EP 95

Welcome to the Smiling at the Future podcast.

My name is Christi Rose and this is my pursuit to glean practical wisdom on femininity, homemaking, finances, relationships, and singleness from the God fearing men and women in my life. Hope you enjoy this journey with me as we learn to smile at the future.

Hello ladies, today’s topic is one that I’ve been wanting to cover on the podcast for years but I couldn’t find the right. Guess for it until now. Pastor Jeremy Volo helps us biblically understand. Play and recreation and how it doesn’t take us away. From the important areas of our Christian life, but it is in fact a way that we are faithful image bearers of God. So without further ado here. Is my conversation with Pastor Jeremy Volo welcome? To the Smiling at the Future podcast, Pastor Jeremy Volo, before we start out on our topic today, would you please introduce yourself to the listeners and share where God has you in life and ministry?

Yeah, of course. Christi, thank you so much for having me on. I’m excited to be with you and to talk about a theology of play today. My name is Jeremy Fuller. Like you said, I am here. I serve in the Crossroads Ministry at Grace Community Church in Los Angeles. I also serve as the Dean of campus life and athletics at the Masters University. And my wife, Ginger, and I have two little girls, Felicity and Evie Joe, and are actually expecting a third baby, which we just announced. And so we’re excited about that. And so, yeah, we’re loving life out here in Los Angeles and yeah, kind of in the Grace Church world and community here.

Well, it’s so fun. We’ve my family, we’ve gotten to know you guys a little bit since you’ve been out. And so it’s fun to see where God is taking you through life and ministry and so exciting to hear about the third one on the way. Had no idea about that. So thanks for announcing it on the podcast. But today, I think the discussion is so helpful on fun and just recreation, especially for Christians. A lot of us don’t know how to embrace this in a way that glorifies God. And a lot of us can feel guilty that somehow engaging in pursuits like this is not redeeming the time being as productive as we should be. So I fully expect that there’s going to be some burdens lifted after we talk these things through from a biblical lens and help people to just fine tune their conscience on this and and have the freedom in Christ that he wants us to live in. So before we get too deep, I’d like to just define our term. So can you help us understand what do we mean when we talk about recreation and play? And does Scripture help us see these as gifts from God or distractions to be minimized?

Yeah, those are good, really good questions. So I I would define play as imaginative, fun, often humorous, spontaneous, really non compulsory activity. I can give you a a non fun definition of play, which is a free activity standing quite consciously outside ordinary life as being not serious, but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. That was a scholar’s definition of play, which is not playful, but it does communicate the point of it’s a free activity. It’s something that is spontaneous often times and delight filled often times. It’s got laughter and humor involved. Play is fun, it’s imaginative, it doesn’t have any demands on you. And you know, it’s interesting. Christi, we are hard wired to play. We love to play as as humans. If you go to any culture anywhere on earth right now, you will be introduced to their games, their entertainment, how they enjoy themselves. We as people have come up with millions of ways to play and we play all over the place. We can play on the water, on the ground, on mountains. We can jump out of airplanes to play. So so we’re very creative players because we enjoy having fun.

Yeah, I like how you said that it’s hard wired into us and you, you watch children too, and what do they do for the first, how many years of their life they’re just playing. And it’s like God designed us to be that way. So as adults though, do we do we see those as distractions or is it a gift from God?

