An Author or a DM

President Camille N. Johnson, Primary General President, recently counseled us to "Invite Christ to Author Your Story," but I think that the authorial analogy works less well than another analogy of which one might think.

Part of the trouble of looking to Christ as the author of our lives is that the characters whose lives are written by authors don't truly have agency for themselves. Fictional characters have no wills besides those that their authors write for them. I suppose one could argue that we should allow our wills to become swallowed up in the will of Christ, but if we're supposed to do that, then why would God give us our own wills in the first place. Why give us the ability to choose if the best choice is to always do what Christ wrote for us in our scripts? Perhaps God wants us to choose to follow Him, but that's not really choosing. That's letting God and Christ choose for us. I believe that God wants us to make a more proactive use of our agency than that.

That's why I see God, not so much as an author who wants to dictate our entire life's story, but as a DM who wants to write the story with us. Dungeon Masters and D&D players share story-telling responsibilities in interesting ways. The moment to moment gameplay loop goes something like this: sees the DM describes the scene, including whatever just happened moments ago, the player decides what their character will do or try to do, sometimes dice are rolled to determine how well or poorly the player's plan plays out, and the DM describes what happens. In these situations, the DM can drop hints to encourage or discourage certain behavior (like describing a tapestry as "flammable" or "informative"), but the decision always lies with the player. The player has the final say in what the character does (or tries to do). Player agency is sacrosanct.

But when it comes to the overall plot of the game, the authority over storytelling shifts more in the favor of the DM. By shaping the world the characters inhabit, controlling the major world events, and determining the behavior of the non-player characters (NPCs), including the antagonist(s), the DMs exercise a great deal of control over the shape of the game. DMs determine who the enemies are and what they do. DMs determine what sorts of challenges the characters encounter. DMs shape the broad strokes of the story, even while it's left up to the players to fill in the details of how the story plays out.

But what really sells me on the analogy of God as a DM is the idea of how DMs and players need to work together in order to tell a good story. DMs need to respect players' agency over their characters and their characters' actions, and players need to respect the DM's plans and story-telling intentions. If the players work against the DM, the story will become directionless and chaotic and will likely end poorly, and if the DM neglects the will of the players, they players may grow resentful and rebel against the DM. But when the two work together, they can create a story they can both enjoy.

I don't want God to "railroad" me or to try to dictate my life's story, but at the same time, I don't want to neglect God's plot hooks and force God to endlessly improvise and come up with alternative plans. I want to respect God's desires for this story, just as I want Him to respect mine. Hopefully, if we cooperate, we can together tell a story with which we can both be satisfied, which, to me, sounds a lot more appealing than letting God write the whole story Himself.