I don't typically like to play, unless it involves learning a new language which I really shouldn't take on. I don't like sitting down and watching movies usually, I can't stand watching sports, and I usually put down video games after the first initial "play it for 10 hours a day" sprint (usually itself due to the fact that I only normally take time off from my studies to do different studies). I wonder if sometimes this is because I don't take worship seriously enough? Now, I don't mean that the two are coextensive; there is certainly play which is not worship, and work done well for the Lord is worship as well. However, work is something which is done for another reason, while play is something which is not; it is either purposeless, or for its own purpose and enjoyment. Now, the only thing which could be truly and rightfully done for its own sake is to enjoy God (c.f. Augustine's distinction between 'use' and 'enjoyment' in De Doctrina Christiana). So, proper play is always an enjoyment of God, though this can be through the created order (rejoicing in creation is implicit rejoicing in the Creator). If this connection is lost, then of course play makes little sense; why whittle away what little time we have doing nothing? But even for all of our work to make sense, it has to point to some goal. Since this life is not about our own attainment of this goal, by our own Promethean urges to steal the divine fire (thanks to Merton in The New Man for this analogy), this life ought not to be all about work, and time should be taken for worshipful play.
5 comments:
The purpose of recreational activity ideally, I think, would be "re-creation"; something that makes us better, or that makes us more fit to return to "real work".
I don't think that's the same as something done for its own sake. But it's how I see many "non-work" activities, when they're justified at all.
How much of my "play" or "recreation" really is "re-creational" in that sense is another question.
Here's my own problem: everything I do sometimes seems to have its meaning in some vague future, as something merely to be over and done with so that I can get on to the next thing I have to get over and done with. In the end, life itself seems like something that I simply want to have finished so I can get on with real life.
But what is this "real life"? It must be something which is not done merely for something in the future. Also, why is it only in the future? Granted, on a Christian scheme of things it is mostly in the future, but at the same time most of our "work" is nothing strictly necessary. God could do all of it directly, so why use us? There seems like there should be some element of the "this is good now" in this life, for it to make since at all.
How about playing a Kantian line?:
Human beings are ends in themselves.
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Or (maybe this is more Aristotelian?):
Our End is community / human relationships / the "polis"
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Or (maybe this is more Christian?):
Our End is the Body of Christ
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So, "real life" is what we do when we're building one another up, carrying one another's burdens, seeking the good/well-being of ourselves and other human beings, and the good/well-being of the community, the Body of Christ.
Our End is a form of human activity, not a static state of being (following Aristotle)--the life of the community is the End, the Good. So it isn't that we build one another up (through education among other things?) because we're trying to build each other into a final, perfected state of being--so that our small activities are means to some end; rather, it's that our building one another up, our loving one another in community, our participation in the life of the Triune God and His Body, the New Humanity, is an active state of beauty and goodness and intrinsic worth (i.e., good-in-itself).
Perhaps an Orthodox view of theosis might be instructive here?
Or is all this too mystical and not concrete enough? :)
I think that any satisfying answer will have to start from the mystical; otherwise, we're simply saying that activities X, Y, and Z are worthwhile. Therefore, when life prevents X, Y, and Z, or when we realize that various factors can prevent the success of X, Y, and Z, then life collapses back into meaninglessness. So, there has to be a larger picture answer to the question for it to work.
I think some Eastern Orthodox guys view Heaven as an infinite progression of knowing God better (I think Gregory of Nyssa, maybe Maximus the Confessor, but I'm not sure). However, sometimes it's frustrating in this life because there's such a disconnect between experience and the meaning of experience (I pray, and God may or may not answer, let alone answer positively; God has his providence which may or may not turn out for anyone's temporal good, even sometimes spiritual temporal goods; God's indwelling by the Holy Spirit is supposed to sanctify us, but there is very little in the way of falsifiability there either).
So I find myself in a position of metaphysical "rest" and goodness, as it were, which ends up being phenomenologically a mere dryness, an absence, not different from what I would expect on an atheistic account of the world.
It occurs to me to wonder what Jonathan Edwards or other Puritans might have had to say about play and work. Given the "Puritan work ethic" and all.
A faculty member at UT actually happened to be the first to suggest to me that the Puritan work ethic is connected to the "deuteronomic principle" plus Calvinism. You reap what you sow, and material prosperity is a sign of divine blessing, and divine blessing is a sign that you're one of the elect. So good Christians work hard and get rich to prove to themselves and the world that God likes them, and they really are unconditionally elected. (So reasoned the faculty member, at least. Although this sounds like it has some plausibility to me, I've never heard it or read it from Puritan or otherwise Calvinist lips or pen).
I was also reminded by the (somewhat dubious reference of an Orson Scott Card novel) that the Puritan Republic in England banned all sports. Perhaps this was because of a doctrinal condemnation of play?
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