Yeah, that that gets to the heart of the question. You know, as Christians, that question, is there a place for planning our lives or is it something we need to maybe outgrow or mature beyond? And if there is a place for it, which I think most people would recognize, well, there’s got to be some place for play because we’ve got these, it’s hardwired into us. And so we enjoy it, but maybe we just can’t play too much. Or maybe they’re just a little a little part of us that can play sometimes. But we’ve really got to be, you know, the more mature we get, the more serious minded and less focused on play we become. And it’s interesting that can you, you struck at it at the start here. It really can become a tension for Christians because they wrestle with this. You know, I, I had years ago, a young man in the college ministry came up to me and he was really concerned and burdened and asked if he could speak with me. And I said, yeah, sure, what’s up? And he said, yeah, this weekend I went to one of the events for the the group. And, you know, they didn’t, they didn’t open the Bible. They didn’t pray. We just played games. And we laughed. And I just, it burdened me because we should have been using that time so much more profitably. And it was interesting because I was able to tell them, hey, man, there’s there’s a time to play. There’s also a time to have Bible studies. But it revealed to me that there really is a tension amongst so many with how do we navigate our presence here on earth. I mean, we’re here to glorify God and proclaim his gospel. Shouldn’t we be having a prayer meeting rather than playing games? And those are good questions. And what’s really interesting is the Bible actually has a lot to say about play. Some years ago, I I was asked to preach a message in a series we did in Crossroads at Grace Church on work, play and rest. And they gave me the subject of play, which if you know me, Christi, you know, is a fitting subject for me because I, I enjoy having fun. But what it made me do was say, OK, I can’t dare stand up in the Grace Church pulpit and preach a topical sermon with no scripture. This has got to be an expository message of the word of God. And so it made me do a deep dive into play in Scripture. And some really interesting things came out of that. The first was actually looking at the character of God. And in preaching this message, I actually my, my, well, my premise of the message was in order to be faithful disciples, we need to play. And I think immediately people, you know, it strikes them oddly that you’d say in order to be faithful you need to play. Like, what does that mean? You know?

And so I wanted people to look around at that, what I called the playful character of God. And I recognize, as I say, the playful character of God, there might be some of your listeners who wince a little bit and go, oh, I don’t know if I’m comfortable with that. And that’s good. But it’s actually deeply theological to look at God’s playfulness in his character and his creativity, because all we have to do is look around that creation. And when we look around at creation, we see just resplendent beauty. We see creativity. We see so much that God has made that he wasn’t required to make, but he simply did it because he enjoyed it. In fact, if you there’s a text I’m going to pull up and in my Bible here in Acts 17, the apostle Paul actually tells us that the God who made the world, this is verse 24 and everything in it being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. In other words, what we’re being told is there was not a single thing that God was required to make. Nothing God has ever done has been based on his lack of fulfillment, including his creation of you, me, and this universe. So God simply makes and creates because He wants to. And then looking at the universe, there are things that are seemingly pointless in this universe except to bring joy and ultimately bring glory to God. And so when I discovered or was kind of drawing that out, my mind went to a few places in Scripture. I don’t know, I’m curious, Christi, if you’re if, if, if your mind takes you anywhere when it comes to the creativity of God, is there any scripture that jumps to your mind right away or is it like kind of like me when I first studied the subject? Like where would I even go for this?

I’m, I’m thinking of Job, you know, when God is talking about his creation, when he’s talking to Job or in the Psalms when they, they talk about God’s creation and the just the beauty that we see. I I don’t know if I could point you to chapter and verse in the spur of the moment, but those are the the two places that I would think to search.

