THE BORING GAME OF MONOPOLY

 In the game of Monopoly, players roll two six-sided dice to move around the game board, buying and trading properties, and developing them with houses and hotels. Players collect rent from their opponents, with the goal being to drive them into bankruptcy. It's one of the best-selling games ever and was especially popular during the Great Depression (1929-1939).

In my opinion, you'd be hard-pressed to find a more boring and time-consuming game other than Monopoly. Well, maybe Cricket comes close. For those who don't know, "Typically, first-class cricket matches are played over three to five days with, at least, six hours of cricket being played each day. One-day cricket matches last for six hours or more. Cricket has special rules about intervals for lunch, tea and drinks as well as rules about when play starts and ends." (A person can fall asleep just by reading that paragraph.) Monopoly is certainly right up there with Cricket on the Richter Scale of Boredom. 

But for the sake of argument, let's say you and I are engaged in playing Monopoly. I land on a lucrative, large-rent property which you bought with your hard-earned filthy lucre and you're about to charge me rent when I up and take your money from you and announce that the property is my mine from now on.

You protest with vehement rage; you're really, really angry. You're so emotional, you shout, "But that's not in the rules! You're breaking the rules!" To which I reply, "Rules? I don't play by any rules; I just do what I want. And that's it."

You take out the rules from the Monopoly box and turn to Rule # 19, which clearly states that what I've done can't be done because it's against the Official Rules. I reply, "You don't get it--I don't care about any rules, your rules or Monopoly's rules. And that's it." You keep protesting to which I keep saying, "You don't understand. Read my lips. I'm not playing by rules, period. And that's it."

You want to discuss things, but you find you can't because I'm not playing by the rules, so you can't reason me. Over and out, no conversation. What's happened is that we have become ungovernable in the game. There is no control over the game. Therefore, we can't play. 

That's what Julie Wronski says is happening in America as she writes, "The United States is approaching, or has already reached, ungovernability. 

She says, "Americans are divided on simple facts and live in two different realities, we are not a governable people. When groups in American society believe in two different sets of rules on how to play the game of democracy, it cannot be played and we become ungovernable."

We used to be governable because we believed the same simple facts: absolute truth exists and it's revealed in the Bible. But today the time has come when one group says that, but another group says, "Absolute truth doesn't exist and nothing is revealed in the Bible. You search for your own truth and I'll search for mine."

What does this sound like? Judges 17:6: "In those days . . . everyone did what was right in his own eyes." Our leaders break their own rules. Why? There are no rules, not even their own.

No election that can solve the problem. What's the problem? It's a spiritual one.