The Christian at Play - Part 2 - External Values

            In my last blog I referred to the book The Christian at Play, by Robert K. Johnston.  In the book, Johnston makes the case that play is only play when it is engaged in for it’s own sake.  If we engage in play for another purpose, it ceases to be play and becomes something else, most likely, work.  Still, play in general, and sports in particular, have external values, benefits that accrue to the player.  Johnston highlights five external values: “(1) a continuing sense of delight or joy, (2) an affirmation of one’s united self, (3) the creation of common bonds with one’s world, (4) the emancipation of one’s spirit so that it moves outward toward the sacred, and (5) the relativization of one’s workaday world.”

            Of these external values, I am particularly drawn to three.  First, the “continuing sense of delight or joy.”  Johnston quotes former basketball player and US Senator Bill Bradley, who, in his book, Life on the Run, described the euphoria that comes when something special happens on the basketball court:

            “What I’m addicted to are nights when something special happens on the court…. It is far more than a passing emotion.  It is as if a lightning bolt strikes, bringing insight into an uncharted area of human experience…. It goes beyond the competition that brings goose pimples or the ecstasy of victory…. A back-door play that comes with perfect execution at a critical time charges the crowd but I sense an immediate transporting enthusiasm and a feeling that everything is in perfect balance.”

            I’ve never been a particularly gifted athlete, but there are moments that transcend the sporting event and bring a deep joy to the soul.  In golf, I remember my drives on two consecutive holes when I was a teenager.  Never before or since have I hit a drive as long or as straight.  I’ll never forget that moment or that feeling.  I remember a particular tennis doubles match in high school – we won, 4-6, 7-5, 7-5 – where the exhaustion, the perseverance, and the shot execution together created a euphoria beyond the final score.  Something magical happened that night.

            Johnston directs our attention to C. S. Lewis and his book, Surprised By Joy, in which Lewis recounts how specific moments of joy that came unbidden in his play pointed to something transcendent.  Are these moments of extraordinary joy a taste of the presence of the divine?  For Lewis, these moments prior to his conversion to Christianity were “valuable only as a pointer to something other and outer.”  Seeking an encounter with the transcendent, the divine, through sport will, most assuredly, prevent it from happening.  Trying to make it happen will turn the "play" into "work," and the opportunity will elude the player.  But when one abandons oneself in the moment, sport might provide an avenue to encounter the divine joy, if God chooses to make himself known in that moment.

 

            Next time, the external value of “the emancipation of one’s spirit so that it moves outward toward the sacred.”