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God and Games in Modern Culture
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14908 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1988 |
4,303 Words |
| Author
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Lonnie D. Kliever
Lonnie D. Kliever is professor of religious studies at
Southern Methodist University. He conducted the
investigation of the recent football scandal at SMU on behalf
of the university and in cooperation with the NCAA. |
Our culture seems bent on becoming one gigantic playground. Play in all its forms has a high priority in the lives of most North Americans. How else can we explain the spectacle of the Winter Olympics, the fervor of contract bridge, the wealth of movie stars? How else can we explain the energy and enthusiasm, the resources and ingenuity invested in the leisure-time activities of sports, games, and entertainment? We are becoming, in the words of Michael Novak's parody of the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance, "One nation under play, with sports and games and entertainment for all."
Commentators on the North American scene are divided over what to make of this preoccupation with play. Some pundits see today's culture at play as the decisive sign of our moral and spiritual decay. For them, the old ideals of thrift and work have disappeared in a land grown fat with indolence and abundance. Other commentators see our unrelenting pursuit of play as a necessary "safety valve" for handling the drudgery and boredom of living in a superindustrialized and superurbanized society. Like the "bread and circuses" of imperial Rome, our leisure time distractions help compensate for the regimented labor and life we must otherwise endure. Still other interpreters take an even more positive view. They contend that play has its own place alongside of work in a life rightly ordered. Indeed, they believe that play has a crucial place in every era and area of human life--from infancy to old age, from religion to recreation.
My sympathies lie with those who see a close connection between human well-being and play, including those forms of play we call professional and amateur sports. Those who regard play at worst as a distortion or at best as a
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