Fairy Tale Spotlight: The Temptation of Jesus

I personally think people need to be a little educated on what "being tempted" really means. Most Christians have likely heard about how Jesus was tempted to evil but ultimately rejected those temptations. But the way people talk about it to me sounds like that don't understand the concept of temptation at all. I'll try and explain.

There are a lot of people that seem to think that Jesus had absolutely no inclination towards evil. They say that there was no interest or thoughts within him about sins of any kind. But that leads to a very important question: How then was Jesus tempted at all? Asked another way: How could Jesus be tempted towards something he had no interest in?

Let's say that you you, unlike most people, despise the taste of chocolate. A friend of yours holds up a Hersey Bar and attempts to tempt you with it. It will be no surprise when you calmly shrug and turn away quite easily. There was nothing particularly hard about doing that because you simply aren't interested in chocolate.

Now, it is the common belief that Jesus likewise quite easily shrugged off evil in the same way as someone might do to chocolate if they did not like chocolate. This being because Jesus was so incredibly spotless that he had no interest in evil at all. But then both of these scenarios lead to a very important issue: There would have never been a temptation at all.

Jesus went into the wilderness to be tempted, but according to how most Christians seem to explain the story, he had not been tempted at all. So which is it? Was he tempted or not? In order to be tempted, you have to want what is offered. Otherwise you are not being tempted towards anything.

Perhaps the reason Christians get this wrong is because believing in the alternative would suggest that Jesus was actually interested in sinful things. Sex, gluttony, and other forms of debaucherous behavior could all likely be on the table. In order to be tempted at all, Jesus would be required to be into those things first. He would still reject them... as he most certainly did, and he would do so because he refused to abandon his people for his own lusts.

Most people prefer not to think of Jesus being capable of such things, but here is the problem: The story of Jesus would not actually mean anything if he hadn't. Without the ability to be properly tempted while having an inclination towards sinful behavior, Jesus would be nothing more than a simple programmed automaton of God who showed up, did his thing, and was an inspiration to nobody but God himself. I certainly would not be as impressed with the man. He would simply be doing what he was doing for no other reason but that he could do it, and there would be nothing particularity exceptional about it.

Jesus was not only the son of God; he was a man. And as a man, he bore the weight of the world upon his back. Like all men, he had to make a choice. It was not made for him. He was left here on his own to choose, and whatever choice he made would have been the righteous one. If he had chosen to give into his temptations, it would have been righteous... but the point is that he didn't.

The reason most Christians ignore this is likely because they don't want to have the same responsibility. It's so much easier to believe that Jesus resisted because that's just the way Jesus was... because there is very little weight in that argument. But the truth is that Jesus proved himself greater because he was able to overcome these temptations. And in all honesty, we should not so easily shrug off this wonderful success. We should look upon his triumph and take such burdens upon ourselves.

I personally adore what Jesus did. He is the Way, and he proved to us this way when he overcame his own sinful desires. He proved, in the end, that he was truly a man without sin, but he would have never done this if he had not been tempted... truly tempted. You can do the same as he did. Don't just pretend he is some spook that was impervious to sin. Take the same responsibility upon yourself as you follow the Way. After all, he chose what ultimately became righteousness.

Thank you for reading my blog! Did you enjoy it? Either way, you can comment below, or you can email me at tkwadeauthor@gmail.com. You can also visit my website at www.tkwade.com. Check out my books! Thanks!

Fairy Tale Spotlight: Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon [Game Review]

I'm seriously reviewing a game I haven't played in over 10 years. I didn't put up a spoiler warning because I don't really plan to talk much about the story. I just seriously like this game even a decade after I last touched it.

Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon is a game for the Nintendo 64 that came out in 1997. It is a part of the very large Mystical Ninja game series, most of which never even was released in the states. We got about 4 of them I believe, and this one is my absolute favorite. In fact, it was the only one I could actually stomach playing.

