Come play!
My children beckon me before I’ve even crossed the threshold. But with shoes still on, mind still at work, heart still anxious about a laundry list of potential problems, I can’t play. I politely decline their invitation before trudging away to accomplish who knows what.
This happens more than I’d like to admit. But why? What prevents me from playing? A poet once said, “It is a happy talent to know how to play.” He’s surely right, and yet, if we’re honest, we find it a hard talent to acquire, part of the “arduous discipline” of hedonism that C.S. Lewis talks about (Letters to Malcolm, 122). It’s a talent my toddlers far surpass me in. I’m tempted to ask if you can even remember the last time you played, but I won’t. I’m content to ask, Why don’t we play more?
But I can hear your question loud and clear, so before we get to those reasons and remedies, consider God’s design for homo ludens — man at play.
Play — Seriously?
Yes, seriously. And we should be serious about it. So, what is play, and why does it matter?
You might think nothing could be less playful than the Summa Theologica (and you may be right), but Thomas Aquinas has a helpful definition of play as “words or deeds wherein nothing further is sought than the soul’s delight” (2.168.2). In other words, play involves doing activities simply for the joy of them. Aquinas recognizes play as a kind of rest for the soul. Just as the body needs rest, the soul needs rest, and “the soul’s rest is pleasure.” We call play re-creation for this reason: It helps make us new. It turns out a playful heart is good medicine (Proverbs 17:22).
Scripture helps fill out the picture. The Hebrew word most often translated as “play” (śāḥaq) comes from a verb meaning “to laugh.” Intensify that verb, and you get “to sport, play, or celebrate.” So we can say play is to action as laughter is to sound. At its best, laughter is a sound that both expresses and intensifies joy; similarly, play is an action that expresses and intensifies joy. Thus, play can involve almost any activity — running, reading, cooking, eating, board games, sports, make-believe, gardening, even conversation (for those extroverts out there) — as long as it is done from joy and for joy. (Writing the Summa was probably play for Aquinas, though certainly not child’s play.)
The “happy talent” of knowing how to play is, according to the ancients, a virtue. Imagine that! They called it eutrapelia, the habit of using play for recreation, but with wisdom and temperance. As a virtue, playfulness is the mean between two vices: playlessness (think Ebenezer Scrooge) and what we might call play gluttony (like the gamer who never leaves the basement). In A Theology of Play, Kevin Gushiken warns that there is a way to play that pleases God and a way that doesn’t. However, at its best, “play is the God-given ability and permission to fully enjoy moments in life as God intended, with freedom and pleasure” (20). Sounds delightful, doesn’t it?
When we come to Scripture, we find a playful God. The triune God is the source and sovereign of merrymaking. In some sense, God is always at play, doing everything for his pleasure (Psalm 115:3), but in a more specific sense, we see God’s glad gaming in the world he made. The world began in wise play (Proverbs 8:30–31); the world is full of laughter and play (Job 39:18, 22; 40:20; 41:5, 29; Psalm 104:26); and the world will end in childlike play (Zechariah 8:5; Isaiah 11:8; Jeremiah 30:19; 31:4; Malachi 4:2).
God packed his world with play, and as his image-bearers, we should imitate his playfulness. He made us, among other things, to recreate, to game and sport, to romp and revel, to toy and lark, to adventure coram Deo. Unlike the normal pattern in my home, where kids call their father to play, we find our Father calling his kids to play.
So, again, why don’t we play more?
Control Doesn’t Play Well
For one, we are too often racked with anxiety; modernity is drunk with the stuff. And though there are many poisons that contribute to this toxic brew, perhaps none is more potent than the illusion of control. Our wealth of technology tempts us to believe we are in control of our bodies, our lives, our world — everything. And sons of Adam that we are, we fall for it! But although we feel we should be in control, our experience is very different. Like trying to hold sand in our hand, the tighter we grasp, the more control slips through our fingers. Thus control can beget more anxiety when that control inevitably falls away.
Of course, we can imagine ourselves to be in control only as long as we forget that God is. To the extent that we don’t trust God, we must trust ourselves (or someone else who also isn’t in control). And the results are what you’d expect. You will either anesthetize the angst with play gluttony or let it paralyze you into playlessness.