No, that’s so that’s exactly where my mind went is to the closing chapters of Job. And where Job is, is being questioned by God, and God is talking to him about everything he’s made. And he talks about the behemoth that he makes to swim in the ocean, or he talks about the wings of the ostrich and the pinions and plumage of love and all of these fascinating components of his creation. And God is basically telling Job, Job, where were you when I made these things? And did you create these? And in that questioning, God is revealing his majestic creativity. You know, from the behemoth to the mountain goats, his creativity is, is really boundless. And you pointed to the Psalms. There’s one Psalm in particular, Psalm 104, which really highlights this character trait of God. And it’s the psalmist is walking through Genesis one and two, kind of poetically recounting the six days of creation. And it gives us this picture not only of God’s power, but his abundant playfulness in his creative work. As one man says, it’s the abundant playfulness of God and we see in something like verse 15 of Psalm one O 4 when it says that God made wine to gladden the heart of man, it’s pointing to the creation that’s simply there for our enjoyment. Or in verse 26 he says there go the ships and leviathan which you formed to play in it, which is fascinating. God made the leviathan to play in the ocean. That’s why he made it. And so there’s a category for this Christi that really helped me. It was looking at God’s non utilitarian creation and studying the non utilitarian creation. And you know, that’s a big fancy word or whatever, but utilitarian is input and output obsessed, right? Like, OK, if I do this, I get that. As a result, that’s utilitarian. If I put in two hours of work, I get 2 hours of pay done. It’s this transaction and so so often we think of all of God’s creation as utilitarian when really so much of it was non utilitarian, meaning his aim was beauty for beauty’s sake and an enjoyment for enjoyment’s sake. So I mean, this is deeply theological because there is nothing compulsory in God’s creation other than his joy. And so, you know, I often give this illustration. I lived in Finland for a year, and the Finnish people are fascinating people, but they’re very utilitarian. And I lived there with a friend from Italy, And Italy is the opposite of utilitarian. They don’t do anything for output. You know, it’s like, it’s like, let’s sit around, have some spaghetti, drink some wine, piece of pizza and enjoy conversation for four hours. But the Fins are very much like, OK, next. Like, mission accomplished next and downtown in the city I lived in Olu were these two buildings. There were these like concrete slab buildings that looked identical. They were just rectangles in the middle of downtown. And my Italian friend once joked, he said, why is there downtown a power plant in, you know, in the center of commerce? And he was joking, of course, because it looked like a nuclear power plant, but it was the library next to the theater. And it was striking because you go that’s so utilitarian. They just need space. They need a slab of concrete. So we need a library. We need a theater. You know, here’s a rectangle. But is that the world that God made? Like when we when we step into Eden, what do we see? What we see an abundant garden bursting at the seams with resplendent color and fruit and taste buds exploding with delight and sounds that would have soothed and all the fascinating textures and the creatures. I mean you just think about the creatures that God has made in Eden and you say this is screaming at us that our creator is anything but a purely utilitarian, bland, boring, input output obsessed architect.

I’m sure as the father of these good gifts gives him great pleasure seeing us enjoying his gifts. You know, of course, but the I think the concern of some people is I don’t want to enjoy the gifts over the giver. And so I think that’s where some of us are concerned about enjoying it too much. So you say that there are just helpful principles to help Christians fall falling into that category. And maybe there’s people that a little lackadaisical, they enjoy recreation too much. Maybe it can controls their life, their budget, everything. So how do we walk balanced through that and not, yeah, not make it an idol?

That’s so good. I think before we get to those principles as practical, OK, this and that, we need to have a base understanding that we have been created in the image of God and what that means. It means that we are called to be physical representations of God in this world, which means if we’re going to do that holistically, that includes God’s creativity and love of beauty and joy. So if that’s why my premise at the start was if in order to be a faithful disciple, you’ve got to play because if you reject this entire aspect of God’s character, you are not being a faithful image bearer of God. If you’re just harsh and stern and serious and input output constantly, that’s not your God. And so you’re not being a faithful reflection of him. But here’s the here’s where it really, you know, the what do they say the rubber meets the road. We do see a human tendency to destroy play. And that’s exactly what you’re talking about where we enjoy the gifts without the giver. And that’s called idolatry, right?

