DTS. John, thank you so much for being with us today. 

John Adair: 

Thanks for having me. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. Our other esteemed guest is Travis Cook. He is a professor… Associate pastor of teaching. Sorry, I just promoted you to professor, but actually I think that you're associate pastor of teaching at Park Cities Baptist Church. 

Travis Cook: 

I'm glad to be here in whatever capacity. 

Kasey Olander: 

Thank you. Appreciate it. Well, board games is an interesting topic. It's somewhat universal. I feel like in a culture nowadays that is so dominated by screens and technology and devices, board games are something that have somehow still remained popular. So one of the things that we're going to talk about today is why are they so popular? What does that mean for us as Christians? And even what does that mean for us as humans? So I'm excited to jump into this conversation. So I want to start off with just, to set the table first, what do we mean by board games? Travis, I'll start with you, but how would you define what board games even are? 

Travis Cook: 

Yeah, so a board game probably implies that there's a board, and so that does maybe remove some card-based games. Are you including things like a role-playing game, like Dungeons and Dragons, things like that? And so I think what most people use now is kind of tabletop games. So games that you set out, you play on a table surface, a flat surface. And so I would say anything that is not… Obviously, there's even some board games or tabletop games that are screen-based as well. You can interact with an app. So yeah, I would say it's anything that you play on a tabletop with kind of a physical sort of interaction would be kind of how I would look at the tabletop game. 

Kasey Olander: 

That's a good point. Not to the exclusion of screens, but there is something physical that you're interacting with. It's not just computer-based usually, or at least that's not what we're talking about for the purpose of this episode. Anything to add to that? 

John Adair: 

I think that's a really good definition, being in a space with people and playing this face-to-face or there's something like that that's going on and there's something before us. But yeah, sometimes screens are part of it. They tend not to be the dominant feature. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah, that's a good point as well. So I think that we can identify some extreme reactions to board games. One of them being, "Oh, well, those are just frivolous. They're completely useless. We shouldn't engage with that at all. We should maybe only read our Bibles," or something like that. But then another extreme would be to get completely absorbed in, "I am this game," or, "I am this character," or something like that. And we can see how that would not be a healthy tendency either. So those are some of the polar opposites, but the hope is that through this conversation we can engage thoughtfully and Christianly with what is a huge subculture. So who is it that's playing board games? Is this just nerds? Who is it that plays board games nowadays? 

John Adair: 

I suppose it depends who you ask. Maybe people who don't play them say, "Nerds play them." And maybe people who do play them say, "Nerds play them," too. I don't know. I think everybody's playing… All walks of life. I mean, old, young, male, female, I don't think it matters. I don't think there's… Particular games might have particular audiences that might be a little more this or that. But I think in general, this is something that has been part of culture for a long time. I don't think even the oldest people among us, none of them were without board games as young people. So they were sitting around tables. Even if it was as simple as a card game, they had that. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah, that's a great point. 

Travis Cook: 

I think even party games, so things like Code Name or- 

Kasey Olander: 

Cranium. 

Travis Cook: 

Cranium, these games that… I'm trying to think of the one like Pictionary. Pictionary, these are party games that anybody can access. There's not a deep level of strategy involved, or maybe there is to master it, but not to engage with it. And so I think even my family or my wife's family has played a game where you have a screen on your head and then there's a thing you have to describe and people call it out or things like that. Even that which was popularized, I think, on the Ellen DeGeneres show… I think Ellen DeGeneres had an app that did that. People play those games. And so I think anybody in the right setting is willing to play a tabletop board game in the right circumstance. 

Kasey Olander: 

Right. Yeah. There's a lot of them that are really accessible to people, like you said, old and young, and it doesn't really matter if you're in a specific niche group of people because there's so many that are widely available and allow us to connect with people. So I feel like I married into board games. My family didn't do that a lot growing up, but my in-laws are always playing board games and card games and stuff. How did you all come by your interest in board games? 

John Adair: 

I was raised in it. We've been playing games for as long as I can remember. We always had games in our house. We had games that were age appropriate. I have a brother, a younger brother, and we were always playing things. We had games in our closet at home, and then with our parents, we would sit around the table, I think we played… We would play Uno a lot, we would play Dominoes. Those were regular at the table for the larger group, and that just blossomed into adulthood where it's like, "Oh, there's all these other options. How about this?" 

