Life as fun

Notice that when a person plays a game, he takes the game very seriously while he is playing it, but he recognizes that the game has no real point. The purpose of basketball is to put the ball through the hoop more often than the opposition, following the rules of dribbling, passing, and so on--rules invented to make it difficult to put the ball through the hoop.

There are all kinds of purposes and rules in basketball, in other words, but the whole thing is just a game; the purposes are just there to make it interesting to play it.

God's attitude toward the world and life is analogous to this. He creates, not because he has any purpose for the world--though the world is evolving toward a purpose--but because he can. The world, for God, is utterly and completely superfluous; it simply does not matter toward his happiness, fulfillment, or in any way for him. It is a pure game.

And so for the Christian, life is a game. It isn't serious; it doesn't have a special purpose that has to be achieved. It is enough that it is. It has purposes, to be sure, and it has rules; and the Christian acts for the purposes and follows the rules. But the rules don't ultimately govern him, and the purposes are there to make the game interesting. But he plays the game for the sake of the playing, not for the sake of the winning.

Giving up "good" and "bad," in other words, and adopting God's attitude, makes life fun. Only the Christian can consistently consider life to be fun.

"Have fun in the Master all the time," says St. Paul to the Philippians. "I say it again: have fun."