And so when we look at First Corinthians chapter 10 and I think it’s verse 7 where the apostle Paul says, pointing back to Israel says don’t be idolaters as some of them were as it is written, the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play. He’s saying, looking at Israelites in the wilderness who in were wanting to enjoy the gifts God gave, but reject Yahweh himself. They, their whole identity and obsession in life became eating, drinking and playing. And we live in a culture obsessed with entertainment. And so it makes us wary of it because we’re like, we don’t want to be that. We don’t want to be idolaters, which if you divorce the gift from the giver, you destroy your worship and you destroy the gift itself. One man calls it an empire of desire. We live in an empire of desire, a nation and a society ruled by our lusts. And what’s interesting, Christi, is even you and me and your audience, even though we’re ideologically opposed to this empire desire, we can’t help but be affected by it. So we see our tendency to obsess over play, and that leads us actually to a second error, error which is just as bad. It’s the error of a rejection of play. So we think the religious response is often an extreme response that he says OK, do away with play because look at all these fools and immature people obsessed with it. We must be serious, engage our minds in utilitarian work and fight against any desire. It’s a waste of time. And here’s the scenario. Just think of, you know, I’ve got 2 little girls and I love Christmas morning because I get to give them gifts. I know what they want and it’s going to be a fun time. There’s two errors in my daughter’s response to the gifts I give. One is grabbing all the gifts, ripping them open, not even looking at me or saying thanks to me or my wife, and just running off all day to enjoy the gift. That’s heartbreaking to a parent, right? Because you go man, they didn’t want me at all. They just wanted the gift I can give and they’re ungrateful. They don’t care, they just want the toy So that that’s sad and that’s the idolization of the gift. But it’s equally as heartbreaking if I were to spend all this time, man, getting these gifts, putting them under the tree, setting nice music, lighting candles, setting up, you know, the mood of Christmas morning, waking them up at 6:00 AM. We all pray at the top of the stairs. We read the story of Jesus birth and then we walk down stairs and I go, OK, who wants to go 1st? And my daughters respond and say, oh, dad, we don’t. We don’t want your gifts. We’re too much sure for that. And I’d say, no, no, no, I want you to enjoy it. No, no, no, really enjoy. And they go, no, no, no, Dad, stop. And they completely reject it. They go in the other room and start doing homework. Well, I’m just as heartbroken, Christi, because I’m like, wait, no, I got them these gifts because I want to see them delight in them. And they’re delighting in it as they delight in me. The giver of the gift is paradise. I, I love it when they jump up and down, give me a big hug and say thank you, thank you, thank you, and then go off and play with their gift. I love it. My, my coffee tastes better that morning. Well, don’t let us become the religious who think, you know, we’re going to reject all of God’s good gifts. In fact, that’s, this is kind of scary. Christi, you ready for a scary one?

I’m ready.

This is First Timothy 4. The Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared. And you say, My goodness, what is this demonic doctrine? Listen to it. Who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with Thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth? For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with Thanksgiving, for it’s made holy by the Word of God in prayer. Everything, this whole world, is ours. It’s a gift from our Creator to be enjoyed and delighted in. But we don’t reject it, nor do we divorce it from Christ. We enjoy it as an act of worship, knowing the One who’s given it to us. Does that make sense?

It does I think the keyword that you brought out was Thanksgiving. You know, we are giving thanks back to God for the gift. So we’re keeping that focus right on the giver, but enjoying it. And I also the the verse that’s coming to mind is Ecclesiastes 7 verse 16. Be not overly righteous and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself? And I think that’s kind of the attitude of someone who’s who thinks they’re being overly righteous. You know, like the monk who’s going to live in a cave, They’re not going to participate in any of these things. And they think that’s what righteousness is. And, and no, we’re seeing from the Scriptures, no, that’s not righteousness. That is asceticism, which is not glorifying to God, but like you said, giving thanks, everything that God has made and designed is good and for us to enjoy. So yeah, really, really key points that you’re bringing out. I’m I’m loving this.

So one more, one more point before I get to these practical advice, because I think the practical tips are so helpful. And, and again, I was so surprised, Christi, when I was studying this some years ago at how deeply theologically grounded play is. But we’ve got to understand the end game can connect our understanding of and participation of play with the ultimate goal, which is redemption and restoration in the coming eternal Kingdom. And when if you want the Bible summed up in 3 words, it’s the Lamb winds. So everything that is broken, everything that causes despair will be banished when Christ finally ushers in his eternal Kingdom, the sin plague world and everything in it. Well, when he sets things back in order, if we look at scriptures that define paradise, like Isaiah 65, like Revelation 21, they’re defined and described as a place of joy and laughter. In fact, Zechariah 8 describes the coming Kingdom as it says the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in its streets. Thus says Yahweh of hosts. If it is marvelous in the sight of the remnant of this people in those days, should it also not be marvelous in my sight? And he said, he’s saying the coming Kingdom will be a place of echoing with laughter because we’re playing and we’re enjoying creation with full with with full abandoned. There’s no more brokenness. There’s no more idolatry because of what Jesus Christ has done. And so just as we get little glimpses of the coming Kingdom in the broken state now, like you enter the church and you see community that’s a taste of heaven. Well, so is play. There are there’s a taste of heaven when you enjoy with reckless abandoned the gifts that God gives and just have spontaneous entertainment because it’s a gift from God.