Travis Cook: 

Yeah, I think for me, I was not raised in it. I had a very, very serious working family. You're awake, you're working. But I was always interested in being able to engage in games and things like that. And so when I was in college, I had a group of friends that… We were into history and so we discovered Axis & Allies and that was kind of my first foray into it. And then I went to seminary where there are no games, it's work. But then during the pandemic, I was always on a screen, I was always looking at screens, and I needed something that was something else other than a screen to look at and to engage with and to be entertained by. And so there was a number of games that I got into at that point, and that's when I seriously started collecting and looking at and really kind of, I would say, probably investing too much money in tabletop games. 

Kasey Olander: 

We'll see what your wife has to say about that. I feel like each of those stories are not specifically unique to you. I feel like there's a lot of people who are either raised in board game homes or people who during the pandemic just needed something tactile to do. So what are some of the other things that are valuable? We talked about having something that's physical and not just another Zoom meeting or a virtual meeting, but maybe what are some of the other things that are valuable about board games, tabletop games? 

Travis Cook: 

I think for me, one of the things that is so cool about board games is the art. It is an opportunity for people to express their creativity. There are games that I've seen, that I've played that the mechanics, the gimmicks, the system is incredibly fascinating, but the art's not good. So the pieces are cheaply done, whatever, and I'm not as engaged with it. I'm not as attracted to it. I don't gravitate towards it. But then there are games that have beautiful art and I'm so entranced by them and their mechanics aren't very good, but I keep coming back to them. And then there are some games that manage to mesh them perfectly. 

Scythe is one of those games. This is a game I've played with Kasey's husband and play regularly. And actually this game, somebody made the art first. It was an artist that created this sort of post-World War I sort of steampunk world and somebody designed… Jamey Stegmaier designed a game around that. So I think it's the artistic ability. I mean, look at chess pieces. Chess is as old as forever and I have a Civil War chess set. The pieces all do the same thing, but it's the art that people find appealing. And so I think it's an artistic expression. So that's one of the things that I think is really wonderful about tabletop games. 

Kasey Olander: 

That's a good point. I think the game Wingspan is another example of that. 

Travis Cook: 

Same designer as Scythe. Same designer. 

Kasey Olander: 

Well, that makes sense. It's beautiful. 

Travis Cook: 

Yes. 

John Adair: 

My thirteen-year-old self is super jealous of you right now because you have a Civil War chess set. That's what I always wanted and I just dreamed about it. Never did get it. So the fact that it exists somewhere, I'm happy- 

Kasey Olander: 

If it goes missing from your house, then you know- 

Travis Cook: 

I got it as a groomsman gift. I was the best man at somebody's wedding, and my buddy got me a Civil War chess set in college. 

John Adair: 

Brilliant. 

Kasey Olander: 

Oh wow. 

Travis Cook: 

Yeah, it was a great gift.  

Kasey Olander: 

That's amazing. 

Travis Cook: 

It was. Still is. 

Kasey Olander: 

And I actually… I didn't even pay you to say this, but we have another episode about appreciating art and beauty. So if you want to listen to that, then thank you, Travis, for plugging The Table Podcast. 

Travis Cook: 

Happy to. Yep. 

Kasey Olander: 

I appreciate that. So that's huge. I think that people don't always realize the intentionality that goes into something like game design and the literal art that you see, but also the art of designing something like that is something that's worth noting as well. 

John Adair: 

Same, yeah. I love the art. And just to piggyback on that, there's a game that we've been playing recently called Hollywood 1947, which is kind of… Everyone has an identity, but it's based in Hollywood and it's around movie-making in the forties where communism was always on the lurk. People are like, "Who's a communist and who's making communist…?" And so some people are communists secretly and other people are patriots, and you're trying to make movies that are in accord with your values. 

But the art is so great. When you make a movie, it's done by genre and they've designed all these little posters for the game and it just brings you into this moment, the '40s. And they look so authentic to what those posters are like. And I'm kind of a film nerd anyway, so having all of that, it just draws you in. And it's been a great… The mechanics are really good too. So it's nice to see those things come together and draw you in. And then we have momentum in our family or our wider friend group that's like, "Hey, we should play this again. Let's do this." And it kind of keeps us coming back to the table. 

Kasey Olander: 

The Table. That's funny. 

John Adair: 

Sorry. 

Kasey Olander: 

That's fine. 

John Adair: 

That's my way of helping. 

