What Stardew Valley Teaches Us About Biblical Work

What Stardew Valley Teaches Us About Biblical Work

Oh hey welcome to my farm I’m Maple I’m just harvesting some oranges cuz I look just about ready can I show you something I was out fishing this morning and I caught a massive sorry what’s that why am I playing a game about work after coming home from an 8 hour

Shift come on why would you ask me something like that this is a question I asked myself a while back stardo Valley is a fun game but it’s not fun in the same way that I find some other games fun for example it’s not the same kind of fun I get in a

Strategy game like into the breach where I spend some time formulating how my pieces will move and attack to make a perfect strategy a game like that makes me feel smart and I like that feeling and it’s not the same kind of fun I get in a fighting game like Tekken either

Where I get an adrenaline rush my heart’s pumping my opponent and I are trying to figure out each other and I end up getting a read to combo my opponent there are some moments in stardew Valley that do give me a rush of energy like when I’m trying to get as

Deep as possible in skull Cavern without using staircases or when I’m trying to keep this fish to Saye this darn bar but most of this game is more slowly paced I mean just look at the trailer the trailer gives a relaxing go at your own

Pace kind of Vibes if I were to describe the type of fun I have in playing stard Valley I’d say it’s satisfying and in this video I want to explore what draws us to play a game like this first I want to answer the question is stard to

Valley a game that appeals to our inner desires to answer that question I want to First Take a look at the intro of this game in the intro we see that you’re working for a company called joa even from the first scene we can already get a good glimpse of what’s going on

You along with a few dozen other co-workers are working desk jobs in what can be described as a cozy environment the office is well lit with an array of rather blinding lights probably make up for the fact that there are no windows here you and your co-workers don’t have

Have a sense of time of the outside world and there may be even some Seasons where you guys don’t see daylight at all actually I was wrong there are windows there are two windows high up on opposite walls each with a corporately dressed I’m assuming supervisor and from

The looks of it it seems like watching their employees is just little job they watch you and your co-workers like a predator stalking the prey to make sure you’re not playing 3D pinball Space Kid it on your computer from the 2000s they’re standing looking down on you

With a pose that only prideful corporate people and Asian uncles and supermarkets make there’s a light on the far wall That’s flashing work and not rest to give you the sense that they’re all about business but hey at least joa has a sense of work life balance right the

Second scene we get of this office is of a camera panning across some of the cubicles here we see that everything is great the walls the cubicles the computers and the desks but hey smile you’re with JoJo the camera continues to pan along until we get to your desk here

Here we see your workspace kid it out with a computer some notes on your walls and a camera pointed towards you to track your productivity as if these two guys aren’t enough right from all this we see that your workplace is physically and mentally suffocating at this point

You remember a letter that your grandfather gave you years ago who told you to open it when you would feel crushed by the burden of Modern Life let’s read this letter together shall dear Maple if you’re reading this you must be in dire need of a change the

Same thing happened to me long ago I’d lost sight of What mattered most in life real connections with other people and nature so I dropped everything and moved to the place I truly belong I’ve enclosed the D to that place my pride and joy farm farm farm it’s located in

Stardy Valley on the southern coast it’s the perfect place to start your new life this was my most precious gift of all and now it’s yours I know you’ll honor the family name my boy good luck love Grandpa you then hop on a bus to start

Your new life life on the farm this is where your new journey and the game starts okay maybe this game does speak to my inner desire a bit but it doesn’t stop there you start your new life on the farm you start waking up at 6:00

A.m. to T to your crops after the Harvest you sell it and pour most if not all of your money back into more seats you keep on working from Sun up till sun down working more than even 8 hours per day you don’t take weekends off because

You need attend to your crops your interactions with your spouse only last about two or three text boxes you invest money into a coupe a barn and animals to fill it you develop a strict schedule so you can get your work done early so you

Can take the bus to skull Cavern to risk your life for material so you can get better sprinklers is this your fantasy wait a minute your fantasy is just being on the grind no don’t give me that look you like the grind don’t you so does this game actually appeal to our inner

Desires do we all share the same subconscious desire as self-proclaim signal males to be on the grind I I’m going to say no but I do think that this game can reveal to us part of who we are made to be and for that we’ll need to go back to the first

Book of the Bible Genesis if you’re not familiar with the creation account God created everything in six days and he rested on the seventh we’re going to take a look at day number six Genesis 2 reads now no Shar had yet appeared on the earth and no plant had yet sprung up

For the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his

Nostrils the breath of life and the Man became a living being the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and to take care of it and the Lord God commanded the man you are free to eat from any tree in the

Garden but you must not eat from the Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil for when you eat from it you will certainly die in chapter 3 you read that a serpent deceives Adam and Eve to eat from that tree God learns of it and tells them this because you listen to

Your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you you must not eat from it cursed is the ground because of you through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life it will produce thorns and thistles for

You and you will eat the plants of the field by the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground since from it you are taken for dust you are and to dust you will return so from this passage we learned that