But providence is a playground for the Christian. If God is in control (he is!), and if God is for me in Christ (he is!), I am free from bearing the weight of the universe on my shoulders. I can release my grip on control, which didn’t work anyway, and revel in God’s exhaustive sovereignty. I can play before the throne with Romans 8:28 flying high overhead.
This sporting under sovereignty gets right at the heart of the Sabbath. God instituted the seventh day of rest to help his people see through the illusion of control. They could enjoy leisure precisely because Yahweh was King and the King was for them. Godward play functions in much the same way today; it is a taste of Sabbath rest.
Ultimately, it is God’s providence put on display in the gospel that enables recreation in a fallen world, because the gospel guarantees that evil and suffering are, even now, on the way out, passé, fading quickly (1 John 2:8). Satan is on borrowed time in conquered territory. Play is an act of exuberant defiance against the tyranny of darkness — a dancing denial of the ultimate triumph of evil. Gushiken says it right:
God is not God if play is only permissible when life is good. What makes God so powerful, holy, lovely, beautiful, and gracious is that he gives us the ability to play even in the darkest moments of life. (A Theology of Play, 165)
If you can’t play, perhaps your view of God is too small.
All Work, No Play
But there is another problem that inhibits our play: work. Not work in the biblical sense, balanced with God’s rest, building God’s kingdom, dependent on God’s strength. But work as a way of life, sixty-hours-a-week work, “total work” as Joseph Pieper calls it in his famous essay on leisure.
Pieper argues that modern society (catechized by Kant and others) has come to believe the ridiculous notion that difficulty makes something good. If it comes easily or is given freely, it can’t have much value. Anything worthwhile must be earned, both ways uphill in the snow. Thus, if we are to get anywhere in life, we must be involved in perpetual activity. We must be workers. Busyness becomes a mark of virtue.
This total-work mindset despises play, which, by definition, is done purely to delight the soul. The worker has no time for anything so impractical. He cannot rest because everything rests on his work. He changes 1 Corinthians 4:7 from “What do you have that you did not receive?” into “What do you have that you did not earn?” Pieper warns that this mindset leads to “the inner impoverishment of the individual” and that “everyone whose life is completely filled by his work . . . has shrunk inwardly, and contracted” (Leisure: The Basis of Culture, 58). All work and no play makes Jack a dull man, one who can receive nothing as gift.
Kids Dance Before Dad
But all the best things in life come free. In fact, all things are gifts (Acts 17:25). Beloved children know this. They work, but they are not fundamentally workers. Their work (and play) flows from love received; it does not aim to earn love. They know that because of the Beloved Son, our Father will “graciously give us all things” (Romans 8:32). No earning. No contract. All gift.
Play thrives in the presence of a happy Father, whose love is freely given and cannot be earned. It demonstrates that we put our hope not in work or wealth, “but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy” (1 Timothy 6:17). Remember how often Jesus taught that the kingdom of heaven belongs to the childlike? Surely, part of what he meant to capture is the reality that children who trust their Father cavort in his presence. Like the prodigal son, they dance before Dad.
When we stop white-knuckling life and rest in God’s sovereign, paternal care for us, we demonstrate our satisfaction in God. Play does this magnificently. It expresses our contentment in God, our confidence in his work, and our delight in his creation.
So, Christian, come play! I won’t lay out a regime for your recreation (what could be less playful?), but here are three practical tips. First, find out what kind of activities are fun for you. We don’t all play the same. Running ten miles is a romp for me, but maybe not for you. What activities are rest for your soul? In his book Play, Stuart Brown lists eight “play personalities” that capture common categories of play: artist, collector, competitor, director, explorer, joker, kinesthete, and storyteller. Look those up if you’re interested. They are a good place to start.
Second, make space for those activities. If you’re too busy to play, you’re too busy to glorify God as fully as he intends you to. So schedule time for recreation, even if it’s only half an hour. Try to play every day. Smell a flower, jump down some stairs, read a book, throw a ball. Be free to enjoy the moments God gives you as they come. He wants you to.
Third, facilitate play for others. Rolling around with my kids after work may not feel like play for me, but it sure does for them. Their play preferences may be different from mine, but the impulse is the same. We can love others well (especially our kids and spouses) by giving them the freedom to romp and rest, to dance and delight in God. Play, as it turns out, is often a shared pleasure.
Saint, heed your Father’s call and come play before the throne.
Desiring God