Kasey Olander: 

That's good. I'm glad that you brought that up also, because I think that something that people also underestimate is how much you can learn something from a board game. So I mentioned Wingspan earlier, and I didn't even know how many species of birds there were. I was like, "Are there three?" But there's so many different species of birds. Are you talking about this…? You're learning about the time period or different things like that, things that are just outside of your normal world that a lot of times board game designers have explored and come up with some really accurate things that allow the participants to learn something about, something that's out of their usual element. 

John Adair: 

Totally. Yeah, one of the games that brought me into more serious gaming, I discovered in college, it's nerd level, top tier. It's called Advanced Squad Leader. And it is multi-module. You can be as into it as you want. But it's World War II-based and all of the scenarios are based on actual battles. Some of them are historical modules, so they've done the map to scale. They've got the Battle of Stalingrad. And you can play through the battle in the space that it took place in. Having a sense, so learning, just getting a sense of, we all have a sense of what Stalingrad was, but being in that space and saying, "Oh, there's this and these kind of movements that could be made." It really is enlightening to be able to be drawn into that. 

Travis Cook: 

Likewise, there's a game, again, I got as part of a wedding that I did. 

John Adair: 

A theme. 

Travis Cook: 

That's how I collect most of my games. I guess, now I'm realizing a theme. I need to do more weddings. Called Black Orchestra. And you are assembling conspirators to assassinate Hitler. And again, the characters you can play are all, you can be Dietrich Bonhoeffer, of all people. My wife was actually Dietrich Bonhoeffer and we did wind up successfully assassinating Hitler, I think through sniper rifle with Dietrich Bonhoeffer. 

But you learn the different plots and the different powers and the ways that it worked. Again, there's elements of counterfactual things that go on, but you are allowed to interact with the space and have this immersion that I think most people find history or something boring and you wind up, you can actually get in and manipulate it a little bit and it winds up becoming a little bit more realistic. 

Kasey Olander: 

And you learn it in a different way than just reading a textbook or even hearing someone talk about it, to actually participate in it yourself. It's very different. I think one of the professors here, I think it's Kevin Wong, who uses a game called Terraforming Mars, to teach apologetics and talk about how difficult it actually is or how unlikely it would be that a world like ours, that is okay for life to exist, to just happen by chance. There are a lot of examples of that where you can experience something in a different way through a game than you could by learning through a different medium. 

What are some of the other values of board games that come to mind? We talked about art, we talked about learning. 

Travis Cook: 

Probably the big one is the communal aspect of it. People sitting around the table with other people. There are a number of games you can play by yourself, solo games, or they have solo modes. I don't know if maybe my nerd level will go higher than Squad Leader here, but a lot of the games I play are solo games. It's a way to unwind or whatever. But the communal aspect, getting a group of friends together to play this game and to play it regularly or to go down to your board game shop and interact with people that you wouldn't normally interact with. And yeah, I think the communal aspect is a huge part of it. It's something peaceful that you can do. Hopefully, unless you're way competitive. 

Kasey Olander: 

I was going to say sometimes they're not peaceful. 

Travis Cook: 

Sometimes not. 

Kasey Olander: 

Sometimes it takes a turn. 

Travis Cook: 

That's why God allowed us to make the co-operative board game. 

Kasey Olander: 

There you go. 

Travis Cook: 

Work together. 

John Adair: 

I think there's two, though. And there's something kind of fundamental about the way games are because even if you're competitive, you are coming to the table with a common set of rules that you're playing by, and a common idea of what this is. And we're all subject to that from the beginning. So even in a competitive game, we are coming together to do whatever it is before us. That cuts against, makes the competitiveness a little, when it gets out of control, like this is kind of against the spirit of what we're actually doing here, because what we're doing is something that is, I think, at a fundamental level, oriented toward a more peaceful interaction. Where we're all in the same world together and we're doing this thing together. Don't be mistaken, I do like to win, but can I do that in a peaceable way? That'd be great. 

Travis Cook: 

I feel that very deeply in my spirit because my wife will often want to fudge the rules a little bit. 

John Adair: 

Oh, yeah. 

Travis Cook: 

Especially if we're playing a co-operative game. She'll be like, "Well, we're the only ones that are here." I'm like, "No. There are rules." And she'll be like, "Well, what about a house rule?" I think we have one game where we have a house rule. I'm very, no, this is the way it's intended to be played. We're going to play it this way. 

