Is it just a waste of time?
Just like work, people have a hard time defining play. James Evans defines play as “Work without anxiety.”[1] Unfortunately, without him defining work, how can the reader know what constitutes work without anxiety? Not only that, but many a player can speak of anxiety. Consider athletes working up for the big game. Video game players know of many times getting up to the final boss battle and feeling the tension build in themselves in the hopes that they will succeed. Both of these people experience anxiety in their play and both with a victorious outcome will consider the anxiety worth it.
Robert Johnston well recognizes the problem. He writes, quoting George Sheehan, that “Perhaps even more difficult than discovering play is defining it.”[2] In Johnston’s own words, he says that like definitions of words such as art, life, and love, play remains elusive.[3] In the end, he defines play as an activity freely and spontaneously entered into.[4] My problem with this definition lies in the spontaneous part. If I plan to write a research paper and then decide to set aside a specific time for video games to relax after that, does the fact that the time came planned instead of spontaneously mean that play has not been achieved?
Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play, has studied play for decades. Despite this, he hesitates to give a definition comparing such to explaining a joke.[5] Instead, he chooses to list the priorities of play such as apparently purposeless (Or done for its own sake), voluntary, inherent attraction, freedom from time, diminished consciousness of self, improvisational potential, and continuation desire.[6] We cannot go into these here, but certain aspects we can recognize. When one gets engaged in something considered authentic play, time passes away so that one looks at the clock and realizes how much time has passed. We do not play normally in order to reach another end. While an athlete, be it physical or Esport, can play for a living, they also do so because they simply enjoy it. If they ceased to enjoy the work, they would likely quit and do something else.
Kevin Gushiken defines play as “The God-given ability and permission to fully enjoy moments of life as God intended, with freedom and pleasure.”[7] A benefit of this definition from a Christian perspective lies in that it places itself easily in a theistic framework. Still, it comes across as a vague definition. Imagine a man driving down the road in the country during the summer and has the windows rolled down and fully enjoys feeling the wind blowing in his face. Does this count as play? Play seems to have an active aspect to it while the man doing this enjoys life from a passive perspective. If someone sits down to enjoy an ice cream cone or a steak dinner, does that constitute play? One can take pleasure in something without it being play. Watching a movie, TV show, or listening to music could count. Video and board games count as play due to requiring active participation.
In the Politics, Aristotle said that “nature requires that we should not only be properly employed, but to be able to enjoy leisure honourably: for this (to repeat what I have already said) is of all things the principal.”[8] After saying this, he gives no major defense. By this, we can get the indication that Aristotle does not present a controversial idea here, but one his audience readily grants.
Aquinas speaks of pleasure with the statement that “two things are requisite for pleasure: namely, the attainment of the suitable good, and knowledge of this attainment.”[9] He then goes on to speak of leisure and play (Note both of them show up) as pleasant insofar as they banish sadness that results from labor[10]. Readers should consider that Aquinas sees work as that which brings sadness and play as that which relieves it.
Ben Witherington goes even further writing that “Play can be seen as an eschatological activity as well as a childlike one.”[11] This means that play has a benefit for man in a temporal sense, but it can also point beyond itself to something greater. Earlier, one definition of work considered was that of co-creation. If in work mankind takes part in the building of the Kingdom of God, could play indicate that mankind is taking part in the joy of the reality of the Kingdom of God?
Consider that when people work, they do their part to bring about something and realize that in some sense, no matter the object of the work, something depends on them. If the employee washing dishes at the restaurant does not wash, the restaurant will have no clean dishes. If the groundskeeper does not work, then weeds will overtake the outdoors area. If the concession worker does not sell the movie ticket, then people will not get in to see the movie. One could say that someone else can do these things, true enough, but for the time being, that activity relies on that one person.
Yet when it comes to play, unless one speaks in a professional sense, a part of society will not break down. If I do not play that video game, society will still function. If children on the playground cease to play jump rope, the playground will still function. If guys do not get together for a poker night, no great loss to the world will take place.
