In Defense of Mere Entertainment (Part 3)Would Mother Teresa have thrown her head back and laughed aloud at The Pink Panther? Likely so, says the author in this apologetic for films that are simply "fun for the sake of fun."by W. David O. Taylor |
posted 7/27/2004
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The Witness of Creation
You can find out a lot, however, about an artist by the things he has made, and according to the English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, "The world is charged with the grandeur of God." So what can we deduce about God by observation of his creation? First off, it's a playful world out there. Ever go to the zoo? Those monkeys are crazy things, swinging around like there's no tomorrow, making faces, spitting bananas. Squirrels, ducks, Nemo fishes—they goof around a lot. Up there with eating, sleeping and copulating, playing is a high priority in the animal kingdom.
So too for humans. You could even call it one of those involuntary muscles: we just can't help but play. We make up games for ourselves, from the Olympic-sized expenditures of playfulness—jumping over sticks, throwing sticks, running around in circles—to the small-time games of checkers or Go Fish. We're an incurably playful creature and we can't escape the thought that God meant it this way.
The Chinese-born Eric Liddell spoke for a lot of us when he chided his serious-minded sister, saying, "Jenny, Jenny, I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made fast and when I run I feel God's pleasure." When we play, not only when we preach or feed the poor, we remember God's pleasure. Indeed there is a largess to God's work: sounds that we cannot hear and colors we cannot see because they belong to a realm beyond the human grasp and exist merely for God's amusement, and so he has decreed it.
A Theological Thought
What then does this suggest about the nature of God? It is this: that joy is grounded in God and flows from his nature (Rom. 15:13;Ps. 34:8). Psalm 16:11 declares, "In Thy presence is fullness of joy; at Thy right hand there are pleasures evermore" (KJV). In Exodus 34:6 the Lord reveals himself to Moses as "abundant in goodness" (KJV; also 33:19), what the Latin calls ultro bonus. This is the quality of divine generosity: a spilling over of more magnificence, more thrilling-ness, more fun than we can handle or make useful. If you will, it is the superfluity of God's goodness that forces us into acts of diversion. "There's too much goodness here! I shall simply have to enjoy it!"
Echoing our earlier comments on creation, the Princeton theologian Charles Hodge states: "The goodness of God in the form of benevolence is revealed in the whole constitution of nature. As the universe teems with life, it teems also with enjoyment."
Creation is infused with a "very goodness" that reflects the richness of God's inner life. Because God is rich with goodness, creation is rich—excessively rich—with goodness, and the only natural response of humans is to stop and take delight in the delightfulness of God's world.
J. I. Packer summarizes the gusto of the rapturous Psalmist thusly (Ps. 145): "[E]very meal, every pleasure, every possession, every bit of sun, every night's sleep, every moment of health and safety, everything else that sustains and enriches life, is a divine gift."
The idea here is similar to that developed by Robert Farrar Capon in The Third Peacock, where creation is depicted as an extravagant, playful manifestation of Divine Pleasure. Things exist because God merrily wishes them to exist: for love, for goodness, for beauty.
For Aesthetic Delight
In the Old Testament, the concept of absolute well-being is called shalom, a state where all things in creation operate according to their divinely ordained purpose. Such was the state in the beginning; such will be the state when Christ finally restores all things to their glorious condition. In light of our biblical and theological observations, we argue that aesthetic delight—or the delight in things joyous—belongs to the register of shalom, alongside justice, peace, community and work. If delightfulness resides with God, then surely our enjoyment of those delights has a place in the Christian life.
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