Kasey Olander: 

You're appealing to a higher authority. 

Travis Cook: 

Exactly. It's exactly what it is. I'm very rules-based in my gaming. 

John Adair: 

I love that. 

Travis Cook: 

So that's me. Yes, I agree that the idea of entering into a space and playing, no, we're going to follow these rules and these rules are not … these rules are timeless and stuff like that. I think that's very helpful. 

Kasey Olander: 

And you're agreeing to get invested in some sort of story. You're agreeing to a role or a character or something like that. What difference does it make to engage with a story in this way where you're more of a participant as opposed to watching a TV show or a movie? You're engaged and you're thoughtful, but it's different. You don't get to affect any change in it. I guess, what difference does that make? 

John Adair: 

It puts you into the mix. And part of what people are, we're decision makers. Everybody has the ability to make decisions. And so when you're sitting in a space like playing a game, everything you do is based on decisions you are making. But you're also impacted by the decisions other people are making, right? 

Kasey Olander: 

For good or for ill. 

John Adair: 

For good or for ill. And sometimes that could be quite distressing and other times be quite invigorating, depending on the decisions people are making. But being in that space I think is really helpful. And just as a person, I think, who's in a story, when I was a kid, I loved Choose Your Own Adventure books. 

Travis Cook: 

Yes. 

John Adair: 

These were my favorite. I would go through these in elementary school, late elementary or whatever, and I would just be all over it trying to find the path that I could read every page. That's what I was really trying to get to. But also to find a good end. And this feels a little bit like that when you sit down to play a game. It's like, how am I going to accomplish this task? Whatever it is. And it never quite looks the same. As you play with different people or people learn your strategies, it might be different depending on what day it is. 

Years ago I worked in an office, not at Dallas Seminary, but at another place, and I had a chessboard out at my desk for anybody to come by and people would come by and play with me sometimes. And I would play, and I had a strategy to win in three moves that I had developed. And I would always beat the person the first time in three moves. And some people would get beat multiple times that way. 

Kasey Olander: 

The same way. 

John Adair: 

Other people would figure it out and make the challenge, whatever. But it's like that was the kind of thing, it's like, "Okay, well they blocked my move. Now I've got to find another way to do this." And there's something really good about that that I think develops us as people. 

Travis Cook: 

I thinks there's different games. There's kind of a spectrum of immersion. If you're playing Sorry or Monopoly, I'm not a top hat in Monopoly. It just represents what I'm doing, but I'm not the top hat. But then you could do a game like Dungeons & Dragons or Gloomhaven or something else that's very immersive and very intense and you want to take on this character. And again, that's kind of where we started at the top. People can get lost in that. 

People can really identify to an extreme. You see that in video games as well. You see that in other things. But then there are some games where there's a certain level of immersion that you want. I have a game that is a card-based game that's called Marvel Champions. And each … it's a deck building game, but you're picking a Marvel superhero, Captain America, whoever, and they have a core set of cards, and then you can add in other aspects to make them kind of flesh them out, what kind of way you want to play them. 

But each character, the characters that are the most fun to play are the ones that make you feel like you are that character. So I feel like if you choose Iron Man, one of his things is you have to build his suit of armor, so you have to collect different things to do it. Or if you're Captain America, you have a shield and you can throw it and all this other stuff. And it's just, there are other characters. You're like, man, I don't really feel like I'm being this person. There's a certain level of immersion that helps you. 

But then there's also the idea of making decisions. There are games called legacy games where when you make a decision in the game, the game changes and the game changes permanently. The next time you play it, you are expected to play with that rule, with that set. There's this idea of permanence involved. And that's a fact of life. You make decisions and every decision you make in life reduces other decisions you can make. 

I married Kim. That means that I am eliminating many other choices. In middle school, I was well aware that many of those choices were eliminated for me, probably because of my love of board games. There's this idea of permanence, and when something's gone, it's gone and you can't get it back necessarily. When you're thinking through those decisions and living it out, you've got to recognize that when I make decisions that those are permanent decisions. 

Kasey Olander: 

Right. I feel like I have to think about that a little bit. Wow, that was a reality check. 

Travis Cook: 

Also, I don't play a lot of legacy games, I think because of, I don't like the idea of permanence. 

Kasey Olander: 

My real life has enough of that. 

Travis Cook: 

Yeah, no, I don't need any more of that. 

