TF2: A Lesson in Grace

I used to play Team Fortress 2 (tf2) a lot more than I used to. Since their May update I haven't really played the game much. In that update, Valve introduced a new concept called the random drop. This meant that anyone at any time during the game could get a new weapon (before you had to earn them) or a rare hat (its just a cosmetic thing for your character). This new system meant that you couldn't earn hats, you just had to play the game. You didn't have to be good, you just had to be lucky. People quickly caught on that you could just sit idle in a server and then you were free to minimize the game on your PC and do other things. Some bright spark (who goes by the name Drunken_f00l) then made a program that fooled the main server into thinking that your were idling in a game without you having to even load up tf2. This meant you could increase your chance of getting a hat and do other things on your PC without the performance hit of have tf2 running in the background.

On Wednesday the developers come down hard on this 3rd party app. They said that anyone who got a an item using this app will have it removed and that from this point on anyone caught using the app will have all of their inventory removed. They also gave everyone who didn't use the app a new hat (a halo - because they have a sense of humour). People hit the tf2 forums to express their feelings- some were happy, some were quite upset and others felt ok as the halo didn't look that good anyway. The whole issue cause me to think about grace and fairness.

• Valve introduced a new rule which might of been fairer to only enforce it for that point on and not retrospectively punish people for it


• But it is Valves game. They made it and can make changes to it however they like.


• When people bought the game, hats didn't even exist. This is free content that for some reason people feel entitled to it or that they deserve this.


• You have no real power to get a hat. It is a completely free gift, based off nothing you can do


• Some people now blame Valve for idling in a server to get a hat which is funny because no one is forcing their hand in anything


• Some people who used the app thought that they deserve a hat. This is normally for one or two reasons: (1) they have played for a long time and random luck hasn't been in their favor or (2) because other people have some, so why can't they?

I see that we do the same thing all the time with God. God made us and it is only by him making this universe and giving us a free content like this whole Earth that we can live. For some reason we feel like we are owed all the good things from God in the world, even though we do not think God has any right over our lives. We complain about fairness and justice and then think that we are the exception to the rule and deserve grace, because to us that seems fair. Like the random hat drops, God's plan for our salvation is a completely free gift, but unlike the random hat drop, you don't have to be lucky to get it, you just have to be humble and put Jesus first in your life.