Mark Sorensen Have you ever been at your favorite Mexican food restaurant and the waiter warns you, “Don’t touch the plate. It’s extremely hot”? Ok, honest show of hands. How many of you actually touch the plate to see exactly how hot the plate really is? That’s what I thought. I do the same. Knowing this, I should have known better when my daughter openly says over dinner one night last week, “Dad, whatever you do, do NOT download this game called Flappy Bird. Seriously, Dad. You’re better having never played it.” Boom. There it was. She threw it down. And, honestly, I think she knew what she was doing. Luckily, I’m an adult, she is still a child and I knew better. For about 30 minutes. Then I downloaded the game (hey, don’t judge).
Initial impressions? It was difficult. Much more difficult than expected. The concept was pretty simple. Tap the little flappy bird through openings in pipes and keep him going without touching the pipe or hitting the ground. Clear one pipe, make it to two, then three, and see how far you can go. I’ll admit it. It was addictive and, apparently, I wasn’t the only one playing the game. It took off. Big time with the creator of the game, Dong Nguyen, almost overnight becoming an instant success with this little game making almost $50,000 a day. And then? The unthinkable. The creator of the game, Nguyen, pulled it.
Game over. Flappy Bird bites the dust.
Why? Nguyen told Forbes magazine, “Flappy Bird was designed to play in a few minutes when you are relaxed. But it happened to become an addictive product. I think it has become a problem. To solve that problem, it’s best to take down Flappy Bird. It’s gone forever.”
It’s been interesting to see the response and reaction to his decision to cancel the game. Just this morning I saw that someone had placed their Iphone on Ebay with the now non existing Flappy Bird app loaded on it, and it was selling for almost $100,000. Amazing.
What I love about this story is that Nguyen owned Flappy, Flappy didn’t own Nguyen. Think about that for a moment. It’s a pretty simple concept but it can be amazingly difficult to own in our lives. Take the rich young ruler Jesus talks to in Mark’s gospel. Take a look:
17 As he went out into the street, a man came running up, greeted him with great reverence, and asked, “Good Teacher, what must I do to get eternal life?”
18-19 Jesus said, “Why are you calling me good? No one is good, only God. You know the commandments: Don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t cheat, honor your father and mother.”
20 He said, “Teacher, I have—from my youth—kept them all!”
21 Jesus looked him hard in the eye—and loved him! He said, “There’s one thing left: Go sell whatever you own and give it to the poor. All your wealth will then be heavenly wealth. And come follow me.”
22 The man’s face clouded over. This was the last thing he expected to hear, and he walked off with a heavy heart. He was holding on tight to a lot of things, and not about to let go.
23-25 Looking at his disciples, Jesus said, “Do you have any idea how difficult it is for people who ‘have it all’ to enter God’s kingdom?” The disciples couldn’t believe what they were hearing, but Jesus kept on: “You can’t imagine how difficult. I’d say it’s easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye than for the rich to get into God’s kingdom.”
I loved the message version of this text. “He was holding tight to a lot of things, and not about to let go.” What a great way to put it and how real for so many things in our lives. Here, Jesus is saying that having wealth is not necessarily a bad thing. When it becomes problematic is when our wealth and “stuff” has us.
In one hit of the delete button, Nguyen said that it wasn’t worth the addiction. It led me to look at the things in my own life and ask, “what do I own and, even greater, what owns me”?
Maybe it’s time to hit delete on some things.
What about you?
