Minister’s Letter – Snakes And Ladders
Dear Friends,
Life is no game, that’s for sure!
But some of the classic games we play certainly mirror, reflect and parallel life – sometimes very deliberately, sometimes (I guess) quite unwittingly. Snakes and Ladders is a case in point.
It doesn’t exactly require a lot of skill to play the game, of course. Children will often learn to play it at an early age. Roll the die. Count the squares. Along, then up, then along again, until you reach the end – with a good few likely ‘detours’ on the way. Not exactly complicated.
Just frustrating. An early introduction for a growing child to the ups and downs of life. Sometimes there are pleasant surprises, great ‘growth spurts’ of one sort or another when you really feel you’re going places. Then sometimes, too, that dreadful ‘sinking’ feeling, some sharp and sudden disappointment, those ‘hit-you-in-the-solar-plexus’ moments when the bottom falls out of your world and all your best efforts suddenly come to nothing.
Snakes and Ladders – welcome to the world, children! This is the world into which you’ve been born: a failed and flawed and fallen world whose ‘fault-lines’ can bring sudden desolation – and yet, as well, some unexpected joys.
Great ‘highs’ of soaring elation, dark ‘lows’ of sombre deflation – a game of Snakes and Ladders is, at least in some small ways, as good an introduction as you’ll get to what life’s likely to be like.
You’ve played the game, so you know how it goes. Even the ancient Greeks had got the gist of it I think. Remember Sisyphus? (Perhaps you don’t – you could well be excused for not having heard of the guy; but it’s maybe high time we all started learning some Greek). According to that ancient Greek mythology, this was the man who cheated death twice – and the price he paid for this ‘trickery’ was an endless, hopeless ‘Snakes and Ladders’ sort of misery. Compelled to roll a boulder right up to the top of the hill, every time he neared the peak the boulder rolled back down.
Whatever the source of the story, there was surely in this telling myth an echo in the psyche of the ancient world, an echo of the haunting truth expounded in the Bible at such length. Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord? Who may stand in His holy place? Who can get the boulder to the top? The same sort of language. The same sort of picture. The same sort of sobering truth.
We’re keen to do so, keen to ascend this hill. We try to do so. We want to be near to the Lord. But we’re all of us just like Sisyphus. We try our level best to roll the ‘boulder’ of our righteousness right up that holy hill: but every time we seem to near the peak … that boulder rolls back down. Our hands aren’t clean. Our hearts aren’t pure. The burden of the boulder is too much for us. It’s the ‘miry clay’ of the psalmist’s song, the ‘dreadful pit’ out of which we vainly try to climb (Ps.40.2): we get so far, but the sides of the pit afford us no grip and we slither back down to the mud and the mire at its base.
And so we start again. We make our New Year’s resolutions. This time we’ll really do better. And off we go again, up that holy hill we plod once more, rolling the burdensome boulder before us. Until once again our efforts are proved to be futile and we’re back in the pits once again.
Who can ever make it to the top of that great hill? Sisyphus, we’re with you! Our every best effort proves futile. Our steady, patient, square-by-square progression up the Snakes and Ladders board of life undone in a moment as we’re jettisoned back down the board to start again.
Welcome to the world of the 2020s! A Sisyphus society for sure.
Whatever the boulder, the outcome’s invariably the same. We have our own contemporary boulder at this time, of course, in the shape of a Covid-19 plague. What massive, commendable effort’s been expended in the arduous, uphill struggle of addressing this terrible virus and getting on top of the thing. Huge, sustained, beyond-the-call-of-duty sort of labours on the part of doctors, nurses, scientists; PMs, FMs, governments; ministers, modellers, every single member of society at large. Everyone pulling their weight: or ‘pushing’ their weight to continue the Sisyphus simile. Rolling this burdensome boulder up the hill. Vaccines as protection. Tablets for treatment. All with a view to breaking out of lockdown life and getting back to something like ‘normality’.
And just when we think that maybe we have made it to the top at last, along comes the next little lesson in our learning Greek – the dreaded letter ‘omicron’. And back down the hill rolls the boulder. Think of it as Sisyphus. Call it Snakes and Ladders. View it in the light of Scripture truth.
You could view it all, for instance, against the sombre backdrop of the Bible’s book of Judges: the roller-coaster, up-and-down experience of a people who had lost the plot and had no king and everyone simply did just what they pleased. A Snakes and Ladders story which is not without its parallels today. The raising up of ‘judges’ by their gracious God was very much the ‘ladder’ that they’d needed at the time – a ‘ladder’ through this leader which then raised them from the depths to which they’d sunk. And off they went again, square-by-square until once more they quickly slithered down the ‘snake’ trail of idolatry and sin.
Snakes. And then ladders. Again and again and again. Nor did it cease with the dawning of the era of the kings. The same basic pattern prevailed. The God-given ‘ladder’ of David as their leader, lifting them suddenly right up the league of nations at the time: but then, before too long, there were ‘snakes’ which came into play. Deceit and division. Defeat and disaster. And they’re slithering all the way back down the board, and they’re needing and pleading and looking once more for a step-up from God and a ‘ladder’ of revival.
