Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach wrote, “Pain is the greatest teacher of mankind. Beneath its breath souls develop.” Well said. Pain is able to grab our attention in ways that comfort can not. It forces us to look deep into our souls and wrestle with our sense of self, of justice in the world, and of ultimate reality. But pain is not a good foundation for a system of belief.

The Origins of Chess Theology

Between July 2013 and July 2015, my marriage of 23 years came to a crashing end, my 18-year career as an ordained pastor was demolished, my seemingly clear future was eliminated, my oldest son died by suicide followed a few months later by the equally tragic and unexpected death of my nephew’s wife. I was reeling in pain. In the immediate aftermath, I developed a tongue-in-cheek understanding of God and life I called “chess theology.”

Chess theology was less of a well-developed belief in who God is than it was a brief metaphor for life. Imagine God and Satan, good and evil, are playing a game of chess. The stakes are high: ownership of the universe and the ability to determine the ultimate destiny of every person who ever lived.

In the game they play against each other, they each possess a somewhat weak and limited king that must be protected at all costs – or the game is over. The queen is the most powerful piece on the board with almost unlimited ability to move and capture other pieces. The bishops, knights, and rooks are less valuable due to their more limited ability to move and capture pieces. And then there are the pawns.

The Pawn’s Purpose

There is one king, one queen, and two each of the bishops, knights, and rooks. But there are eight pawns. With some exceptions, they are only able to march forward into battle. The other pieces at times use them as shields and at other times are frustrated by the pawns who always seem to be under foot and in their way. The pawns’ greatest value might lie in the fact that they are expendable – if a pawn can be used to protect any of the other pieces, it will be sacrificed.

Chess theology teaches that in “the game of life,” some of us are more important than others. Some of us are strategic players, more valuable because of our abilities or our stature. Others are more expendable. At that time in my life, I counted myself as a pawn and tried to find strength in the belief that I was being sacrificed for some greater good. I tried to share Paul’s hopefulness from Philippians 2:17, “Even if I am to be poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all.” In reality, my understanding of myself, my world, and God was filled with my own pain and presented a skewed view of reality.

Reconsidering the Basis

Chess theology – although mired in pain – is not entirely off-base. The Byrds captured a piece of wisdom when they sang, “To everything turn, turn, turn. There is a season turn, turn, turn.

And a time to every purpose under Heaven. A time to be born, a time to die. A time to plant, a time to reap. A time to kill, a time to heal. A time to laugh, a time to weep.” They understood that there are seasons that we each go through in cyclical motion. Someone laughs while another weeps, often with no sense of what is happening in each other’s lives. Some lives are filled with more laughter; others with more tears. But we each get our time with both.

The song draws on the language of Ecclesiastes but fails to grasp the depth of what the teacher in the book wrote. We can spend our lives maximizing laughter and minimizing tears or running from storms and traveling to sunlight but when it’s all said and done, we are “fleeting.” As James wrote, “Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” (James 4:14)

Failure leads to destruction and success leads to death. Happiness and sorrow disappear when our still bodies no longer produce tears of joy or sadness. Like smoke dissipating in the wind, our lives and our legacies vanish. Some of us may make it into the history books, but children will roll their eyes when they are forced to read about us and college students will drop the books into their laps as they fall asleep midway through our stories.

A Message of Freedom

To some, this will sound terribly sad; to others, they will hear in these words the sound of freedom. If the writer of Ecclesiastes is on target, then a person can do no better than to eat, drink and enjoy their work in this life. That’s profound.

Imagine a couple sitting by the side of a road in India with their two young children next to them. The air is hot and their labor is hard. They squat beside a pile of granite boulders, beating away at them one at a time with handheld sledgehammers, slowly pounding the boulders into smaller pieces that will be used to rebuild the road next to them. When their day is done, they might have a small meal and some lassi or water, but not much.

If the couple in India can find joy and meaning in their work, they could be better off than the couple sitting down to eat at a posh restaurant in an air-conditioned room at the top of a skyscraper. The family in India who has almost nothing might be more wealthy than the couple in the United States or Dubai who “has it all.” It’s not about what they possess in their world but what they possess in their hearts.

A Better Understanding of Pain

Chess theology is wrong. No piece nor person is disposable and the situation in life does not determine the purpose or meaning of that life. The pieces are more alike than they are different. When the game is over, the king, queen, bishops, knights and rooks are all placed once again in their box or in their velvet-lined and custom-shaped cabinet. Side-by-side, they wait until the next game is played. When it begins, which piece captured the king is immaterial; the next game is about to begin!

My pain told me that I was a pawn in God’s hand. (Others might have said that Satan was attacking me.) I tried to comfort myself by believing that the pain had a purpose beyond myself. Ironically, the pain was not something that was being done to me but something that was becoming a part of me. Throughout the rest of the game, my challenge is not to find the purpose or meaning in my life…but to find the joy in it. “A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. This too, I see, is from the hand of God…” (Eccl. 2:24)