Now, you know, getting to the like. How do we curb this? I think that the takeaways for me are one understand that play is necessary and meaningful to be a representative of God. You’ve got to you, you’ve got to be a reflection of who he is, which means enjoy this creation and rejoice over it like God does. So that’s an understanding. But then we need to receive play as a gift, not kind of pietistically reject it and think that makes us holier. The biblical commands to be sober minded are are not abandoned during play like that. People think, oh, if I laugh, I’m abandoning sober mindedness. No, it’s like there is a sober minded, conscientious awareness for the Christian that their play is intentionally worshipful, and so we get to pursue the enjoyment of it in a way that reflects a heart of gratitude. Like you said, that’s really at the center. Christi, is the gratitude because of the creative God that’s given us this stuff. So an overly serious and somber approach to life doesn’t scream maturity. It actually reveals a lack of gratitude. So people who think, look how mature I am, I don’t enjoy this life. My response is, my goodness, we have some spiritual maturation to go through because play is a gift and we should receive it gratefully. Now, you know, as practical outline or guidelines, I’d say maybe, you know, I think we should always be prepared for our play to be interrupted. We don’t want to prioritize play unnecessarily over other things, just like we don’t want to prioritize prayer over acts of mercy or we don’t want to prioritize, you know, as a pastor, I don’t want to prioritize preparing to preach over spending time with my family. So we’ve got multiple responsibilities that we’ve got to prioritize. And here’s here’s one is, is not to use play as an escape. Like I’ve got a really difficult life and so let me just drown my sorrows and trying to enjoy play. Oh well, no, we still need to face the brokenness of this world, but just recognizing that play is a is a part of it. And then ultimately looking beyond to the coming Kingdom of joy that’s that’s to come. So I don’t know. I hope those little tidbits are helpful.

Yeah, no, really, really grounding. And I think, you know, like, instead of using it as an escape method, if, if life is hard, looking at it as a gift, you know, like we talked about even laughter as being a way that God can help us kind of cope with some of the, the challenges of life. And I always hear older couples say this, like, find someone that you can laugh with through life. And it just seems to that just seems to be the age-old wisdom that I hear so often is laughter is so important. It’s so therapeutic, it’s so helpful. And it not in a trite, you know, trivial way, making lights of the challenges of life. But there is something to be said that there’s a time for everything. And it can be a, a great way to help ease the tension and, you know, lighten the, the mood. But I’m thinking too of Ecclesiastes 3 where it talks about there is a time for everything. You know, it’s, it’s not just all serious, It’s not just all suffering. You know, there is a time for all of these different things. And knowing the appropriateness of, like you were saying, the, the priorities. Are we keeping those in balance and recognizing when it’s time to have fun and when it’s time to, you know, to put those other priorities in place instead of that? So, yeah, really, really helpful guiding principles.

So someone who, let’s say there’s, there’s someone who just feeling guilty, you know, use the example. I thought it was a really great one at the beginning of someone that went to a, a maybe a church function or, or hung out with other believers and they were just spending their time playing games instead of praying or, you know, doing something of a more spiritual nature. So how do you, how would you encourage someone who is still battling with guilt doing play, specifically singles. And we’re supposed to have undistracted devotion to Christ. So we can, we can really sense that maybe we’re not redeeming the time or we have to be serving at church 24/7 in order to be maximizing our singleness and giving God glory. So you’re fleshing this out. You’re helping us kind of wrap our mind around how to be thinking about this in a more biblical way, but do you have any other helpful encouragement you would give to someone who’s struggling with guilt?