John Adair: 

Indeed. 

Travis Cook: 

I want to be able to flip the board over and start over again if I don't like the way things are going. 

John Adair: 

There you go. 

Travis Cook: 

I believe they call that a rage quit. 

Kasey Olander: 

That may be the term. 

Travis Cook: 

Yes. 

Kasey Olander: 

Well, that's interesting. Since you brought up immersion, is there an element to … I guess, how do we interact with the fact that sometimes in games you have to attack or kill or in some way harm somebody? In a way, you would never do this in real life. If my husband and I are playing a board game together, I would never attack him in real life. But in order to play this game, it is part of the mechanics of the game. 

And so is there, I guess any danger in that? Or how do we interact with that as Christians, the fact that it's enabling us to pretend do these things, but then also some games require actual lying. There's some of those games of deception. I think you mentioned, I don't know if somebody mentioned Secret Hitler or something like that. But Mafia, there's a lot of games like that that require actual deception. So fake, fake sins. And then I don't think that this lying in a game is actually a sin. But I don't know, what are your thoughts? 

John Adair: 

It's a great question. And one that I've had to wrestle with as well. Many years of doing college ministry and playing Mafia regularly and being good at it means you're a good liar. 

Kasey Olander: 

Mm-hmm. 

John Adair: 

And you're deceiving people that you love. And what are the consequences of that? And honestly, I think you have to navigate it in the community of people you're with. I never wanted to win the game at the expense of relationships. 

Kasey Olander: 

Right. 

John Adair: 

And I say that my best self never wanted to do that, whether that was actually the case or not. I let other people speak to that, but I definitely want to be on that space where it's like, yeah, I can do some of these things in good fun. We tell our kids sometimes things about what we might do for their birthday to protect the surprise or whatever, and so we're telling a little lie or whatever it is because there's something really cool coming on the back end of that. There's these spaces where we enter into and all of us together know this is what's happening here and we're all kind of okay with it, right? And I think that's good to remember. 

The other thing I would say is we tell stories all the time about these kinds of things as well. And the issue is always going to be how we frame what it is that we're talking about. If I'm playing mafia and I'm lying to win the game, am I framing that in a way? Am I thinking about that in a way? Are we thinking about this game in a way that says, "Oh yeah, lying's awesome and this is how we should be in the world." In our context that was obviously a no. And we're not doing that. So I think everybody kind of knows that going in and we can recognize, like stories, this is separate from who we actually are, and that's healthy to be able to think about those things in a different space. 

Travis Cook: 

Yeah, I think it's so important. I think you said it really well. What are you willing to sacrifice a friendship to win a board game? And as embarrassing as it may be to say, I've had people become angry at me over board games, I've become frustrated and angry with people over board games. And not just when I was a kid. These are grown up Travis. Grown man Travis. I remember … and one of the things I'm really bad about is I want people to go. Take your turn. Let's go. Let's keep moving. We're here to play a game. And I've had a couple of instances where people have gotten upset with me because I've pushed them. 

It's not just, you have to figure out who am I when I play a game, what kind of a player am I? And does this bring out the best in me or does this bring out the worst in me? And if it brings out the worst in you, then as a follower of Christ, you avoid that. There's some things you can't do. The alcoholic doesn't go to the bar. The hyper-competitive person doesn't play the game that brings out this dragon in you that ruins your friendships and your relationships. 

But to the same point, you do enter into those spaces where everybody agrees to the rules. In our society, in a marriage, we agree that lying is wrong. You do not lie to your spouse. You be honest and everybody, whether you were as pagan as the day is long or you were an ardent follower of Christ, you hold to the values of honesty and openness in a marriage. With that being said, there is no one more deceptive than a man who is trying to propose to his girlfriend. Good marriages are based on honesty. Good proposals are based on lies, deception and cheating. 

And that's just a fact. And typically it is the female, the prospective wife, she's on board with it. She wants to be surprised. She wants to be deceived to some extent. Santa Claus kind of the same way, right? You want to be surprised. If you enter into that space like Mafia or something where deception is a key part of the game … even a game like Rummy, Go Fish is based on deception to some extent. I'm hiding my cards from you so that you can't see them. 