The story takes place in the Japanese Edo period with all the beautiful fashion and design that came with that era. [I genuinely love the look of that period.] And I am not particularly saying that this game was graphically impressive. It wasn't. In fact, this was one of the most simplistic looking games of the time. But it all worked somehow and managed to make the entire experience interesting.

You play as four characters throughout the game:

-Goemon [A ninja who uses a large smoking pipe as a weapon.]

-Ebisumaru [A fat ninja man with a mallet. Also used a lot for comic relief.]

-Yae [Female, sword-wielding secret agent ninja.]

-Sasuke [Kunai-throwing robot ninja.]

The premise of the game is that a couple of thespians want to turn Japan into a giant stage so that they can perform for all of eternity. They are doing this by force due to the fact that they aren't very good actors. It's a completely silly idea, but the game's whole story and setting was silly to begin with. They seem self-aware of this enough to use it to great advantage.

The game play of Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon is a perfect cross between Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Both of these wonderful games seems crushed into one game and done in a solid and fun way. You have the enjoyable fighting and platforming of Super Mario 64 and the adventuring, dungeoning, and progression elements of Zelda. It rather created it's own genre by doing this, and I probably played this game more often than the two games that inspired it.

Graphically, the game is extremely simple looking. There isn't much to see. The cities and towns seem a bit under-built. Still, the Edo period design is still there, and it's not really as bad to look at as it sounds. It's just that if you compare it to other games out at the time, it does seem like a budget version. I still enjoyed exploring these places though. The graphics are easy to look past, and there are some fantastic design to many of the places you'll see. The dungeons in particular were wonderfully designed. I'll never forget the one that had you running around on a giant pool table. It was so much fun.

Probably the one thing that most people remember from this game is the music. I guess the way to explain it is traditional Japanese music with a modern pop influence. Whatever it really is, I haven't met one person who played this game that didn't come out of it humming some of the music. Very catchy. I actually use one of the songs as a ringtone. Additionally, this game had the best dungeon music I have ever heard. It progressively got more and more exciting the further you went into the dungeon. Very dynamic for the time the game came out.

There is quite a bit of fairy lore in this one, all with a Japanese influence. The kappa was among my favorite [I love his theme music too.] Most of the enemies are based on various Japanese demon designs. There are also giant robots. Why? Because Japan.

Despite my adoration for this game, I doubt it will ever receive a remake. I tried playing it on emulator, but I just has so much trouble getting it to frame correctly on my monitor. It was frustrating. If there is ever a way for you to play this game, I do recommend it. It isn't a particularly hard game. In fact, it's a good game for newbies to get into. There aren't really a lot of puzzles. It's mostly just platforming and combat. All very simple and intuitive. Play this one any way you can.

Thank you for reading my blog! Did you enjoy it? Either way, you can comment below, or you can email me at tkwadeauthor@gmail.com. You can also visit my website at www.tkwade.com. Check out my books! Thanks!

Fairy Tale Spotlight: The Mother Series

JRPGs are a dime a dozen these days, They are everywhere and on every video game platform. They are full of anime style characters carrying massive swords and summoning magic fireballs as if they were born with fire in their bones. Some of these are actually really good. Chrono Trigger is easily one of the best JRPGs ever made. I think even objectively, it could be said that nothing tops it. But I'm not here to talk about the best JRPG ever made; I am here to talk about something slightly different.

The Mother series of JRPGs is my all time favorite. This series consists of three games:

1. Mother [Earthbound Beginnings in the US.]

2. Mother 2 [Earthbound in the US.]

3. Mother 3 [Unreleased in the US. However there is a fan translation available online.]

I have played all three of these games, and I really cannot think of a better JRPG experience for me, a lover of fairy tales and fairy lore. And that is not to say that the game really is based on any particular fairy lore. The Mother series reinvents fairy lore and implements it into a modern day setting. But that is not the whole story, merely a small part of what makes these games so wonderful.

