first posted November 6, 2012 (caveat: 4 years later, no one really plays Minecraft that much anymore in our house)
My kids are pretty huge Minecraft fans. For those of you who have never played Minecraft, think of it as a big game of "virtual Lego." Those of you who have played Minecraft will know that it's as much like virtual Lego as Mario Karts is like "virtual Hot Wheels" (that is to say, only a bit).
Here's Wikipedia's description: "Minecraft is focused on creativity and building, allowing players to build constructions out of textured cubes in a 3D world. Game play in its commercial release has two principal modes: survival, which requires players to acquire resources and maintain their health and hunger; and creative, where the player has an unlimited supply of resources, the ability to fly, and no health or hunger."
Like I say, Minecraft is a popular pass time at our house. So watching the kids work on a project the other day I floated this idea past them: "Hey guys, you wanna build a scale model of Solomon's Temple, from the Bible?"
They were up for the challenge, and construction continued off and on over the next couple of weeks. We used the plans for the Temple and its furnishings as they're detailed in 1 Kings chapters 5, 6 and 7, and tried to follow them as strictly as possible (in Minecraft, each cube is supposed to be 1 metre by 1 metre, but for simplicity's sake we made each minecraft cube equal to one cubic cubit (a cubit is approximately 0.5 metres, so our scale here is 2:1.)).
My son, who is a wizard when it comes to all things techie helped us produce this virtual tour of our completed Minecraft Temple, which I offer here for your amusement and illumination:
I've read 1 Kings 5-7 a bunch of times over the years, but nothing brought it to life for me like this project with the kids, trying to figure out how and why they built this magnificent building the way they did. But what was especially fun about the job was the many opportunities it provided for us to talk about the things of God. Here's only a small sample of the questions we chewed over as we "built" our Temple, brick by Minecraft brick.
What's an altar? Why did they need one? What was in the Holy of Holies? Why couldn't you go in there? What's a cherub? What's an incense altar? What did they keep in the Temple storerooms? What's a "bronze sea?" What was it for? What were the tables for the show-bread all about? Why did they keep bread out like that?
Fielding these questions (and much deeper ones-- Why was it only the priest who could go into the Holy of Holies? What was sacrifice all about, anyway? And what happened to the Temple?) it occurred to me that meeting your kids where they play is perhaps the best way to mentor them in the things of God.
Louis Mercier once said, "What we learn with pleasure we never forget"; and if that was ever true, it should be true of our formation in the Faith.
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