Now, the expectation is when I ask you do you have any nines, then you're supposed to tell the truth. So you've got to follow the rules. And again, it's entering into, again, to use a nerdy theological term, you're entering into a covenant with people of an agreement. This is the way we're playing the game. These are the rules. And outside of this setting, I'm not going to do these things. When I play board games with my wife, my wife is an incredible engine builder, not like car engine, but a game where you have to build a city or build something and get a machine going that feeds it. Oh my gosh, she's so good. Games like Dominion. She's really good when she plays Scythe because of this. 

What messes her up more than anything else is when somebody does something to disrupt that and she gets really upset about it, because she doesn't want you messing with her little world that she's created. My strategy is to win. And I know that if I can just throw a couple wrenches in it, I can win. But ultimately I lose. I lose after the game is over. And so you've got to think through those things as to how can I make sure that the other people are having fun as well and enjoying the game. And maybe I don't do as well as I could, but the other people are enjoying themselves and I'm fostering community and I'm fostering an enjoyment. 

And more than that, I want people to come back and play the game again. I'm not going to crush somebody right out of the gate because … If I can, I don't mean I can all the time, because I want them to come back and play again. 

Kasey Olander: 

Right. Yeah, that's fascinating. We have all agreed to this certain set of rules, and so we've agreed to this when deception is okay. And frankly, we probably wouldn't be okay if somebody just outright showed all their cards or told the truth the whole time. You're like, that's not how you play the game. When deception is the key and you're trying to see who has the best poker face, so to speak, when that's part of the game, we all agree to come to that. And then like you said, it ends when the game is over, and we're not like, we lie to each other forever now. This is it. 

Travis Cook: 

And there's the merciless aspect. If you're playing a game with four or five people and there's somebody who's very much lagging behind and you realize, I can get really far ahead if I just attack this person, or I could take this person's stuff. And you're like, I can't do that. I'm not going to do that. It's not worth it. There is compassion and mercy even in the moments of the game and recognizing that there's a person behind those pieces and you want to love them well. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah, because a lot of times, most of us come to board games to have fun. As Christians our chief end should not be to win at all costs. But we're having fun and we're building community. This is a sort of a related question. Is there a sense in which … Well, let me back up. 

A lot of games have a good and evil. Most of the time where the good team that's trying to defeat the evil team. What about when the roles are flipped and we are for some reason, we're the villains and we're trying to take down the good? Is there anything that that does to us as believers? Is that something that we feel like is okay for Christians to engage in? 

Travis Cook: 

Yeah, there's a whole series of games, Ravensburger, I think is the company that puts them out called Villainous. And they take Disney villains and the Marvel villains, they've taken Star Wars villains because Disney now owns everything, and you play as the villain and you're trying to accomplish your task and stuff like that. It's not an uncommon thing. It's a mainstream. You can buy those games at Target. 

I don't know. I think it depends on maybe the gratuitousness of it, right? 

Kasey Olander: 

Sure. 

Travis Cook: 

This is a little bit of a leap. There's a computer game called Hearts of Iron where you can play as any nation during World War II. And the studio is based out of Sweden, I think is that makes it. And one of the things that they will not let you do if you play as Germany. There's no concentration camps, there's no genocide, there's nothing like that. Even though that was an intricate part of the story of World War II and one of the tragedies and also one of the redeeming elements of it, and it made it such a good versus evil, they won't let you do that. And even modifications that players make, they take them down. They are very active in destroying that element of it. 

They don't even let you have … They use a classic German flag rather than the swastika and things like that. I think policing that idea and then also having a sense of your own conscience. I'm not going to engage in that. I'm not going to be that kind of person or I'm not going to … that's too far for me to play that way. Dungeons & Dragons is one of those where you can do whatever you want. You can engage the story however you want. If you want to be this incredibly sexually driven individual character, you can do that and make everybody really uncomfortable around you. 

Or you can be incredibly violent or crude or whatever. But I think that's an element where people, especially as a believer, you perhaps go too far. Even if it's a character you're playing that says something about your heart that you want to play that way. That you want to engage in that. You want to put your toe in the water of what it's like to be that kind of person. There's danger there, I think. Just personally. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. 

John Adair: 

Yeah, I would think in terms of attachment. How attached are you to the dark side, whatever that is. And so you're talking about gratuitousness, the level of detail that you put into that. Those are the things that I think are troubling and that you want to pull back from. I think it's fine in principle, you're going to have two sides. And the reality is whatever side I'm playing, the other side is the bad side. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. That's good one point. 