Many JRPG begin with a similar premise: A young boy who starts of small but grows and becomes a powerful hero by the end of the game. The Mother series does this in all three games; however, there is a far more personalized aspect to this trope that captured my attention more than the other JRPGs out there. It all has to do with the title of the game itself which is paramount to the story as a whole.

The use of the word "Mother" in the title had to do with the connection we have, not only with our origins, but all the things that are familiar and dear to us when we start off on this journey called life. Our minds always wonder back to their beginnings. It's where our home was. It's where our friends were. It's where our mother was when all this began.

Why do most of us still dream of the first house we live in? It's because we still feel that connection to it. The term "Mother" denotes everything about where we started. It's an aspect of us that we never let go of, and we take it with us to the very end of our lives, for better or worse. As a series, these games take this concept and build on it from beginning to end.

The most well-known of the Mother series was the first US release called "Earthbound." Although this was the second game in the series, it had no connection at all with the [then] unreleased first game. What we were given was a brand new type of JRPG that had absolutely no anime influences at all. The art of this game looked like it was localized in the US. It all looked like the silly cartoons of a child, yet this really still was a JRPG from beginning to end.

For the first couple of hours of the game, your missions center around your hometown and, of course, your actual home. The things you were fighting were pretty bad, but it was also forgiving because you could always return home and spend time with your mother and sister for a bit. It made everything better, and you could go right back out with a renewed spirit.

Unfortunately, your missions will soon take you further and further out and away from your home town. Although you can still travel back home whenever you want, it becomes more and more difficult. Eventually, you begin staying in hotels and just calling your mother up on the many phones around the game. These phone calls are important because you can actually get "homesick" which can drastically hinder you as go along.

This problem goes away once you start making friends. The more friends you make, the less you will see the homesickness that plagues you in the beginning. They give you the comfort you were missing and help you continue on as the world around you tries ever so harder to beat you down.

Now, the story of Earthbound is a serious one with deadly consequences for failure, but the actual journey itself is filled with fun and sometimes silly moments. A lot of it comes across as goofy and even ridiculous, but there is always the idea that something dreadful is right around the corner. But there is a reason for this strange contradiction. The game wants you to see life for what it can be: wonderful. And the idea of losing it to something that hates it... Well, by the end of the story you have something very important that you want to defend.

All the laughs along the way... the funny moments... even the strange and often silly creatures you had to fight... There was something so wonderful about all of it. And if the bad guys win, you lose all of that. And worst of all... you lose the very place where you started from. You lose your home town, your home, your mother. Earthbound had a way of making you truly love the world. It removed all pessimism from your mind and gave you all the positives. And realistically, there are more positives in this world than negatives. But a single negative can seem to overshadow all the many positives.

And I think the creator of this series understood this and wanted to give to us how he felt about the world. He wanted us to know that evil was worth fighting... because there was so much good in the world that needed to be saved. Love, friendship, and the connections we make are what make this world a better place. It's also what makes us stronger.

This blog is already a bit long, so I'll begin working to a conclusion. The second and third game is connected to each other. The first game is it's own thing, but it isn't as well-made at the last two. I consider Mother 3 to be the best, but it's a bit of a double edged sword. It is also the game that will tear you up the most emotionally. All the aspects of the other games are there, but it feels like the writer could have suffered a horrible tragedy and used the game to deal with it [unconfirmed]. The hope and faith of the other games are still there. It's all there. But his tragedy will become yours as the game goes on, and sometimes, I feel like I suffered through it with him. There are times when we have to come together and deal with our losses.

Although Mother 3 seems to be the last of the games slated to be made, there is something interesting on the horizon. A game called Oddity will be coming out soon. It is a fan made game originally called Mother 4. They changed the name to avoid legal hassles, but for all intents and purposes, it is the next game in the series. I fully intend to play it when it comes out.

Sorry for the long blog. I really adore these games. They were some of the most wonderful gaming experiences in my life. They are true and meaningful works of art. I recommend any and all of them; however, if you are not fond of very difficult games, I would avoid Mother 1 [Earthbound Beginnings]. But if you do play through its very hard campaign, you will be pleased with its story and ultimate conclusion.