Yeah, I think it’s coming to a proper understanding of the holistic nature of the Christian life. And what I mean by that is how do, how, how do you think you are actually obeying to 1st Corinthians 1031, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do to alter the glory of God? Do you really think there are certain activities that are more to the glory of God than others? Or was Paul being serious when he said you’re eating Chick-fil-A on a Tuesday afternoon? Or is you’re able to do that to the glory of God? And I think we’ve become so Gnostic in our understanding of spirituality where we really think, oh, if I’m on the church premises putting chairs away for this event, I’m really serving. Well, you need to understand the holistic nature of the Christian life. You are called to reflect God in every aspect of life. And actually you may be being more effective in your secular workplace by simply living a consistent integrity filled life. Then you are on a Sunday morning amongst other believers to advance the glory of God because you are called to be in the world to put His glory on display. And that means the way you play, the way you work, the way you rest, the way you worship and the formal gathering of the church. Ultimately all of it is worship because you’re living a God word life. And so I, I hate to see people try to separate and partition their life so much where they get into things like they say, well, I put God first, I put family second, then I put work third. That is not how that’s not how life is lived. It’s all God word. So I don’t look at my wife and go, sweetheart, I’m going to prioritize you. And then I’m going to prioritize my oldest child and I’m going to prioritize my middle child. It’s no, I’m seeking to glorify God in all of my interactions and I’m going to love my wife and enjoy my kids And I’m going to work hard and I’m going to have fun and I’m going to worship God and I’m going to pray and I’m going to read his word and I’m going to counsel the hurting. And I’m going to have a meal with my friends. And then I’m going to go go golf and enjoy the beautiful creation God has given and wake up tomorrow and serve the Lord. I mean, it’s, it’s all acts of worship. And that’s where I really think for someone struggling with that, two things I’d recommend. One really study and seek to understand what it means to be made in the image of God because you are called in every facet to reflect your God in his creativity as well as his justice, in his mercy as well as his judgement. You’re you’re called to reflect God. And so you might have pigeonholed God into being one component of who he is while rejecting other very real components of your God. So it’s a study of God, who is God and you’re called to reflect him. The the other reality that I’d want you to focus on is so often we make extra biblical commands to define our sanctification and our growth in holiness that the Bible doesn’t. So we say I’ve got to have a 2 hour devotion this morning. I’ve got to spend 4 days at church this week. I’ve got to be at 3 Bible studies. And then if I accomplish that, I’m holy and if I don’t, I’m less holy. Well, I’m glad to break it to you that the standard of sanctification and holiness is actually found in the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5. And it’s demonstrated in a life that becomes increasingly more loving, joyful, peaceful, grateful, self-control, faithful. You look at the fruit of the Spirit and say, as I grow in my joy today, I’m becoming more like Christ. And as I grow in my patience, today I’m more like Christ. And so you’re called in every facet of your life to bear the fruit of the Spirit, Lovejoy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control. So are you a more gentle person? Behold, that is the outworking of Christlikeness in you. Praise God. So don’t make holiness an extra standard that you come up with and then guilt yourself over. I I have found that when it comes to personal devotions, for instance, more people have such guilt hanging over their head from an unbiblical standard of holiness than anything else where they’re they actually believe. There’s a verse in scripture that says unless you wake up and spend 2 hours in the Bible, you are backsliding. And we don’t, we simply don’t have that. We have texts that say hunger and thirst for righteousness. You know, I meditate on your law day and night. Great. Yeah, this is a God. This is describing a God word life. And yet we set on ourselves these parameters of what we think holiness looks like, which are unbiblical. And then we guilt ourselves like crazy when God is not looking at you shaking his first going. How dare you skip that midweek Bible study to spend time with friends? In fact, he might be saying that’s the better decision this week because we’re living a Godward life.

Yeah. Yeah, and it’s you know, I, I think it’s like, you know, you’re either demonstrating living other under law or under grace. You know, how do you the work has been finished. And so your righteousness, you don’t have to earn your righteous standing before God. And then if you turn it into a law based system, you’re it’s totally backwards of what God designed grace and, and you to be living in the new covenant, what that should feel and look like. You’re doing it out of gratitude and enjoying God and not trying to earn your way to God and earn peace with God. So I think it just really turns back and, and puts you under the old covenant in a way.

