The free downloadable book, in English and Spanish, isn’t deep and it isn’t long. It’s a pointer to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and why you should care. It’s about the game that you were born into and what it takes to level up. Just so you know, it contains a small amount of mild profanity---if that is overly offensive to you then don't read it. Yeah, it’s copyrighted. So what? Print it, copy it, quote it, pass it on, whatever. The introduction is on this page. The next two web pages are complete sample chapters from the book. The free download is just below in Adobe pdf format. Just click on the little Adobe icon and it should download in seconds. Adobe Reader is free from their website (older versions may or may not open the file). I do not speak or read Spanish and I used an online translator to convert the files. My apologies if it did not turn out right :( . 

The newly revised chapter, Jesus of Nazareth, More than an Avatar, also available online as a short e-book (free of course), is also available below.

Introduction

“God is his name; the cosmos is his game.”

This little book is probably going to 'piss off' a lot of people, Christians included, along with atheists and those of other worldview belief systems. And when you start it off with a sentence like that, you just know that it’s not going to be another helping of your usual Christian cuisine. That’s okay. Jesus pissed off a lot of people himself. It’s written by a gamer for gamers, not the ladies sewing circle (although you might be surprised by what they talk about). If my occasional use of mild language overly offends you, then I suggest that you either stop reading or get over it.

I’m not going to climb into the rarified air of the academic elite so that you need to keep a search engine open just to know what I said (Dude, this guy must be smart! He uses big words!) Nor do I intend to confuse those outside of Christianity by gumming up the pages with Christianese. And, BTW, I’ll use poetic license as I see fit. Grammar police, you have been warned!

Just so you know, I’m a non-denominational Christian of  fifty plus years, raised in the Southern Baptist tradition. Personal experience, coupled with countless hours of study has convinced me that God is for real, that Jesus Christ is who he claimed to be and that the Bible is God’s word, front to back, although it is very often misinterpreted, misunderstood and misapplied---even by those claiming to believe in it. I’m not a Young Earth Creationist and I will tell you why. So, no duping---you have this info right up front.

    The second half of the twentieth century on down saw more and more people finding Christianity to be less and less relevant to their lives, starting especially with my own baby boom generation. They regard the Christian Bible as a mashed-up mix of unscientific myth, contradictions, invented and distorted history and bias. And the central figure, Jesus---a radical nice guy who may have thought that he was God and ended up paying for it. Why should anyone believe any of it, still less try to live by it?

    Why indeed, when every version of the Bible that you pick up seems to say things a little bit differently and sometimes more than a little bit differently; when respected biblical scholars disagree over dating, content and meaning; when the majority of the intellectual elite snicker in its face.

    This is a pointer to Christianity, but not in the traditional sense. That’s been done and done well over the centuries---for the few Christians willing to take the time to dig into it. Hey, let’s own it guys---most Christians have never even read the Bible, let alone studied it. I’m also convinced that the Christian church has allowed the presentation of these truths to become dated; that it is presenting a nineteen-forties witness to a twenty-first century Western world. But I’m not pushing a 'different gospel', just another way of sharing the Gospel (heresy hunters and the faint of heart take note).

As I said, I’m a gamer and this is aimed especially at gamers; for those familiar with the genre and for all those who have come and are coming of age in a scientifically, technologically minded online culture. There just might be more than a little similarity between VR (virtual reality) and reality-as-it-is---beyond look-alike, beyond make-believe. And if my 'what ifs' turn out to be nothing but crap, at least some of them can make for good illustrations. You just can’t top Jesus’ teaching parables, but a lot of them go right over the head of a generation which is totally unfamiliar with life in biblical times. I recently used an illustration from Dungeons & Dragons to explain the concept of God’s foreknowledge, and a Wiccan girl’s eyes lit up and she exclaimed, “Yeah! Now I’ve got it!”

One potential problem with trying to make the Christian witness more understandable to the twenty-first century world by adding science, technology and gaming to the mix is that this stuff tends to have a “shelf life”. It changes rapidly. Today’s “bleeding edge” technology turns into tomorrow’s unusable junk. Scientific theories get “patched” and sometimes tossed aside as new information becomes available. So, keep that free advice up front.

    I’ll get into subjects that are uncomfortable, if not off-limits, to most Christians but which have gained a lot of popular traction over time, including ghosts, angels and demons, reincarnation, UFOs (seriously) and other phenomenon under the so-called New Age umbrella, as well as the perceived bogeymen of science such as evolution, Big Bang theory, climate change, and some of the more bizarre concepts like time travel, extra dimensions and Multiverse Theory. I’ll also explain why genuine science and skepticism are neutral and necessary and not the enemies of the Christian faith that so many presume them to be.

    We’ll get into the topic of NDEs (near-death experiences), why they often appear so much alike and yet so different, and what they may indicate, if anything, about life after death including the concepts of heaven and hell.

I have added a glossary of terms for certain gaming language not defined in the body of the book. I don’t expect everyone who reads it to understand these terms, including gamers coming into the genre after the terms go out of date (which they will).

The select bibliography at the end of the book includes theists, atheists and others who do not share a common concept of reality---in all fairness, if one is going to voice an opinion on a world view then he or she needs to pay reasonable attention to what all sides have to say.

    This book is FREE (why pay more?) Copy it, print it out, share it, whatever. Don’t sweat the copyright. Jesus said to his disciples that as they had received freely, so they should freely give (Matthew 10:8). I’ll buy that.