Thank you for reading my blog! Did you enjoy it? Either way, you can comment below, or you can email me at tkwadeauthor@gmail.com. You can also visit my website at www.tkwade.com. Check out my books! Thanks!

Fairy Tale Spotlight: The Rarity of Heroes

I've talked enough about how the word "hero" is extremely overused. To recap: A hero is someone who seems to stand far above everyone else in the world. They cannot be beaten. If in combat, they will survive and kill all those who come against them. They are essentially the one-man army we see portrayed in most movies and video games. If they die, they die of old age or in some amazing, powerful way that inspires the masses for generations and sometimes into the far flung future. That is a hero. If you fought cancer and died from it, you are not a hero.

In these days, everybody wants too feel like a hero. But the truth is that heroes are extremely rare. They are so rare that some generations likely fail to produce one. The only real requirements for someone to be a hero is that they stand alone, unbeaten by anyone who comes against them. And this is where we come to a very unpopular aspect of a real hero: They have no true moral alignment.

The latter statement is more based off the social constructs of what morality is than anything universal. (Remember that all cultures throughout history considered their own accepted morality as universal.) The original definition of "hero" was merely "favored by the gods." Whether or not the gods exist, the gist of this definition is that this person seems to be beyond his fellow mortal kin, which one could likewise perceive as being touched by the hand of the immortal.

As a believer of God, I can easily imagine that a true hero very well could be touched by God, and very likely is. But the belief in this possibility is not needed to understand what a hero is. It is merely that they are seemingly better and beyond all other humans on the planet at that moment in time.

As I said earlier, heroes do not adhere to a strict code of moral righteousness. The term "evil hero" is actually not an oxymoron. Because of the modern perception that the word "hero" must entail that, as a hero, he must be good, we often use the term "anti-hero" to describe these infamous humans that kill and destroy untouched by all forces, good and evil, that come against him. However this is an unnecessary redundancy used to help people deal with the fact that evil heroes can exist. The truth is that if a human is unbeatable and stands above all other humans in greatness, that person is a hero... period. Whether he is good or evil is debatable based on cultural norms.

With the latter information in mind, if there be a truly evil hero who rises to greatness upon the corpses of the innocent--as certainly we would desire to grant this person the title of evil--should this man be dethroned? Well, I don't really know how I feel about it honestly. If this man really is the hero that he is, going against him is surely a death sentence. More so, if God has chosen him to be our judge, we shall be so judged for trying to take him down. But I suppose the good often has no choice but to rise up in compassion for the slain innocent. It is bound to happen regardless, and if this evil hero loses that which gave him that power, then we shall ultimately win, but not after fantastic losses. He is, after all, still a hero, and we fall well below that, even in large societal groups.

Nevertheless, the heroes of our world are rare. They are few and far between, but when they rise, we notice. These people suddenly become the most noticeable person in all the world. Their names are repeated constantly in the media and during conversation. Even long after they are deceased, they remain in our media circle for centuries. We can't forget them. We can't unsee them. They become a part of our lexicon and culture. Adjectives are invented based on their names. Whether we love them or hate them, the point is that we cannot help but notice them. That is what a hero is, and unless you meet those qualifications, you are not a hero.

Thank you for reading my blog! Did you enjoy it? Either way, you can comment below, or you can email me at tkwadeauthor@gmail.com. You can also visit my website at www.tkwade.com. Check out my books! Thanks!

Fairy Tale Spotlight: The Deadly Trial for a Woman

One of the greatest tropes of many fairy tales is the trial to marry a princess. I have seen this happen across the board in the old fairy tales of many cultures. The idea of it works something like this:

-A princess is available to be married.

-The king or the princess herself decides that only a very special person must be allowed to marry her.

-To determine who this person must be, some sort of trial must be completed in order to prove his worth.

-If the trial cannot be completed, the fellow who made the attempt must be executed.

