NPCs

NPC is a video game reference.

It means Non-Playing Character, or Non-Playable Character. The term refers to all the various background characters that you find in most games. As a player, you cannot use or become one of these characters. They are part of the scenery. Some are just there, you cannot interact with them in any way, like movie extras. Some you can interact with, but all their dialogue is preprogrammed and repetitive. Some can be killed. They have no volition, or any say in the outcome of the game.

I am sure that with the rise of AI technology, the NPCs in games will become more sophisticated and responsive. But that is beyond what I am thinking about here. I am more interested how the term is being applied to society.

NPC has become a cultural slang term referring to the general masses. More specifically, those who seem to have no opinions of their own and are just driven by the winds of whatever media they consume. If their crowd is happy, they are happy. If their crowd is upset by events, they must be appropriately outraged. They are carried along by the programming around them, wearing and eating what has been decided by others, captured by trends, obedient to advertisers.

Some people are now filming themselves interacting with innocent bystanders in public spaces, like supermarkets, and conversing with them as if they were NPCs in a video game. It has become a trend on social media. Oh, the irony.

Entertaining yourself at the expense of a fellow human, by making them a prop in your story, is both narcissistic and disrespectful. But the whole topic has me pondering my own NPC tendencies and how to combat them. I must stop being the digital version of a couch potato, and actually start playing the game and making a difference in the world around me.

Life is not about being background personnel in someone else’s matrix. Life is not being soulless automatons who simply perform as programmed. Life is not just being an NPC. We are much more than that. Life is not something that just happens to us. So what is life?

Life is a gift.

You didn’t request to be here. You never asked for life. You never paid for it. You have not ordered it from the manufacturer. One day you were not, and then, here you are. Life was simply given to you. What will you do with it?

Much of our individual personalities seem to be hardwired, preprogrammed, like an NPC if you will. So we are not just born blank. But we have volition. We have real choice. We make real decisions. We take real actions. We change. We grow. We can form habits, and we can break them. We can change our own programming. If you are not learning, you are not living.

We have a Creator. We are creatures. We shall always be creatures. But we have been given the profound opportunity to live and learn and grow forever. What if every day was a gift to be opened, instead of something to be endured? What if an NPC became grateful? It would cease to be an NPC.

Life is a treasure.

We start out wealthy, and we spend it as we go. We give our lives away. We absorb the cost, and often the heartache, of children. We serve the needs of others, even when we do not feel like it. We bury loved ones. We rescue friends. It all costs.

We bless, we give, we go, we help, we embrace, we comfort as we give ourselves away. if you are not giving, you are not living. Life is a treasure and all those around us have a claim on our treasury. But we must open our vault and hand out the precious gems of our time, our talents, and our love.

Love is expensive, for to risk love is to risk pain, but it is always worth the risk to love. An NPC could never know that. When I feel the needs of my neighbors on this earth, and when I look into the face of my grandchildren, I am reminded that life is a treasure that is meant to be spent. And I plan to die with nothing.

Life is a weapon.

When you were handed this life, you were handed a weapon. Despite what you may have heard from your philosophy professor, or some trendy theologian, good and evil actually exist. They are opposed to each other. That means war. You were made to affirm the good and oppose the evil.

You are here to push back the darkness and help slay the dragons that are always trying to consume us. Your life is not about you. You are here to make a difference on this battlefield, and to assist in pushing the pendulum of Earth toward righteousness. If you are not serving, you are not living.

Everything that you do here matters. When you speak it matters. There is no neutral ground on Earth. We are either helping the enemy, or the Creator. We are walking in either darkness or light. There are no real NPCs in this game. You are not a vapid decoration here. You were made to be dangerous.

Life is all of this and more.

Why does God spend so much effort and time on this one species, humans? Because we are made of mud and holy wind; these two substances push against each other. Even as our bodies decay, our hearts know there is something more. What is forged as a result of this pressure is an actual player, not an NPC.

I have been feeling my age lately. Although I may have a long way to go yet, I know someday I will have used all my days here. I will have opened my last gift. I will have spent my last emotional dime, and my treasury will lay empty. My sword will fall and lay at my feet, chipped but not dull, and all my arrows will be spent. I shall be carried from this battlefield, a broke, unarmed, empty vessel.

But I will be received by the great cloud of witnesses that surround us. For I was not an NPC. I was a living, breathing, human winner of the game, like the Carpenter who went before us and showed us the way out of the game. He is the one who calls NPCs to life and fills them with treasure, and arms them for battle. He is the one who broke the game, once for all, and set all the players free.

He is life.

“What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the gods and crowned him with glory and honor.” Psalm 8

“To be human is not a fact, but a task.” Kierkegaard