Snakes and Ladders. How aptly the game is named! How instructive, indeed, is that very name by which the game has come to be known!
Snakes. Perhaps in all the scientists’ analyses of what’s going on today, the serpent’s not been noticed. Sin has been discounted. Satan is ignored. Maybe it’s time for some ‘gardening leave’: time for us all to go back to the garden of Eden and to reflect on what happened there. The snake and his subtle deceptions, enticing a people away from their walk with the Lord. Their sin and its instant conclusion, in a rapidly downward regression.
Is there not perhaps an element of this ingrained within the Sisyphean storyline of how this Covid drama’s being played out? Is there not an echo in our present-day experience, an echo of the ‘birth of Jesus’ song which Mary sang?
“He has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. .. He has brought down rulers from their thrones, but has lifted up the humble” (Lk.1.51f).
It’s Snakes and Ladders language, isn’t it?
The sin of pride, and the sudden, slithery slide back down the board. Is it our pride which is showing its face once again? Our haughty presumption, whereby we’ve assumed we’ll be able ourselves to figure out solutions and come up with all the remedies we need. The pride that we have in our science; our knowledge; our wisdom. Our pride in the speed with which we’ve produced all these wonderful vaccines. Our pride in the stunning logistics whereby the vaccines and the boosters have been rolled out so efficiently across these last few months. Our pride in the digital modelling in which our scientific gurus have engaged. Our proud, defiant spirit, and the consequent reliance on our own resources.
Our chronic, endemic, self-important pride. We even have a growing annual showcase of these brash, self-styled ‘Pride’ Marches. We’re a smart, intelligent people. We now know better than God. Who needs the Lord when we can do it so well by ourselves?
Have we not learned from Babel? Have we not listened in to the songs of the Christmas cantata? Have we not figured out that to land on this square is to slither back down to ‘square one’? The proud get scattered. The ‘rulers’ who boldly discount their submission to God are, just when they least expect it, suddenly brought down. It’s the same old Sisyphean storyline of sin.
We forget the snake at our peril. Proud of the way we roll up our communal sleeves. Proud of the way we roll out the vaccines. Proud of the way we roll out restrictions. Oh, we’ve been on a roll all right! Proud of the way we’ve been rolling the boulder right up to the top of the hill, conquering Covid at last.
And then, near the top, there’s this ‘omicron’. The slithery trail of the serpent and sin which sucks us back down once again. Snakes and Ladders translated across to the much larger board of our modern-day, national life.
We simply haven’t grasped at all the rules of how this thing called life is played, if we ignore, discount and pay such little heed to the reality of sin. The serpent and his repertoire of snakes.
Nor, of course, have we got the point if we leave out from our thinking the reality of grace. There are ‘ladders’ as well as the snakes.
The Lord who has brought down the rulers, is the Lord who will lift up the humble. Those, that is who know their place, who know they’re on the lower rungs of any sort of likeness to the Lord: those who know they have no leg to stand on in the presence of His majesty: those who know their own best, earnest efforts to ascend the hill will never get them close to God at all.
The narrative of Scripture is replete with these transforming ‘ladders’; stairways up to heaven which are lowered by the living God for renegades and rebels to be raised right up on high. Jacob’s ladder tells you all you need to know: mercy shown in bucketfuls to one who was an undeserving, self-advancing schemer: a good-for-nothing scoundrel who is elevated up to heights he could not ever have imagined in his wildest dreams (read Gen.28.13-15 if you doubt it).
‘Ladders’ are a feature of God’s grace. Lifting Joseph up from being a prisoner to being premier – in one quick, sudden, stunning act of sovereign grace. Lifting up the psalmist from that dreadful pit, and setting down his feet upon the rock – no more vain and tedious ‘rolling the boulder’ for him, now he’s standing on the rock. Lifting Daniel up from the obscurity of exile and giving him authority and influence throughout succeeding kingdoms in his day – instant elevation through the sovereign grace of God.
Mary got it right. He has lifted up the humble.
Ladders: for those who know and gladly recognize their need of them. Ladders – the Lord loves them! And it is, of course, a ‘ladder’ that He’s given in the Leader whom He’s sent. Jesus – the highway to heaven, the healer of hurts; the one in whom there’s renewal: the one in whom we are raised on high and with whom we’re now seated at the very right hand of the Lord.
Life isn’t a game that we’re getting to play: it’s a load more serious than that. But we forget at our peril these two profound realities of life. Snakes and ladders. Maybe this next little lesson in classical Greek, the short ‘o’ letter ‘omicron’ – maybe in God’s kind providence it comes as just another wake-up call: a sobering reminder that to discount and dismiss both the reality of sin and then, too, the necessity of grace – to forget, that is, that life is always played out now on a large-scale, global Snakes and Ladders board – is simply to be sentenced to a Sisyphean existence and a dead-end way of life.
May we humble ourselves, therefore, at the start of this new year, under God’s mighty hand, that He may lift us up in due time. He gives grace to the humble. And He cares for you (1 Pet.5.5-7).
With lasting gratitude for your partnership in the gospel, I remain always
Yours in the glad service of the Lord Jesus Christ,
Jeremy Middleton