Alright, let's go over each one of these steps, one at a time. We begin with the idea that there is a princess who has been put soundly on the market to be married. The big deal about this is that anyone, even a peasant, has a shot at this and can gain quite a sizable dowry as well as a shot at the throne. Even if she is ugly as a donkey (no offense to donkeys), the other aspects of being married to her still make the whole transaction a bargain. For this reason, many would try for this goal out of sheer greed.

But the latter brings us to our next point. It wouldn't do for this to be a "first come, first serve" situation. Oh, no. Certainly not. I mean this is a princess after all. No king would let just anyone have his daughter, and no daughter would rightly put up with that sort of arrangement. Therefore it is important that we make very sure that whoever does marry her is a person worthy of it. And the interesting thing about this idea is that they are entertaining the notion that there may be someone floating about their mass of peasants that may actually be worthy. Then they may not be. Nobody knows, but they seem to want to find out.

At this point, a trial of some sort needs to be administered. I've seen this trial come in a number of forms. Here are some examples of how they may be structured:

-The man must go out into the world and bring back some sort of ancient treasure guarded by some beast such as a dragon or some other monster.

-The man must dispense with a creature that has been causing problems in the kingdom such as a witch or some sort of demon.

-The man must solve some sort of riddle either given by the princess herself or the king. This riddle is often some sort of inside joke or some obscure reference which would be extremely difficult for anyone to "guess."

-The man is expected to get some sort of reaction out of the princess, such as making her smile or laugh.

-In situations where the princess is ill or completely comatose, the man may simply be expected to heal her somehow.

If the man who hopes to be this woman's husband wants to win this trial, he must certainly be a spectacular human being. These trials are all meant to be difficult and sometimes deadly. The idea of it is that this person will show himself to be more than just a mere peasant, at which point he needs to be raised up in status to be among those who are likewise considered as such. But what about those who fail this test?

As the final point morbidly denotes, failure to complete this trial almost always leads to the death of the hopeful male. In some cases, the trial itself would be dangerous enough to lead to an untimely death. But what about those riddles? Unfortunately, if the trial doesn't kill you, the king will. Think of this required punishment as both the price of admission as well as failure. It takes a certain sort of bravery to take a dangerous risk like this. It is, perhaps, the first part of the trial: the fact that you were willing to risk your own life for a goal. Courage.

It's obvious that the trial is simply intended to find someone with an abundance of good qualities. If anything, you might run into a hero in the process. First they have to show courage by accepting the ultimate penalty. Then they have to prove themselves capable of completing the task. None of this really reflects the man's romantic qualities, but it does help decide who he is as a man. It is a sort of litmus test to see if he is royal material. Marrying a princess is not only about love and devotion, it can effect the way the kingdom is going to be run down the line. This is why the test is so important.

The feelings of the woman are important, but the kingdom comes first. Who is this man who is going to rule someday? There are a lot of things that need to be considered in this case. It's not as simple as figuring out who will love her the most. And if they can well-determine the right man for the job, everyone will benefit from it in time.

As for me, I'd really rather not be put in a position where I could be killed for not guessing the answer to the riddle correctly. That also excludes me from heroship, but I don't mind that so much. I'm content just being an author in a small town. I've no interest in throwing a perfectly good life away for someone I don't know anything about. But it's safe to say that there would be many out there who would do it... and perhaps a handful of people in history who could succeed.

Thank you for reading my blog! Did you enjoy it? Either way, you can comment below, or you can email me at tkwadeauthor@gmail.com. You can also visit my website at www.tkwade.com. Check out my books! Thanks!

Fairy Tale Spotlight: Cloudy With a Chance of Imagination

I was driving to my friend's house today (7-30-20) when I saw something in the sky that I thought was very amusing. Apparently somebody high up in the sky was giving me a big (very big) thumbs up. It was clearly a hand. I saw the thumb and the curled up knuckles and the arm leading up to the hand that was forming this gesture. It was quite clear to me that this was not just a cloud formation; it was someone somewhere showing me their approval.

