A Concept of Possibility

People play with possibility, saying "If I do this, then this will happen." Maybe they do not say it out loud, or even realize that it passed through their minds, but at some point someone has thought of what would happen in a given situation based on their actions. I am not innocent of this, I would even lay some claim of being a chief of this action. This though of "What if I..." has been apart of my life as long as I can remember, to the point of panic and sickness of both spirit and mind.

This way of thinking is good for chess or starting/running a successful franchise, corporation, or business. As a life style though, it leads to paranoia and fear. You feel a sense of total loss of control, and the thought that sneezing in public might scare the person next to you causing them to bump into someone else and that person having lost their balance falls off the bridge onto the highway below cashing through the windshield of a CEO of a very important corporation killing him instantly which causing the car to logically lose control and crash starting a chain reaction of wrecks which become a massive fifty car pile-up making a specific scientist late who was going to cure cancer but because he wasn't there the cure mutated and killed the world.

Now, reading that it makes sense right up to the of the fifty car pile up and then it starts getting ridicules. You, who are reading this, are probably thinking, no one really thinks like that and he just made it up, it's crazy. Well, the reason you've never heard of someone thinking that way is because in their minds they said "If I tell them how I think, they'll think I'm crazy, and they will either reject and mock me or lock me away." That way of thinking that I wrote out is a little extreme I will admit, but closer to home for me is the thought of relationships, friends and family.

The world isn't going to die because I said the wrong word to a friend at the wrong time. The peace between two countries isn't going to end because I lost my temper while I felt scared and cornered. I might hurt a friend though, and that might drive them so far away that I've lost them forever. The way of thinking "If I do this, then they'll do that" like I said before works well in chess. Because there are only two factors that determine the game, the moves you make and the ones your opponent makes. Life and relationships for those of us that think in this way can easily be viewed as a chess game, because it's only between you and that person. But that is a trap, and it starts a domino effect.

This in my mind is what I consider a Concept of Possibility. The idea or thought that any action I take in any circumstance will merit a reaction or cause an effect on something or someone else. Chess is a simple game of moving my pieces to block your pieces til you can no longer move. The game becomes complicated when you add in the factors of: 1. How long has the person been playing chess? 2. How creative are they? 3. How many moves can they keep in their head at one time? 4. are they smarter then me? 5. has someone taught them something I don't know? 6. is the fact that I haven't eaten going to effect my ability to perform? 7. was staying up all night researching strategies going to be helpful or will the lack of sleep hinder my judgement? This list can go on and on.

Take a simple idea, then start adding to it. Next thing you know you've built an entire web of possibility, and before you can even act on the idea you've built the web has become a thing of it's own, and it tangles you up and fear and doubt and the possibility of loss, rejection, and mockery paralyzes and turns you to mush and then it drains you like a spider with it's prey. You're left with nothing but "what if's" and regret.

Now, how does chess relate to relationships and life? Go back, read numbers 1-7 and replace them with any question. "is he going to think I'm ugly?", "can they every forgive me for what I did?", "am I going to sound foolish?", "will they give me the time of day?", on and on. The Concept of Possibility is a trap of Satan, he built and designed it so that we would be more worried about ourselves and how our life will be, then how God wants to reach and effect people. That web of God's that you're so scared of getting caught up in because of what people will think, well it's not a web, it's a safety net to save us from the burning building or the eternal fall. The game of Chess that Satan has you playing, the mind games that he throws at you to trip you up, well you don't have to play. You're free to get up and walk away from his game, in fact you should cause he wrote the rules and when playing games with the devil you always lose.

God has called us to love him, and IF we love him we will love the things he loves, and we will want to do the right thing, and we will follow him and he will guide us through every awkward conversation, scary interview, and dangerous situation. We won't have to worry about "what if", we'll only have to act on "What is the next adventure of sharing and knowing Christ more?"

What could possibly be wrong with that idea? :)