But not all create, not all recreation and play is equal, so to speak. You know, there’s, there’s more wise ways of going about this. So how do we go about picking hobbies, recreation, activities that are going to be refreshing to us and not detrimental to us?

Yeah, You know, I heard one person say recently, and I thought it was really wise to prefer play that drives us toward community. So I’m all for video games, I think. I think we can sometimes be overly harsh when we guilt people about video games. I don’t think I think video games are an aspect of our creativity. And and yet sometimes that can drive community, but sometimes it can isolate us, right? And that’s not necessarily bad. Some people want to recharge alone. And so if you’re like, man, I’ve had a long week. I just want to play FIFA on my PlayStation for a few hours tonight. And it’s like, all you want to do, go for it. Enjoy that. However, I do think it’s a good parameter to say what what fosters community and what fosters, you know, I might choose, you know, playing cards with my wife over maybe watching a movie, although we do enjoy watching movies or TV show, but we’re laughing, we’re looking at each other, that kind of thing. You know, I think basic Christian maturity will navigate you through these decisions where you say, should I watch movies that celebrate things God hates because it’s play and you’re saying plays. OK, Well, basic Christian maturity would draw you to a text like Ephesians 5 and say, no, we don’t delight in the works of darkness. It is interesting though. Maybe this is a podcast for another time, Christi, of navigating. OK, does that mean we can never engage in any activities that have elements of darkness in them, like a movie that might have some elements of murder or something like that? How do we navigate that? And there is an aspect of, well, we are still functioning in this fallen world. And so there’s going to be aspects of our everyday life that have fallenness in in amongst them. The command we’re given in Scripture is not to partake in and to delight in and celebrate darkness. And so I think just basic Christian maturity will help you navigate through that play. And then also to, you know, if you’re if you’re idolizing play and overindulging, it will be it will fail, it will stop being recreative and it’ll start being draining. You know, we all know that feeling of going like, man, I haven’t had a day off in three weeks. I’m just going to veg out and watch TV all day. And you do it and you wake up the next day dragging and miserable because you didn’t recreate, you just kind of spiraled. And so I think each person as they navigate that those decisions will, will come to a place where they say, this is this is a proper place of play in my life. And then, you know, people need to navigate too and say, man, if I’m the type to obsess over this or that, well then maybe stay away from that if it’s not helpful.

Yeah, I was just going to bring that point out of addictive. Like if you, you know, when you’re addicted to something and when it’s just monopolizing every free moment. And for myself, what that would look like is I had to deactivate Facebook recently because I’m just doom scrolling all the time. And then half of what you’re seeing on Facebook these days is not even post from your friends. It’s just ads or celebrity news or, you know, things that I don’t necessarily care about. And so I realized, OK, this is no longer refreshing or, or benefiting me in any constructive way. So we’re going to put that on pause and find a better way to use my time. So yeah, you know, where it’s hindering you, where it becomes, like you said, draining instead of refreshing. But I do like the point of doing things with people if you can. But I, hey, I’m all for solo activities. That’s how I recharge is not talking and going on a hike or something, doing something that’s by myself. But we all know kind of the balance of of what it is healthy in our lives and being willing to take measures we need to to curb those impulses wherever they’re getting out of hand. And then just again, I love going back to being thankful for God’s gifts. And if it’s something you can give thanks to the Lord for, you know, it’s still in a proper place in your life and, and you’re still having him on the throne of your heart instead of this other thing that’s looming too large and out of place. So really, really helpful points. Jeremy, I really appreciate you being on today. I think it’s going to be just clarifying. And like I said, burden lifting is probably going to dig some people out of ditches that they’ve fallen in into unexpectedly. Most of the people that are listening are trying to live a life that gives glory to God. And I think this will help them do that in a just a more like you said, holistic way of representing God on this earth to a a dying world. So thank you so much for your time today. And I’m looking forward to hearing how it’s a benefit to the listeners.

Chrissy, thank you so much for having me. It was a lot of fun.