Recreation

As the word implies, recreation is re-creation. That is, something has become out of kilter and needs to be restored to what it was: a healthy body a balanced, tranquil disposition, or a stable, expressive emotional life. Recreation is one means, though not the only one, of restoring body, mind and soul, thereby bringing rest. Recreation is also one dimension of leisure.

Recreation as Useful Leisure

The 1988 New Lexicon dictionary defines recreation as a “leisure-time activity engaged in for the sake of refreshment or entertainment.” As useful leisure, recreation may take many forms, usually chosen for reasons of personality or social pressure. Such dutiful recreations include self-improvement disciplines such as reading and bicycling, competitive sports such as golf and hockey, and skill-testing pastimes such as canoeing and sailing. These may be taken up for a variety of reasons: improved performance at work, the desire to vent competitive energies in a safe arena, the need to prove oneself or to belong to a school. In the Western world almost all recreations have professionalized, and the huge leisure industry promotes correct costumes, proper equipment and professional training. The picture of my brother and me wearing our winter school clothes and simple wooden skis strapped to our boots on our way to Rosedale Golf Course is laughable today when one needs a skintight aerodynamic ski suit and state-of-the-art equipment because, in part, of how one will “be seen” on the ski tow.

Not only is the choice of recreations affected by our social situation and personality (I tend to avoid competitive sports and choose activities like canoeing or walking), they are also affected by our life situation. Carpentry was a recreation for me while I was a pastor. When I became a tentmaking church-planter and earned my living by carpentry, I found no refreshment in crafting things from wood. When my wife and I live in rural Africa, we take a long walk each evening before sundown. Our neighbors always ask, “Where to?” When we reply, “Just for a walk,” they stare in disbelief because walking for them is a means of transportation to the market, not a means of recreation. It is easy to assume from this that people living in rural areas or in less-developed countries do not need recreation. But they do, and they choose what fits their culture: spending half a day in the village on market day, having an extended tea with friends and, in the case of children, inventing their own sports and games.

Robert Bolles in The Three Boxes of Life expounds our imbalanced life span: education for the first twenty years of life, work for the next forty until retirement, to be followed by an orgy of leisure until we die. What is needed, he argues, is a better balance between all three throughout life, including meaningful, though perhaps unpaid, work in retirement. Even recreation can become boring if there is nothing else in life. Still recreation is part of the complete life for Christians as well as others.

What Makes Recreation Christian?

Some might think that belonging to a church baseball team makes that form of play “spiritual.” Anyone who has ever played on such a team knows that the flesh-Spirit conflict rages just as fiercely in a Christian team, though usually with a little less swearing! Others seek recreation by going on a Christian cruise or by playing shuffleboard in a Christian leisure park. But what makes recreation Christian is not the religious character or context, both of which are the husks of the matter. The heart has to do with the character of action and the intent of the person.

On the first point, we are drawn back to God’s threefold mandate to humankind in the opening chapters of Genesis: (1) to live in communion with God, (2) to build community (cohumanity, family, church, nation; Genesis 1:26) and (3) to express cocreativity in making God’s world work and to develop its potential (Genesis 2:15; see Laity; Service). Recreation that erodes our communion with God, like playing games that toy with the demonic or that encourage predatory competition (such as some boxing or wrestling matches), or that is destructive of God’s creation (such as some forms of backcountry driving on ecologically sensitive terrain) is out of sync with God’s threefold call to us (see Ecology; Stewardship). In contrast, recreations that encourage playfulness in the presence of God (such as golf), build teamwork and deepen relationships (such as playing football or Scrabble) or encourage stewardship of the earth (such as sailing or backpacking) are to be preferred. Becoming Christians does not make us angels but full human beings. Recreation should express the dignity of being human, neither dehumanizing the players nor dehumanizing the earth. A recreation becomes Christian not because of its religious label or the fact that we enjoy it with other Christians but because it lines up with God’s purpose for humankind, a purpose to which Christ restores us. But there is more.

On the second point (the intent of the person), recreation becomes Christian in virtue of being born of gospel reality. This means, quite simply, playing by grace instead of works (for a more complete theological foundation for recreation, see Leisure). Failing to take time for recreation because “there is so much to do” or “I am so busy at work” is usually an indication that the doctrine of justification by grace through faith (we are accepted by God not in virtue of our performance but solely by trusting Christ) has not yet penetrated our leisure life. Paradoxically, as Leland Ryken points out, “Many of the people who feel guilty about taking time for leisure also feel guilty because they work too much” (p. 20). Martin Luther was brilliantly eloquent on this matter. In his “Treatise on Good Works” Luther uses a powerful analogy:

When a husband and wife really love each other, have pleasure in each other, and thoroughly believe in their love, who teaches them how they are to behave one to another, what they are to do or not to do, say or not to say, what they are to think? Confidence alone teaches them all this, and even more than is necessary. For such a man there is no distinction in works. He does the great and the important as gladly as the small and the unimportant, and vice versa. Thus a Christian person who lives in this confidence toward God knows all things, can do all things, ventures everything that needs to be done, and does everything gladly and willingly, not that she or he may gain merits and good works, but because it is a pleasure to please God in doing these things. They simply serve God with no thought of reward, content that their service pleases God. On the other hand, he who is not at one with God, or is in a state of doubt, worries and starts looking for ways and means to do enough and to influence God with his many good works. (pp. 26-27)

Recreation, paradoxically, is one of those little “works” we do that don’t try to prove anything to God or even ourselves. We have been proven, more accurately approved, by Christ. Therefore we are free to play wholeheartedly. We can really get into it. The gospel frees us to rest because God’s achievements are what count in the end. We are free to enjoy recreation not with a heavy heart (wishing we were out doing really “Christian” work) but exuberantly because we have gospel confidence.

Recreation is creational—lining up with God’s purposes for the created order. It is evocative of the gospel, inviting us to relax in the grace of God rather than our own achievements. But finally it has an eschatological dimension, pointing to God’s final re-creation of the universe. Therefore it is a foretaste of life in the kingdom.

Luther also said that it is “living, or rather dying and being damned that makes a theologian, not understanding, reading or speculating” (quoted in McGrath, p. 152). Could it not also be that it is by playing—one dimension of living—that we become practical theologians enfleshing our real belief about the goodness, grace and final purpose of God?

» See also: Boredom

» See also: Hobbies and Crafts

» See also: Leisure

» See also: Quilting

» See also: Rest

» See also: Sabbath

» See also: Vacations

References and Resources

R. Bolles, The Three Boxes of Life (Berkeley, Calif.: Ten Speed Press, 1993); R. K. Johnston, The Christian at Play (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983); M. Luther, “Treatise on Good Works,” in Luther’s Works, trans. W. A. Lambert, ed. J. Atkinson (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966) 44:15-114; A. E. McGrath, Luther’s Theology of the Cross: Martin Luther’s Theological Breakthrough (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985); W. Rybcznski, Waiting for the Weekend (New York: Viking Penguin, 1991); L. Ryken, “Teach Us to Play, Lord,” Christianity Today 35, no. 16 (1991) 20-22.

—R. Paul Stevens