I was about 40 seconds from a turn. I realized that if I didn't get a picture of it, all I would have was a story and no proof. So while I was driving at 55 miles per hour, I fished my phone out of my pocket, tapped the home button twice to get it into camera mode, and flashed a picture right off my dashboard while frantically swerving away from honking cars about to hit me while I was extremely distracted by a massive thumbs up. I nearly died.

What was worse... So frantic was I during this spontaneous act of picture taking, I was pretty sure that the image would end up blurred while I was frantically getting the car under control. But what was I to do? I did my best, dropped the phone onto the passenger seat, and turned to go see my friend.

I think people talk about clouds in the same way a lot. People marvel about how we can see image in random vapor formations. It's been talked about many times, and I feel a little silly bringing it up again. But I think it is something entirely human to look at clouds and see things that just aren't there. But then again, who is to say that they aren't? What is a painting but a random smattering of color? Only we see something in them when we do it. In such a way, we are making random cloud formations whenever we do art. It's all the same, yeah? It takes a human mind to interpret any of it. When an animal sees a painting, they are less likely to see anything at all.

But then people giggle and chortle about seeing things in the clouds. Why? Because they are just the result of the weather. We're silly people to see anything in them at all. But then I still am reminded about the painting example. If we can throw stuff together to make art, so can God. And if we just happen to see something in them, then I'd call it good.

By the way, there's a happy ending to this story. That picture I took while swerving madly on the road, desperately trying to save my life: It turned out pretty good. 😀

Thank you for reading my blog! Did you enjoy it? Either way, you can comment below, or you can email me at tkwadeauthor@gmail.com. You can also visit my website at www.tkwade.com. Check out my books! Thanks!

Fairy Tale Spotlight: Valley

[Some spoilers ahead.]

I recently got around to finishing a video game called Valley. It is an indie title released by developer Blue Isle Studios in 2016. Where it is not the best game I have ever played, there were aspects of it that I liked which leads me to writing out this review.

The story centers around a male or female (of your choosing) heading out into uncharted areas looking for some fabled thing called the life-seed. Along the way, you find out that Nazis had already found it in WW2 and were trying to make a super weapon out of it. Right... because Nazis.

Honestly, the story of this game is kind of crap. I never really felt very interested in any of it. The Nazis barely even came across as believable. They just seemed like silly mad scientists trying to win a war. Even if that's partly true, I felt a lot of it was lost in the writing.

Another problem with this life-seed business is its connection to the earth. It's connected to all life on the planet, and using it basically just drains all the life in the world in order to... Gosh, I'm getting bored just writing this. It was basically a pagan, environmentalist, Gaia plot-line. Like I said... it was crap.

There was a reason I kept on playing though. Two reasons. The first was that the game is genuinely fun to play. The gameplay itself, not the story. The story can take a hike off a high cliff. The protagonist gets a special mechanized walking suit called a L.E.A.F. It makes you run faster, jump higher, and all around makes you feel like some sort of super hero. It has weaponized abilities as well for when you start fighting... things later. I got addicted to this runny jumpy gameplay and didn't want to stop until I had played through its 5 hour campaign.

Another thing I liked about the game was the fairy tale aspect of it. Well, that's sort of where the pagan stuff didn't bother me as much. They, at the very least, did a little research there. The game is quite beautiful and filled with little fairy creatures that really gave it a wonderful atmosphere.

The story also spoke about these ancient giants that roamed about with a taste for eating human flesh. There were a lot of statues of them with their toothy maws wide open. They looked like humans. This is likely a misinterpreted Nephilim reference. The thing that rather horrified me is how games like this are almost trying to make monsters like this seem victimized. It is as if they have every right to devour us for our sins against nature. I applaud them for their representation of these creatures, but I dislike the the way they are being framed.

