GAMES
CALVIN SEERVELD
GAMES are
like complex toys that people can play, provided they
know how and
will obey the rules. Games can engage people fully.
Each player at the
checkerboard is there as a whole person, focused on
playing. Games are bona fide,
God-given invitations to be playful and therefore can
open people to God.
GOD ENJOYS
PLAY
Whether the
voice of Wisdom in Proverbs represents the Holy
Spirit or Jesus
Christ, it is striking that Wisdom was playing before
God's face at the creation of
the world, having fun (Prov 8:31;
meshaheqeth JB). God's wild beasts and
Leviathan also frolic in creation (Job 40:20; Ps
104:24-26). Integral to the
promise of the Lord's restoration of God's people as
caretakers of creation on the
new earth is that boys and girls shall be able to
play in the streets without getting
hurt (Is 11:6-9; Zech 8:1-).
In the here
and now joy is the primal gift of the Holy Spirit to
those who receive
the gift of salvation (Gal 5:22-23; 1 Thess 1:2-7).
Thus sourpuss Christianity is
certainly out of line with the God of the Bible and
the communion of saints. Joy,
however, is deeper than pleasure, for there is in
jubilation a more outgoing,
imaginative character than the satisfaction of merely
being pleased. So joy, fun and
glad exuberance are the normative traits of playing
around and therefore form the
clue to the meaning of games.
A GAME IS
ORGANIZED PLAY
When babies
and children play in sand boxes or at the seashore,
let mud ooze
through their toes and laugh as the waves make them
happy with God's slap of
wetness. Grownups are often playful in a caress with
their loved ones or indulge in
wordplay, like puns. There is always an element of
surprise in playing, such as the
wonderful excitement experienced when riding a swing
hung from the branch of a
tree. This unpredictable element epitomizes play and
other aspects of the ludic
dimension of life. So playfulness explores the
unexpected ambiguity that inheres all
human activity and sometimes comes to the fore,
especially in games.
More
complex than simple play, games always have rules and
usually demand a
certain amount of skill from those who participate.
Further, everything in the game
happens in the realm of a make-believe reality. The
players have to imagine
somebody as "it" to play tag and must decide whether
or not a player can tag
back immediately upon becoming "it." Games thrive on
uncertainty and usually
involve some kind of guessing on what to do next.
Should you aim for the wicket
in your croquet shot or knock somebody else's ball
into the rough? Every player
strives to reach the end or goal of the game first,
even though the elusive prize is
imaginary. A great thing about games is that
everyone, technically, begins evenly,
and that evenness is recovered every time the game is
restarted. So children can
occasionally win over their parents, and the stronger
may lose to the weaker
thanks to the wonderful uncertainty that always goes
with a real game, such as
when the marble or bocce ball just happens to hit a
piece of uneven ground. A
game to its players is very close to what Wonderland
was for Alice: During a
player's turn in jumping rope, reciting limericks
while jumping up and down, he or
she can cheerfully have the illusion of being a prima
donna. And children play the
hunter and the hunted in kick the can with shivers of
expectation and tables turned.
Good games always carry the aura of
adventure.
DO GAMES
HAVE A PURPOSE?
Educators
have long understood that children learn through
playing games and that
play is work for a nursery school child. So games
serve a social purpose. Games
that last are much more complex than any one person
and have been shaped by
societal milieux, historical circumstances and the
faith perspective of cultural
communities. Anthropologists have noted, for example,
that Inuit children of the
Canadian North played games of physical skill that
fostered memory, rather than
games of chance and strategy. Inuit childhood games
were thus congruent with a
harsh, subsistent life and world in which the young
were nurtured to do their best
but not at the expense of others. The games of the
Iroquois in the New York area
were more competitive athletic contests, tied to
rites invoking rain or ceremonial
dances for the blessing of fertility on the
crops--matters outside human hands.
Naturalistic psychologist Karl Groos
(1861-1946) interpreted games to be a kind of
animal survival-kit practice that the young exercise
to rehearse coping with adult
activities. Pragmatist educator-theorist Jean Piaget
(1896-1980) traced the
development of games played by children
(sensory-motor, then make-believe,
finally symbolic games with rules) and found they
geared very strictly to stages of
a child's preverbal and postverbal accommodation and
socialization toward
external reality. Games for Piaget are indices of
human maturation; full-grown,
well-adjusted humans outgrow them. And many a
Christian moralist has excused
games only if they help Christians take themselves
less seriously or help them
work more efficiently afterward: Learn to relax and
lose--it's good for you. Enjoy
games as pleasant lessons in humility, perhaps even
as a foretaste of a heaven
free from drudgery.
A
biblically directed conception of games will take us
beyond the mere instrumental
value of games. We should not miss the peculiar glory
and blessing built into the
play that God created us to enjoy, and we should not
apologetically twist games
into becoming a means for nonplayful ends. It is true
that games generally help us
discharge pent-up surplus energy, aggressive and
otherwise, and games do
prepare us to exercise competencies in nonthreatening
situations--strength, agility,
decisiveness or willingness not to be a poor loser.
But games need to be
reconceived as a diaconal service for mature people
through which they thank God
as the games invigorate the players' imagination.
Games are not something
particularly childish or remedial, nor are they a
middle-class luxury or a waste of
time. The refusal to play games or the indulgence in
a life of constant game
playing--each is an indication of an imbalanced and
unhealthy spirituality.
THE RICH
VARIETY OF GAMES IN GOD’S
WORLD
There are
many, many games for children and adults to play.
Within the rough
taxonomy that follows the games appear in order of
their complexity, with the
most elementary appearing first:
basic
movement and control (kite flying, roller-skating,
swimming, bicycling, skiing,
gymnastics)
testing
physical properties (making mud pies, molding clay,
sawing wood)
chase and
capture and lost and found (hide-and-seek, blindman's
buff, fishing,
hunting)
display
(dressing up, participating in parades)
skill
competence (catching a ball, spinning tops, shooting
marbles, horseshoes,
quoits, darts, group juggling, spelling bees)
guessing (Who am I? charades,
Pictionary)
puzzles
(fitting shapes in holes, jigsaw pictures,
crosswords, anagrams, Scrabble)
get-acquainted (passing grapefruit from neck to
neck, forming group tableaux)
chance
(dominoes, card games, board games with dice,
mahjong)
combative
strategy (checkers, chess, tennis, squash, pickup
team sports)
trust-relationships (blind fall and catch,
Balderdash) sheer pretense (masquerade
party) One can turn almost any fascination
or activity that has flair into a game
so long as there is an obstacle to overcome or
something whimsical that eludes
straightforward calculation and implementation. There
is much to be said for
inventing our own games. Games that are no longer
homemade but are
standardized and manu |