John Adair: 

That's kind of where you're even in something like checkers, it's red and black. These are the colors of the pieces, and I'm the black pieces, those red ones are the bad ones, and I've got to find my way to vanquish the foe. And so I do that. That piece is always there. But I think if you're getting way detailed into that kind of stuff, it can be problematic. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. And as Christians, we have convictions about what movies and television we should follow the spirit's leading and all of the things that we engage with where we draw boundary lines on, "You know what, for the sake of holiness or purity or my relationships or whatever it is then I follow Jesus instead." And this is where each of us has to draw our own lines and convictions. 

John Adair: 

Right. Honestly, my problems are less about being attached to the dark side of whatever game it is and really about my own heart and how I enter into games. The game is really ancillary. I could be a really bad good guy, because that's just the depths of my heart are wicked and I don't always want what is good. There's always this constant wrestling, but I feel like that's mostly coming from me, rather than from whatever the mechanism is out here in front of us. 

Kasey Olander: 

And I like that both of you have highlighted that. That as Christians, that's something that we're not just ignorant of, but something that we're actually monitoring is our own hearts and seeing what comes out of us and what, Like, "Wow, I'm a lot more upset about this than I thought I was." Or that sort of thing. That we can learn not just information or history or anything like that, but also we can learn about ourselves and learn about each other in a way that the Spirit can use to convict us and show us different areas that he still needs to work in us. 

Travis Cook: 

The litmus test for anything, particularly any form of entertainment is what do I become or what is this making me into be? If you're somebody that can't watch an athletic event without becoming a colossal rage monster or have your… There are people that I know that stopped watching college football because they're like, "I was tired of having my emotions on Saturday dictated by the way my team did." They were also an Arkansas fan, so they were very, very negative, most Saturdays. But that shows a sense of maturity and growth and saying, "I can't do this without it corrupting who I am or being more corruptive perhaps." And so if a board game or a video game or a sport or pickleball turns you into this Godzilla monster that's just destroying really, stop doing it. You can't do it. Limit yourself, find other things. Pick up something cooperative, perhaps. Go on a hike, find a way out of that would be my recommendation for sure. 

Kasey Olander: 

That's really good. Are there any other ways that y'all can think of that games could impact our spiritual lives? 

John Adair: 

Yes, I think they absolutely do, because everything you do impacts who you are spiritually. You're talking about entertainment, Travis, but anything, all the things that I'm engaged in are discipling me in some way. And so I can't not think about that. It's always part of what I do. I do think one thing that I've found to give a specific answer to your question is, one thing I really appreciated is the way that games create a space, not just of community, but of joy. And there's a real sense of there's goodness in the world that we're able to sit down and do something together and have a good time together. That's a real grace and a gift, I think. And those are things that I think we need to remember. The world's a hard place and we want to be people who are joyful. That's a fruit of the spirit and being able to sit at a table with people and play a silly game, play a strategy game, whatever, something in between that creates that space for that. And that's a really important aspect of us as spiritual beings, I think, and as Christians. 

Travis Cook: 

Friendship in our modern day is something that's difficult to cultivate. 

Kasey Olander: 

Thanks for plugging our episode, the Lost Art of Friendship. 

Travis Cook: 

You're welcome. And anything that can give you an excuse to sit down and develop friendships with people, particularly male friendship is difficult to cultivate. And I am like this as a person. It is embarrassing to say as a pastor, but sitting across the table from somebody and having a conversation is much more difficult for me than to sit shoulder to shoulder with somebody and play a game or work on a fence or something like that, do something side by side. You have those kind of conversations that happen in between turns, somebody else is going and you're able to talk. And so anything that can cultivate a friendship. And even to an evangelistic sense, going into spaces, going into places that you normally wouldn't go. I would probably never go and associate with some of the people at the board game shop, but I get to go talk to them. And on their name tags, they have things that say what their preferred pronouns are and things like that. And it's an opportunity to be like… Working at a Baptist church, I would not… We don't have that, let's just say. 

There are unbelievers that work at my church, but you don't have that element. And so getting to interact with culture and a section of culture that you don't normally get to is really great. And then there are some board games and there are some really good board games that actually interact with biblical theological ideas. Like actual, there's one called Anno Domini, we were talking about it before. And it's a work replacement game, and you are trying to get closer to the apostles at the Last Supper. And I don't know how I feel about that. I don't know that I want to make a game out of the Last Supper, it's such a solemn moment. There's another game called Ezra and Nehemiah where you're trying to build the temple and you're trying to build the wall around Jerusalem and it's really well-designed and things like that. And so there've been other less successful, more failed attempts to engage in biblical material. 