Work isn’t actually a punishment for sin work existed before Adam and Eve disobeyed God rather bad work is a result of sin after understanding this it makes sense to why a game like stardo Valley appeals to who we were made to be video games are made to be enjoyed and

Games that simulate work in some way or another cut out the bad parts of it I can make stardo Valley literally unplayable by changing only three aspects of this game to be more like the real world welcome to Maple’s patch notes change number one energy now works

Like the real world World your energy bar depletes just by being awake and moving around and based on RNG there will be some days that you’ll just wake up with less energy we’re also going to Nerf the amounts of energy that you get from food so you can no longer regain

Your whole energy bar by simply eating change number two we’re going to update the value of everything sellable to be like the real world according to statistics Canada in 2020 an average Farm had a profit of 17.1% this means that if parsnip seeds cost 20 gold per bag you now make a

Profit of four gold per parsnip down from 15 in the beginning of the game you’re given 15 parsnip seeds for free you’d be able to buy a whopping 18 seeds after growing them all and selling them change number three you no longer own your farm rather you work under someone

That pays you a salary this means that you can no longer reap their Awards of working harder you just given more work okay obviously nobody would play this game but I brought this up to bring up one point our experience playing stard Valley is actually closer to what work

Was originally made to be like compared to how we experience work today I do believe that we can experience fragments of what it’s like but only fragments so is the point of this video to remind everyone of work and how sad everything is no it’s not I want to start off by

Saying that there are times where it’s perfectly okay for us to grieve about work after all there was a time where it wasn’t like this before we as Humanity sinned against God I know that we’re often told that we should always be thankful we should especially if you live in the west we

Have ways to provide food and shelter for ourselves not everyone has that but that doesn’t mean that you should feel bad about feeling bad if you have days weeks or even seasons of life where work is more like suffering it’s okay because we have hope if we go back to our

Passage we read that in chapter 3:15 God tells the serpent that deceives Adam and Eve and I will put enity between you and the woman and between your Offspring and hers he will crush your head and you will strike his heel this is what’s known as a Proto evangelium Proto

Meaning first and evangelium meaning gospel this is the first promise of Jesus conquering Satan and sin Jesus lived a perfect life to take our punishment of sin he died in our place Rose from the grave and ascended into heaven and the Bible says that there

Will be a day when he comes back to make everything right again for us today this means that we have hope in the present and in the future let’s start off with hope for the present a YouTube channel called healthy gamer made a community post which argues that there has been a

Loss of meaning and purpose for work in recent years this is something that I would agree with it sucks that we’re in a position like this but this opens a time of self-reflection this is a time where we can ask ourselves real questions like what are we living for in life or what

Do we really desire I don’t believe in the Prosperity Gospel I don’t believe that if you donate money to the church or if you pursue God that God will give you Wealth Beyond measure the Bible doesn’t teach that however I do believe that if you start treating work for the

Lord that God will grow you in your faith and you’ll start to see some cool things happen to you and possibly your workplace as well unfortunately I can’t give you the specifics cuz I’m just some random guy on your screen this is something that you’ll have to wrestle

With God yourself and he invites you to do so we also have hope for the future there’s a misconception about Christians that in the afterlife will’ll all become angels and play Harps in the clouds all day that’s simply not correct the Bible speaks of a day when everything will be

Made right Heaven and Earth will pass away and a new Heaven and Earth will come and replace it this is where we as human beings made in the image of God can finally return to what we were made to do and be this means that there will

Be work but it won’t be work that you’ll have to do to live you’ll be able to pursue your passions and you’ll be able to glorify God in the specific ways that he he made you to be for me there are a lot of things that I want to do in this

Lifetime I want to make a video game I want to write a book I want to make music I want to learn how to draw and I think it’d be pretty cool to spend a few decades farming for me I have hope that I’ll be able to pursue these things one

Day I want to end this video with a quote from C Lewis if you don’t know who CS Lewis is he penned a little series called The Chronicles of Narnia during World War II CS Lewis spoke on a few radio broadcasts about the Christian faith these were adapted into a book

Called Mere Christianity in this book Lewis writes if I find myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world if work is suffocating you perhaps it’d be a good idea to play a bit of sty Valley

To remind yourself a bit of what we have to look forward to as Christians maybe you don’t play so much that your prayer for Jesus to come back and fix everything diminishes but play a bit to give yourself a bit of encouragement also this game is fun just play to have

Fun as well as well oh hey welcome to the end of the video thanks so much for watching I didn’t get to tell you about the fish I caught this morning this morning I caught a massive carp it must be the biggest fish I ever caught while I was

Reeling it in I got distracted by a treasure chest and I ended up getting that as well no there wasn’t anything good on it it was just cold yeah this fish has been in my pocket the entire video but it doesn’t even hey hello where do you go

Welcome to my farm 🙂

0:00 Intro
0:28 Stardew Valley Is Not Like Other Games
1:37 Does Stardew Valley Appeal to Our Inner Desires?
5:04 Stardew Valley Can Show Us Part of Who We Were Made to Be
8:52 We Have Hope
11:15 Conclusion
12:00 Cringy Outro LOL