Teach Us to Play, Lord

During the midtwentieth century, someone coined the phrase “the leisure problem.” The phrase still fits, but in the opposite way from what was originally intended. Those who popularized the expression thought that we were moving to shorter and shorter work weeks and that people would not know what to do with all their free time. The predictions turned out to be naively optimistic.

Instead, the chief problem of leisure today is that there is simply not enough of it. And things are getting worse instead of getting better. A Harris survey found that leisure time has steadily declined from 26 hours per week in 1970 to 17 hours in 1987; in other words, in under two decades Americans lost on average 35 percent of their leisure time.

Nearly every observer of the cultural scene agrees that in North America people are suffering from a time famine. According to one survey, a fourth of our overstimulated population claims that it “always feels rushed.” A Time magazine article on the time famine speculated that “leisure could be to the ’90s what money was to the ’80s.”

Even when people find time for leisure, problems persist. One is the poor quality of people’s leisure pursuits—a trivialization of leisure that leaves people bored and diminished instead of enriched.

Another is an inability to value leisure apart from work. People who overvalue work tend either to be passive and lethargic in their leisure or to work at their play, carrying over the intensity and competitiveness of their work into their leisure (and sometimes into their church life as well). They are never less at leisure than during their leisure time. A survey found that a significant number of executives do not take the full vacation time to which they are entitled.

Guilt over leisure is another aspect of the problem, especially in Christian circles. It is fed by the conviction that we should always be doing something useful. Leisure is perceived as unproductive and misspent time. Paradoxically, many of the people who feel guilty about taking time for leisure also feel guilty because they work too much.

Finally, although a lack of leisure is the main problem, for a significant minority in our culture the problem is the opposite. Leisure has become their idol. One manifestation of this obsession with leisure is the syndrome of the endless weekend—not only living for the weekend, but talking about it all week long. Checkout clerks dutifully command us to enjoy our weekend. In our urban society, moreover, the young have become today’s leisure class, characterized by an insatiable capacity to be entertained.

In summary, the problem of leisure in our society is a problem of excess. People have either too little of it or too much of it.

Work Versus Leisure?

Christians share these problems, but this is only the beginning of woes. We also inherit a burden of guilt about leisure from our Christian practice and heritage.

The time famine, for example, is intensified by the usual round of religious activities. By the time we factor in church attendance, Bible studies, devotional activities, committee work, and volunteer service, time that might otherwise have been spent on leisure goes to Christian causes instead. A CHRITIANITY TODAY survey disclosed that Christian leaders spend nearly 25 percent less time in leisure activities than does society at large.

Christianity also poses an inescapable conflict in attitudes toward leisure. By its very nature, leisure is a form of self-indulgence—something to which we treat ourselves. Yet Christ calls us to deny ourselves. At the heart of the Christian faith are such attitudes as duty and service to those in need.

It is no wonder Christians feel guilty when they relax. While this is mainly a false guilt, in at least one major way it is deserved.

Christians are often guilty of mediocrity by default in their leisure lives. Operating on the premise that leisure is beneath them, they drift into whatever leisure pursuit pushes itself into their path. The resulting leisure is often much less than it might be.

Faced with the leisure problem, leisure theorists today assert that we must repudiate the work ethic inherited from the Reformation. The work ethic “no longer fits the needs of the hour,” writes one theorist. We must “escape from the shackles of the work ethic” and “renounce the false notions of the dignity of work, the necessity of work, self-fulfillment through work, and … the duty to work,” writes another. Yet another voice asserts that “it appears … that society, both individually and collectively, would be happier, would be more harmonious and would have fewer problems if the work ethic were either destroyed or reconstructed.”

This is a false solution. A rich leisure life depends on having a healthy work ethic. We must work before we can play. The unemployed and poor do not lead rich leisure lives. Furthermore, work gives meaning to leisure. By itself, leisure quickly palls and loses its point. When seen as a contrast to work and a reward for it, leisure assumes meaning.

The Protestant work ethic is not our foe. Its main tenets—that God calls people to work, that all legitimate types of work have dignity, that work can be a stewardship to God and a service to self and humanity, and that work should be pursued in moderation and in deference to spiritual concerns—are not hostile to leisure. Our problem, shared by the Puritans and their successors, is that we do not have an adequate leisure ethic to go along with our work ethic.

Christians should not feel guilty when they relax. Nor should leisure theorists malign the Protestant work ethic. The distinctive contribution that Christianity can make to discussions of leisure is its insistence on balance between work and leisure, and between self-denial and enjoyment.

Because the Bible says a lot about work and little directly about leisure, the misconception has arisen that the Bible is uninterested in leisure. The God-intended balance between work and leisure was present from the beginning of earthly history. After God performed the work of creation, “he rested, and was refreshed” (Exod. 31:17). The same rhythm of work and rest reappears in the fourth commandment of the Decalogue: “Six days you shall labor, and do all your work; but [on] the seventh day … you shall not do any work” (Exod. 20:9–10).

Neither work nor leisure is complete in itself. In prescribing a day of rest, the fourth commandment also commands us to work. Here is the integration of work and leisure into a harmonious cycle that is essential to a Christian view of leisure. If God commands us to work, he equally commands us to cease from work.

Since Christian leisure theorists typically make so much of the Sabbath as a biblical basis for leisure, I would urge a caution. We should not equate Sabbath observance and leisure. A day of worship is sacred time that God requires in a way that he does not require us to attend a ball game or to go for a walk.