But again, it's an opportunity if you're trying to teach people about scripture, "Hey, this is just a work replacement game. Let's talk about the importance of why is the Last Supper so important? What was going on there?" And you could really have an interesting conversation if you're willing to spend $70 on this game and figure it out. I haven't yet. 

Kasey Olander: 

And that's one of those areas where people develop their own convictions about is this sacrilegious to make a game out of something that's actually a really critical moment? Or is it something that some Christians, I think are sometimes prone to be like, "Oh, I can only engage in Christian content, so it would only be Christian board games that I would ever play." But it seems like throughout the course of this conversation, we're talking about the value of building relationships with people, building friendships with unbelievers and the hopes of sharing Christ with them, but also strengthening relationships with our brothers and sisters in Christ. I am happy to say that my husband and I have played board games with both of you guys and our relationships are all intact, so let's celebrate that for a second. 

John Adair: 

Great. 

Travis Cook: 

Are they? 

Kasey Olander: 

We'll talk about it off-air. 

Travis Cook: 

I've been meaning to bring some stuff up. 

Kasey Olander: 

Okay. Any closing thoughts on our discussion today? I feel like it's been robust as we've highlighted board game art and being able to learn things, make decisions, build community, and even the power of engaging experientially in a story. 

John Adair: 

I don't know if this counts as a closing thought, but I've been thinking about just as you guys were doing this exchange here, this last exchange, and this has maybe come up a little bit before earlier in our conversation, but I think in terms of Christian stories versus not and all that, one of the things that games do is they are story oriented typically. Even a basic card game like rummy or versions of rummy that we play, it builds a story as you go through and it's like, well, that game took on this life of its own and it had this sort of ebb and flow or whatever. And I think there's something really helpful about that and really human about that. Even in a card game that has no words or characters or anything, we create a narrative around what's happening in this story. 

And that speaks to who we are and what we're looking for. And to me, this is why any game can be useful for thinking about us as spiritual creatures and as believers because we're people who are part of God's story. And there is a larger story going on. And so I'm always thinking about how do the stories that we tell related to whatever we're playing here, the stories that these games are telling, how are those stories, how do they fit into this larger story? And that's a productive space to sit in and to be able to think about, is this a story that's lifting up things that are good and that are oriented toward good things? And what I find is most of the time, yeah, they're telling a good part of the story here. It's a little piece maybe, but it's helpful. And so it's, I think, good to give us opportunities to do that kind of thing. Tell stories and participate in them. 

Kasey Olander: 

Something about us as humans find stories really compelling. 

John Adair: 

Right. 

Travis Cook: 

And you have an emotional response to those stories. The rummy game that you were really excited about. You're like, "That was the game that I did this, this and this." I'm sitting over and being like, "That was the worst game I've ever played in my life." And I have a depressive emotion about that. I would think as far as closing thoughts for me, I think because since Settlers of Catan, Settlers Catan blew the board game market back open. It's not just Monopoly and sorry, and games that make you want to just flip the table over. If you have an interest in something, there's a board game about it. And so I would encourage anybody to go down to a board game shop and just look around, you'll find something that can pique your curiosity. I like ships, I like naval stuff. 

I found a game where you can build ships. You can find a game that can do pretty much anything and give it a shot, try it and see if that's an area where, again, if it can get you off of a screen, get you around playing with other people, even cooperative, however it is, I think it's worth investigating. And if it's not for you, you can sell it, move on. But I think the board game world is a nice place that I think many people ignore but it's a really good excuse to get people around the table other than food and drinks or whatever it might be. You can have something that's maybe more tactile in that way. 

Kasey Olander: 

That board games can cultivate an environment where our relationships can flourish and we can be together and enjoy our embodiment as humans that we're doing something physical. Well, this has been a wonderful conversation, John and Travis, thank you so much for joining us today. 

John Adair: 

Thank you. 

Travis Cook: 

Glad to be here. 

Kasey Olander: 

And we want to thank you too, our listener, for being with us. If you like our show, go ahead and leave a rating or review on your favorite podcast app so that other people can discover us. And we hope that you'll join us next time when we discuss issues of God and culture to show the relevance of theology to everyday life.