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Does God Play Games? Of Course!

© Richard Kent Matthews

I spend almost as much time at Powell's City of Books in Portland, Oregon--the largest bookstore in the Pacific Northwest if not the country--as most people spend at work. And I have been spending time at Powell's for more than 18 years. How much time? On average, three hours a day, four or five days a week.

I'm one of those fortunate(?) folks who don't have to do the 40-hour work week. I'm self-employed. I am a freelance New Thought minister-writer-singer, executive coach, and business speaker.. Most of my work is on Sundays, and then, mostly in the morning. I'm often in Powell's even on Sunday afternoons.

The point? I know the store nearly as well as the employees. My interests are varied enough to put me on all store levels at one time or another. But mostly, I spend my time searching through philosophy, religion, self-help, science, writing, and even business. I constantly seek to keep my ministry open and contemporary. My audiences seem to appreciate it. They keep asking me back.

Of the many hundred of books I have read on spirituality over the past 30 years, one stands out as the most remarkable, the most memorable. I found it at Powell's. I have shared this book with others; reviews are mixed. No matter. The book, "The Game of God," by Arthur B. Hancock, has changed my life. I have read it countless times. It's one of those reads that teaches you something new each time you run through it. Most of us have at least one book like that.

The premise of the book is simple: God, the Creator, is the only Reality, the only Awareness. And being thus, is lonely. What better way to dispense with loneliness than to create a universe full of an inexhaustible number of beings, both organic and inorganic? And better yet, since God is the only Reality, each living creature, each rock, each star, being God in disguise, is endowed with an innate drive to discover its own central reality, which, of course, is God. The movement and energy of the atom itself-quantum physics-is this same "innateness."

The universe, then, with all its incredible diversity, mystery, and life, is actually God playing a Game with Itself, a sort of risk-taking hide and seek, the objective being to ultimately rediscover Itself, hidden in all Its many aspects. Then, once the discovery is complete, which takes eons, the Game begins all over again.

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