The command to cease from work also appears in the Old Testament system of religious festivals. Hebrew culture was a subsistence society. Yet it followed a schedule of annual festivals that ensured days free from work. On the first and seventh days of the feast of unleavened bread, for example, as well as the day of the first fruits, the Israelites were commanded to “do no regular work” (Num. 28:18, 25–26, NIV). When the Israelites entered the Promised Land, they were commanded not to till their land and vineyards in the seventh and fiftieth years (Lev. 25). The idea of rest is deeply ingrained in the biblical consciousness. It was part of a daily, weekly, yearly, and lifetime rhythm.

Jesus confirms this rhythm. During his extraordinarily busy public years, Jesus found times of retreat. On an occasion when the disciples were so pressed by the demands of the crowd that “they had no leisure even to eat,” Jesus commanded them to retire from the obligations of the moment (Mark 6:30–32). Jesus did not confine life to ceaseless work and evangelism. He warned against the tyranny of the utilitarian in his discourse on anxiety, where he commanded us to “consider the lilies of the field” (Matt. 6:25–34).

Self-Denial Versus Enjoyment

If Christianity puts work and leisure into a state of harmonious balance, it does the same for another perennial pair of rivals: self-denial and self-indulgence. At the heart of the Christian faith is something that is destructive to the very idea of leisure. It is the idea of the suffering servant and the command to deny oneself. “If any man would come after me,” Jesus declared, “let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34).

We do not have to choose between this command and the command to enjoy leisure. The Bible itself makes them complementary ingredients of the Christian life. Self-denial and duty are not the whole of the Christian life.

The most extended biblical affirmation of pleasure comes from the much misunderstood Book of Ecclesiastes. It is true that the author of this book takes a dim view of the pursuit of pleasure “under the sun”—that is, life lived by human striving apart from God. The quest to find meaning in work, eating, and pleasure through purely human efforts fails because it attempts to get more out of earthly life than it can offer.

But the Book of Ecclesiastes repeatedly sets up an alternative to life under the sun. It abounds with God-centered passages that affirm the enjoyment of life as a gift from God. “It is God’s gift to man,” the Preacher tells us, “that every one should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil” (3:13). “Every man also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them, and to accept his lot and find enjoyment in his toil—this is the gift of God” (5:19). Here is the ideal of godly hedonism.

That ideal does not cease when we come to the New Testament. Paul wrote to Timothy that God “richly furnishes us with everything to enjoy” (1 Tim. 6:17). God is not a sadist who hopes his creatures are miserable. Jesus was so fond of dinner parties that his detractors called him a “a glutton and a drunkard” (Luke 7:34). Jesus turned water into wine to keep a party going.

All of this biblical data may seem remote from the leisure problem in the last decade of the twentieth century, but it is not. The Christian community has failed both itself and its society by failing to practice and proclaim the balance between work and leisure, between self-denial and enjoyment, that its faith espouses.

The Stewardship Of Leisure

For the Christian, an adequate leisure life begins as a personal responsibility. Leisure is part of the stewardship of life. We forge our personal identity from our leisure just as surely as we derive it from our work. We are not commanded simply to rest from work: As stewards we should strive to be all that God wants us to be in our leisure as well as in our work and worship. Christians have a motivation to rise above mediocrity in their leisure life.

The first step toward such excellence is to make leisure activities a matter of conscious choice instead of drifting aimlessly. Dozing off with the paper or plopping in front of the television set need not compose the whole of a person’s leisure life. If leisure is conceived only as a quantity of free time, then anything that helps us pass the time will do. But if it is thought of as a quality of life and state of soul, we then need to find ways to fill our leisure times with enriching activities.

Excellence in leisure also means that we choose leisure pursuits that meet our leisure goals. If family unity is a goal, for example, we need to plan family outings. If becoming informed about a topic of personal interest is our goal, we need to read. If strengthening friendships is a goal, we need to spend time with friends.

The quality of our leisure will also improve if we realize that our individual identity stems partly from what we do in our leisure time. Through choosing leisure activities that fit and develop our gifts, we can rise above the mass identity of a media-oriented society. If we picked up an interest in history during our college years, we can cultivate that interest during our leisure time. If we enjoy working with our hands, we can confirm that identity by planting a garden or building a cabinet.

Finally, we can develop a taste for the best in leisure. When leisure rises above mere pastime to a state of being, we feel satisfied and enriched within ourselves, aware that our leisure has added something (perhaps permanently) to our lives. Leisure as a state of soul cannot be programmed, but it can be recognized and developed. We will find our quest satisfied more often if we monitor what leisure activities are conducive to inner satisfaction.

Leisure is more than a personal responsibility. It is also a family matter. It is no coincidence that the religious group that has cultivated leisure most aggressively at an institutional level—the Mormons—is family-oriented. Christians in our day have generally accepted the specialized leisure patterns in which family members go their separate ways as they pursue leisure activities with peers or interest groups. In acquiescing, Christians have lost a key opportunity to build family unity and values through shared leisure experiences. Education for leisure is a parental responsibility that we have too often abdicated.

The church also has a stake in leisure. In addition to providing opportunities for leisure, the church needs to provide direction from the pulpit and in the classroom. Many a person in the pew would be surprised to hear that leisure is part of the Christian’s stewardship of life. The New England Puritan Cotton Mather preached a sermon on “how to employ the leisure of the winter for the glory of God.” When did you last hear (or preach) a sermon on leisure?

If the Bible prescribes a balance between work and rest, the church schedule should reflect a similar balance between service and leisure. In some cases, the church program may have to be scaled down or rechanneled to help members achieve this balance.

At all levels—personal, family, and church—the goal is a Christian lifestyle. The church in our century cannot be said to have given its best thought and effort to leisure. The time has come to do so.

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