When the Best Becomes Old-Hat

Though I am only 36 years old, there are a few items that I have placed on my bucket list, assuming that I live long enough to accomplish all of them. I would love to go and visit the hospital in which I was born, which just happen to be outside of Tokyo, Japan. I also want to go skydiving and survive. Those are events that I will probably enjoy with my family, but there is one annual event is on my bucket to attend that I plan on attending alone. Call me selfish, but I want to go to L.A. to attend an E3 all by my lonesome and completely soak in every new and upcoming game that developers have to offer. This used to be impossible, but seeing as I am now officially writing for a gaming group, I will be able to attend next year’s expo without a hitch.

Of course, that is entirely up to the answer of whether or not E3 is worth going to anymore. E3 2019 took place a little over a week ago and it was by far the weakest showing of electronic entertainment companies that this expo has ever experienced. Annual showrunner, Sony, along with dozens of other game development companies, chose to forego attending the expo to pursue other avenues of promotion. They have come to find that gaming conventions no longer hold the same influence as they once did back in the 90s’ and 2K eras. What was once an incredible inferno of ideas and creativity is now nothing more than a spark of ingenuity.

Being near the middle of my life, I like to look back at the good old days and reminisce on everything that was once great and is now old-hat. The original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) provided hours of awe and wonder for my pre-pubescent imagination to latch onto. Now, as I look at the graphics of a 25-year-old game, I am hit with the reality that video games change, drastically. I used to get sucked into the world of Hyrule as an 8-bit Link trudging through the monster invested wilderness of a broken land, but now I struggle to even get through the first dungeon of the game. Everything was so formulaic and basic, and I didn’t know any better. No one did.

Sure, the graphics are cringe-worthy right now, but they were all the rage 30 years ago!

Now all of those old games are seen for what they actually were; primordial stepping blocks within eternal franchises that made way for bigger and better things. Like E3, they were once the best and soon became the second-hat when something better came out.

In my own Christian walk, I try not to see my faith the way I see my video games. The Christian faith is something known as an “eternal concept;” one that does not change or is altered by the march of time. It cannot, by definition, become old-hat, and yet it often feels like it does. Going to church every single Sunday, moving through the memorized liturgy, singing the same songs, reading the same Bible; for something that is eternal it feels an awful lot like mindless repetition. However, repetition can be a good thing.

Looking at the Old Testament, the Israelite people were people of repetition. All of their religious rites, from the festivals to the sacrifices that were made, were done in specific ways to point back towards God. What this did was create a culture of remembrance, and that insured that the faith would be passed from generation to generation.

⁵ He decreed statutes for Jacob
    and established the law in Israel,
which he commanded our ancestors
    to teach their children,
⁶ so the next generation would know them,
    even the children yet to be born,
    and they, in turn, would tell their children.
⁷ Then they would put their trust in God
    and would not forget his deeds
    but would keep his commands.

Psalms 78:5-7

Retelling the message of the Bible is something that teachers for centuries have been doing, and you can carry on that tradition!

That which could easily be considered old-hat is actually used to preserve that which is most important. In our faith, we must see what is worth holding on to and passing forward, continually pressing forward with the Words of Truth that will not grow stale or sour. Other things, like church buildings, worship styles, and even the teachers themselves can become old and dated, but the endearing Word of God and his blessed Gospel will never change. I recommend reading it in a new way when it becomes old and stale; read from a different translation and connect with other teachers that may have new perspectives. The Words of the Lord are living and active, so they grow with you as an individual. Also, the church will continue to alter its appearance to fit the culture that it is in, but do not allow for either change or consistency to sway you from the Truth. The only factor that leads Christianity to become old-hat is you, and you can prevent that from happening by adjusting your thinking on the never changing Word of the Lord.