Do I recommend Valley? Sure. I mean... there's a lot here that's still very good. Just playing the game felt very relaxing for me. It's a stunningly beautiful world that feels like they really managed to take it from concept art into the realm of 3D. And even the pagan aspects of the game are cool. It's just the story itself is sadly uninspiring and uninteresting. The good news is that it was fairly easy to ignore. Play it if you can look past such things. Avoid it if not.

Thank you for reading my blog! Did you enjoy it? Either way, you can comment below, or you can email me at tkwadeauthor@gmail.com. You can also visit my website at www.tkwade.com. Check out my books! Thanks!

Fairy Tale Spotlight: Doom

Doom is a game that came out in 1993. By today's standards, it is entirely obsolete in every single way. Thousands of games have come out since then. Most of them better looking, with better controls, and with an all around better experience. So why am I still playing it?

Interestingly, my first actual experience with the original game was for Super Nintendo. It was a terrible port with horrible controls, but I was a bit shocked to see 3D graphics to that scale on a system not really known for such things. Still, it wasn't very good, but I liked the idea of it. I don't think I really got into Doom full scale until 2006 when it was released on Xbox 360 with full controller support. I still had not had much experience with it, but I remembered the experience from the old SNES days, and I wanted to give it another shot.

I loved it. There are not enough words to truly express my love for this game. And yes, I like the sequels as well, but right now... I am only talking about the first one.

Doom was about a space marine trapped on a Mars base during a demonic invasion from Hell. There's nothing really accurate about it, but I never really cared. It's pretty much a game about a badass dude that kicks demon ass for hours at a time. I love it. I can't get enough of it. I am still playing the original game to this day.

Anyone who knows me knows I have a tendency to play games on the easiest setting. The exception to this rule has always been Doom. The game seems to get more fun and exciting on harder difficulties. They add more enemies and make some of them a bit faster. It does get harder, but the difficulty adds more of an intensity to it that never seems unfair. The earlier difficulties can get a bit boring after you've taken off the training wheels, and it's really hard to go backwards.

It does boggle my mind as to how this game has remained popular long after its time. It's not just me. Many people still play the original doom. There is still a bustling modding community for it. People are still making new levels for it like crazy. That game never died.

I guess I'll talk about the series a bit more later, but I was just so amazed at the lasting appeal for such an old game. I mean it's nearly 30 years old! What an amazing game. I'll probably be playing it until the day I die.

Thank you for reading my blog! Did you enjoy it? Either way, you can comment below, or you can email me at tkwadeauthor@gmail.com. You can also visit my website at www.tkwade.com. Check out my books! Thanks!

Fairy Tale Spotlight: God vs. Satan

So let's take a moment to fully appreciate the title of this blog. God vs. Satan. On the surface, it might seem right. It sounds like two polar opposites at war with one another. You can pick one side or the other. If you do good, you are for God. If you do evil, you are following Lucifer. There's a problem though.

A lot of Christians mistakenly think that God and Satan are constantly struggling with one another. And this might have been true if it wasn't for a very important point that many people overlook: God created Lucifer. I mean... the angel already lost!

Now that doesn't mean that Lucifer can't make a point here and there. Making a point is all he actually can do. He won't win. He is physically and spiritually incapable of winning. But he does try and make an argument with whatever time he has left. The only reason he has had any power at all is because humans have given it to him.

The word Satan basically just means "The Adversary." But the question here should be, "Who is Lucifer the adversary of?" Well, it's certainly not the being that created him. Yes, it's probably us. Remember that we are the same species of people who created the golden calf. We are ripe for the picking, as far as Satan is concerned.

But when it comes to this nonsensical struggle between God and Satan, it just strikes me as a bit silly. There never was a struggle. Satan can make a few arguments, and sometimes he can even be right. I mean... he certainly has a very low opinion of us. He was able to temp Adam and Karen... I mean Eve. That was pretty bad. But at the end of the day, he is not the strongest person out there. There is no struggle. There is no fight. By default, God already wins. It's not fair. It was never meant to be.

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God prefers the starting position...