I have always thought chess looked like my kind of game. I love Chinese checkers, and regular checkers; how hard could it be, right? Well, it's nothing like checkers, Chinese or otherwise. I have never seen so many rules to a game. First, the pieces all have names and specific positions on the board. There are rooks, knights, bishops, queens, kings and pawns. Then you divide the chess board into ranks and files which sounds a lot like a battlefield. Each chess piece can only move in a certain direction. Maybe this is not my kind of game at all.
 I realized knowing how to manipulate the pieces was the key to playing chess. Webster's defines manipulation as “controlling or playing upon by artful, unfair, or insidious means especially to one's own advantage.” How many of us have played chess in life? How often have we used manipulation of people to get our way? How many times do we try to manipulate God into doing what we want? “Lord, if You'll just do this, I'll do that.”
Sarah tried to fulfill God's promise for her to have a son through Hagar, her handmaiden. It only made the situation worse. Laban manipulated Jacob's love for Rachel to get 14 years of free, and blessed, labor. Jacob made Laban a wealthy man because God was with him. David manipulated the death of Uriah in battle so no one would know Uriah's wife was going to have David's child. He callously arranged his devoted soldier and servant to be a pawn to ease his own conscious.
We still see it every day; a relationship fails and parents use the small children that did not ask to be brought into this world, as a pawn. “If you don't come back, you won't see your child again.” Or “If you don't pay your child support, you can't see him.” How many times have you seen this happen? The child as the pawn is helpless pulled from pillar to post with little or no stability. Not only do the parents use the child against each other, they use it against anyone they are angry with. It's often been said that children are resilient; they bounce back from any traumatic event. But when children grow up having been pawns, they master the game of manipulation. They produce their own pawns which creates another generation of pawns worse than the last. When does it stop? When do we make ourselves the pawn and sacrifice what we want for what is best for our children or spouses? Do we really want to manipulate and use people as chess pieces to win? There is no winner in the chess game of life. As Napoleon Bonaparte said, “We are either kings or pawns of men.”