Reflection on Psalm 119:78--The Games People Play

"Let the arrogant be put to shame, because they have subverted me with guile; as for me, I will meditate on your precepts."
The world is full of people trying constantly to play each other for suckers. My 4-year-old already knows how to manipulate situations to her advantage. Every marriage has spoken and unspoken power struggles, every church has ways the people vie for control. Pity the preacher who doesn't understand that the real decisions are made under the oak tree before or after the official meeting!
These games are exhausting. Many of us don't want to play them, but we feel compelled to because we have been victimized when we didn't play close enough attention. Life can turn into a chess game.
We are all more impressed with our own ability to play these games than we are actually capable of winning them. "Let the arrogant be put to shame, because they have subverted me with guile." It is because we are arrogant--we think we can win--that we engage the subverting games we play against each other. We fail to realize that, as Rosy Perez told Woody Harrelson in 'White Men Can't Jump,' "Sometime when you win, you really lose; and sometimes when you lose, you really win." Even when we win the head games and power games we play with each other, we lose ourselves and lose the ability to be whole people who are connected to God, ourselves, and each other. We are "put to shame."
So how do we live in a world full of subverting, arrogant games without becoming part of the game or being victimized by those who play games with us? The Psalmist prays, "I will meditate on your precepts." The Psalmist does not have time or attention for the games, the subversion, the undermining, the power struggle. He's too busy tending to his own stuff. He's too busy letting God call him out, straighten him out, show him a new way to think, to live, to be. He doesn't have room in his head or his calendar for God's project of conforming his soul to God's ways while simultaneously struggling with everyone else for control of things. So, he has to hand over control to God. He has to leave the struggles and games for God to take care of. He puts the "arrogant" in God's hands--"You deal with them; I'm too busy dealing with YOU and with ME."
Now there's a choice we can make that can lead us to a path of sanity in the midst of a crazy world. And, when we refuse to play the game with others, oftentimes they will give up the game themselves. Give it a try. It can't work out any worse than the way we've been doing it so far.