Minecraft unlocks Pilate's dilemma

The 8-year-olds were finding it difficult to work out whether any choices they make have lasting significance! Do their choices ever matter? Adults may talk about us all, including children, having too many choices and always hoping something even better will turn up that we will want to choose.

But children don’t see it that way. They still expect adults to make the significant choices for them. So when we talk about making a choice to follow Jesus or choosing to live in a way that pleases God, do they actually think they can make that choice? Do their choices matter? Do they ‘make a choice’ to please an adult, to be like everyone else or to be different? This is not to say we should avoid presenting them with a choice. Rather that we need to think hard how we present it. Are we comfortable with the implications of decisions they might make?

These children had all chosen what to wear that day, but so what? None of them were wearing any favourite clothes, not even the shirt of their football team. Earlier, arriving for morning worship, none of them had chosen where to sit. Either a parent or brother had made that decision or they just sat in the nearest empty seat. They hadn’t had much choice for breakfast either. Cereal and toast eaten in a rush! They don’t choose where to go on holiday, since that’s a family decision, although their opinion might matter. Most of them will not choose their secondary school. It is only as they enter their teens that they begin to make choices that matter.

Somehow, the conversation turned to Minecraft! Minecraft is a computer game about placing blocks to build anything you can imagine. At night, monsters come out (if you don’t turn them off!), so make sure to build a shelter before that happens. One young informant added, ‘I never do that. I fight them!’

One child must have ‘chosen’ to play before church. For most of the group, this made sense. Given a choice many of them would spend hours on it, every day. What made sense to them was that with Minecraft, you make lots of choices: how deep to dig? What to build? What to destroy? How to escape? Every choice has a consequence, even though it might not be of lasting significance!

So when we talked about the choice that confronted Pilate (this was eight days before Holy Week), they were more ready to think of the consequences of his actions. We used a copy of the painting ‘Ecce Homo‘ (Behold the Man) by Antonio Ciseri to stimulate our discussions. They made a list of the options before Pilate. For Pilate himself, if he insisted on releasing Jesus, would there be a riot? Would word get back to the Roman Emperor so that he might lose his job? From now on, would the Jewish authorities think they could get him to do exactly what they wanted? For Jesus, if he was meant to die, wasn’t Pilate doing the right thing? (Now that was a challenging question!) Why didn’t Jesus persuade Pilate to come down on his side? The Gospels vary in how much they record of Jesus’ conversations with Pilate but Jesus doesn’t say a lot. For Barabbas, they speculated how he might feel. They were all agreed that Pilate knew what he should do because he could see that Jesus’ enemies were lying.

Pilate had only one choice, to release Jesus or Barabbas. A lot hung on it.

Children and young people always surprise us but that’s the joy of walking with them on their spiritual journey, which includes Minecraft!

Image: “Ecce homo by Antonio Ciseri (1)” by Antonio Ciseri – http://www.most-famous-paintings.org/Ecce-Homo-large.html. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.