The Gospel and Toilet Rolls

I wonder if you have ever heard of the Theta Trading Game? We came across it many years ago and we have used it several times with youth groups. If you don’t want me to give the game away, stop reading now. Otherwise, read on. This is how it works. You take a reasonably sized group of people (say 20) and, in a large building, church or hall, you divide them into three groups, each different in number. The groups move to different parts of the room and a facilitator hands them cards and explains the game. The cards represent three items they need to survive. Let’s assume these are, oil, wheat and rice. One card represents the amount of food one person needs to survive for a year. Each person needs one of each of the three cards to survive. Once the cards have been handed out, the group is asked to look at the cards and decide what their prospects are for the coming year. Then the game begins. Each group is asked to appoint a trader, who can visit each of the other groups in turn so as to engage in trade deals. Let’s assume that group A has just three people, with three rice cards, no wheat cards and ten oil cards. It ought to be possible to trade some of their excess oil to acquire the three wheat cards they need. But, before trading starts, they need to discuss what might be considered to be a sensible and prudent policy, in terms of having some reserves, in case of unforeseen disaster. The traders set off to do their trading and then report back to their group what they have achieved. It is now becoming obvious that the different groups have very different levels of resources. Group C, which has twelve people in it, has nothing like enough to survive and nothing spare with which to trade. Group B’s size and fortunes are somewhere in the middle. Trading continues until it is deemed that the game has come to a standstill.

What is interesting is to see how the game plays out and what the end result might be. On the few occasions we have run this game, it has always been great fun, but has also produced some startling results. On one occasion, war broke out between islands. On another, one island mounted a raid against their neighbour and stole what they needed. On another, the islanders resorted to cannibalism. When told they had ended up with too many people for the resources they needed, they simply said that they had survived, because they had eaten two of their members.

There is a punch line at the end of the game. After an enjoyable, yet fantastically intense evening, you reveal that for twenty people there were twenty wheat cards, twenty oil cards and twenty rice cards.

Life is not quite that simple, but as we look at the frantic buying up of pasta, tinned food and toilet rolls, I cannot but think that the number of people in our country has not altered discernibly since last month and the things we need to sustain life are much the same. Yet the frantic rush to overstock on such things as toilet rolls, which means that the next household has none, reminds me very much of the Theta Trading Game. In is reported that, in some shops in London, fighting is breaking out. The basic instinct for survival kicks in, civilized human behaviour begins to break down and some fundamental natural selection takes hold. A strong person has the advantage over a weak person, in the fight for the last packet of toilet paper. A tall person can reach the last packet on the top shelf, which is beyond the reach of a short person.

There is a challenge here for all of us, as a society, to seek to put aside the social/political divisions of recent years and to start caring for each other in a rediscovered cherishing of what it means to live in community. For Christians, our opportunity to gather in worship might have been curtailed for a time, but there is the opportunity here of seeking to live out what it means to give of ourselves in the service of others and to show something of the love of God in the value and care we give to them. ‘Who is my neighbour?’ is a Gospel challenge we must take to heart. ‘How can I serve my neighbour in need?’ is surely the exact question we need to fire our imagination, as we live as the Church in these troubled times. And it is through the witness of such service that we will be people who can offer hope in a time which, for many, now seems so dark.