How We Play The Game

There is a sequence near the end of "Ender's Game" that stood out to me. Ender has just learned that, rather than playing in a scenario, he was fighting a real war. He won the war by destroying the enemy's home world. He thought it was a game, but when it's made brutally real to him, he is shaken.

His trainer, Col. Graff, follows him and shouts "We won, that's all that matters." Indignant, Ender responds, "No, how we win matters." It was striking and unexpected, but also true.

I have written a review of the film. I didn't think it was a great film, but I thought it had some interesting and challenging ideas. One of them is that how we win matters. How we conduct ourselves matters. In other words, while our society prizes the ends as a justification of the means, the means matter.

I thought about that two days later when watching "Homeland." The CIA agents had closed in on an asset that could change things for them. But before bringing him in, the asset committed a brutal double murder on members of his family he felt betrayed him. Instead of bringing him to justice, the agents cleaned the scene, grabbed the asset, and brought him back to their base.

While I have no trouble believing this is the practice of our government, that doesn't make it right. We can't say we are a nation of justice when we will overlook brutal crimes to serve the "greater good." That is an ends justifies the means argument.

When you read the Bible, you see something different. The ends don't justify the means, the means is everything. In short, it's how we win that matters, it's how we live our lives that matters. It matters to God and it should matter to us more than it does.