While that might mean some see those activities as useless, in reality, those activities mean that for a time, the world is trusted to the hands of others, including the hands of God. When a person has done his part and then plays, his actions say that God dwells in Heaven and the world can manage under His care. The person lays down his responsibility. In an ironic sense to use a video game as an analogy, when a player sets out to save a video game world, he does so knowing that for the time, he does not have to save the real one. God does that.
In his argument from desire[12], Peter Kreeft speaks of desires that people have naturally and those they have from external conditions. Children in the biblical world did not grow up dreaming of fighting crime like Batman since Batman did not exist for them. They did grow up to have natural desires for food, water, beauty, sex, knowledge, and friendship. Part of having a human nature means having these desires.
What if we turned these to something else besides natural desires and looked at behaviors that people naturally participate in that often can serve an end in themselves? In this, three come to mind. The first being sex, in which people often desire sex regardless of if they desire a child or not and if movies like Blue Lagoon could give any indication, people do not need to have much education to know about participating in sex. While people can have sex to have children, many want to have sex simply for the joy of sex itself.
Next comes worship. While to some extent, worship often took place in ancient societies for the good of the harvest, worship also took place for the sake of worship. Worship declares that something has a nature worthy of honor. For Christians, YHWH revealed in Christ meets this criteria. While ancient man apart from divine revelation did not worship YHWH knowingly at least, he still worshipped a being greater than himself.
No surprise should come upon learning to find play the last activity done for its own sake. If people see sex as the highest activity done on the horizontal level between human beings, and worship as the highest activity done by man to God, then perhaps we should see play as the one that has elements of both. Sex often gets referred to as “having some fun” with your spouse and worship has the element of taking joy in God as God. Could play become the unifier in the trinity of three such activities?
Play has an air of privilege to it. Not only do we consider play a blessing, people actually pay to play. Charles Coonradt says that “People really will pay for the privilege of working harder than they will work when they are paid.[13] People hate working in a hot office, but have no problem with a day at the beach. People complain about getting up for work, but they will get up early in the morning if they plan on going fishing.
Play also benefits by getting people to invest in it. In this way, when people play, they do something enjoyable and they can learn. Consider the game ICivics, meant to teach students civics. No less an authority who worked on the game than Sandra Day O’Connor said, “I have often said that iCivics is the most important thing I have ever done.” O’Connor continued, “More so even than serving 25 years on the highest court in this nation.”[14] About this, Johnston says that if play becomes a teacher, play becomes valuable. He even refers to the Teacher saying that we should work and play, playfully.[15]
Looking at all said about play, we can conclude that play requires a free activity entered into for the sake of the activity itself. Play represents freedom and joy in anticipation of a coming eschaton. Play shows a time when people give up control of the world for a moment and try to enjoy the world God made, realizing that He gives us everything richly for our enjoyment. (1 Tim. 6:17) To describe play as a childish pursuit not only speaks of arrogance but goes against the hope of Christianity itself.
After all of this, the Teacher still awaits. He has spoken his thoughts on work and play. We will now see how the book ends and what the Compiler said about the lessons of the Teacher in Ecclesiastes 12:9-14.
[1] James H. Evans Jr., Playing (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010), xiv.
[2] Robert Johnston, The Christian At Play (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1983), 31.
[3] Ibid., 32.
[4] Ibid., 34.
[5] Stuart Brown, Play (New York: Penguin Group, 2010) 16.
[6] Ibid., 17
[7] Kevin Gushiken, A Theology of Play (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Kregel, 2024), 20.
[8] Aristotle Politics: A Treatise on Government, 232.
[9] Thomas Aquinas. The Complete Works of Thomas Aquinas, 2304.
[10] Ibid., 2305.
[11] Witherington III, Ben. The Rest of Life: Rest, Play, Eating, Studying, Sex from a Kingdom Perspective (p. 42). Eerdmans. Kindle Edition.
[12] Peter Kreeft, “The Argument From Desire”, Peter Kreeft, https://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/desire.htm, Accessed 3/31/2025.
[13] Charles A. Coonradt, The Game of Work: How to Enjoy Work as Much as Play, (Layton, Utah: Gibbs Smith Press, 2001), 15.
[14] Asi Burak and Laura Parker. Power Play: How Video Games Can Save the World (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017), 61.
[15] Robert Johnston, 101.
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