Christ Frees Parents to Play

Parents, let’s ask ourselves a searching question: If our children had to say what God is like based on how we act toward them, what might they say?

Note that the question concerns not “what we teach them” but “how we act toward them” — our typical moods and demeanors, our everyday ways and words, our knee-jerk reflexes and responses. As our children think about ordinary moments in relationship with us, what might they say God is like?

Would they come close to saying, “God is happy”?

“God’s glory consists much in the fact that he is happy beyond our wildest imaginations,” John Piper writes (The Pleasures of God, 26). And this God has placed you and me in the closest relationship to the most impressionable people in order that they might catch a glimmer of his immense joy. God intends every parent to be a portrait of his happiness.

At times, I imagine my own children would be more likely to say, “God is well-organized” or “God is hard-working” than “God is happy.” At worse times, they may say, “God is distracted” or “God is busy.” So how do parents like me give our kids a clearer glimpse of God’s pleasure?

For the dad or mom who delights in Christ, the happiness of God spills out everywhere, from car rides to mealtimes to bedsides. But one activity offers an especially apt opportunity to embody God’s joy: play.

Playful God, Playful World

Some Christians may balk at the suggestion that the God of Scripture is not only happy but playful. And, granted, in a world of sin and death, the Bible shows God’s seriousness far more than his playfulness. But if we conceive of play as an “imaginative, non-compulsory, non-utilitarian activity” filled with creativity and laughter, then, yes, the living God is a playful God.

What else accounts for the world we live in, even on this side of the curse? If the Creator of the world were always serious, never playful, he may have made a universe of order and logic, but would he have made one of endless variety and beauty, filled with unnecessary delights? Would he have made not just tongues but honey, not just ears but harmonies, not just eyes but wildflowers? Genesis 1–2, Psalm 104, the divine speeches in Job, and the exuberance all around us declare the glory of a happy and playful God.

So too do the children in our homes. I sometimes stop to marvel that God, who could have created children any way he wanted, created them like this. He created them silly and squirrelly. He created them ready to be tossed and tickled. He created them breathless with excitement to tell you something new. He created them unable to speak fluently and therefore liable to the most ridiculous sayings. He created them tireless in simple delights (“Again! Again!”). He created them endlessly imaginative. He created them playful.

“God intends every parent to be a portrait of his happiness.”

Our kids’ playful qualities can be tainted by sin, of course, but the qualities themselves are not sinful, any more than a smile is sinful. If Eve had borne children in Eden, surely they would have giggled as much as any two-year-old — in fact, having no cause for sorrow, surely they would have giggled more.

If God created kids’ playful tendencies, then he delights in them (Genesis 1:31). And if he delights in them, then we reflect his joy when we delight in them too.

The Medicine of a Parent’s Laughter

If he had wanted, God could have created kids with the seriousness of a businessman. Instead, he created them in a way that makes businessmen silly again.

At work, a man may make spreadsheets or manage employees or design building plans. But at home, he slays dragons and builds castles and shoots arrows. At work, he is “project manager” or “software engineer.” But at home, he is by turns David and Goliath, Batman and Robin, the gallant knight and the knight’s gallant horse. At work, he labors. At home, he laughs.

Of course, home has its many serious moments as well, and a faithful father or mother knows when to be silly and when to be stern. But perhaps many of us need to remember how powerful the medicine of parents’ laughter is.

Our sighs and slumped shoulders communicate something true to a child, especially when we take time to explain them: The world is broken; evil is everywhere; Christ has not yet come back. And in an age as flippant and frivolous as ours, children need to feel just how badly sin has fractured human souls and societies. Through warnings and somber reminders, our own Father tells us the same (Romans 6:23; 1 John 2:15–17).

But he also tells us more. He tells us Christ rose and reigns. He tells us the darkness is already passing away, and our sins are forgiven, and a new world is coming. He gives us promise after promise that answers our sighs, lifts our shoulders, and makes us laugh. And just as “a joyful heart is good medicine” to the soul (Proverbs 17:22), so a joyful parent is good medicine to a child. And more than that, God is glorified in parents when their joy in him and their delight in his promises overflows in play.

In Zechariah, God illustrates his coming kingdom by saying, “The streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing” (Zechariah 8:5). Alongside seriousness, then, play also tells something true to a child: The happy God still lives and rules. And when he returns, “sorrow and sighing shall flee away” (Isaiah 35:10) — but laughter and play will remain.

Let Kids Be Kids

With a few young boys at home, my wife and I sometimes look at each other across a room filled with flailing limbs and shouts. We widen our eyes as if to say, “This is nuts” — and, at least in our better moments, “This is just as it should be.”

Of course, we sometimes need to tell our children that now is not the time for play. Or we need to say that, no, they cannot put marbles down the vents or use their brother’s belly as a skateboard. And we certainly need to pause play to right wrongs, discipline rebellion, and reconcile hearts. Play, like all of God’s gifts, needs wise limits. Play without boundaries brings pain.

But we would be wise to be wary of drawing those boundaries too tightly. In the Gospels, many adults try to dampen the liveliness of kids; our Lord never does. The disciples shooed the kids, the Pharisees shushed them, but Jesus drew them near and let them sing (Matthew 19:13–15; 21:15–16). He did not despise the childlike spirits he created.

At times, I shut down my kids’ play or refuse to join them not because they’re acting inappropriately but because I’m feeling annoyed. And what I need most is a fresh vision of my happy God, my happy Christ, who loves to let kids be kids.

Fellow parents, isn’t that what we need to help our kids see that God is happy? We need something beyond willpower or a resolve to laugh more or planned times of play. We need a sight of God’s smile — the infinite joy that flowed between Father and Son before the world began and then overflowed to us in Christ. God is magnified in our play when that play overflows from parents who have seen his smile.

Yes, the world is broken, evil is everywhere, and Christ has not yet come back. But God is happy, Christ is risen, and unending joy will soon roll through the universe. So tell your kids the good news, and then show it by taking your seat at a tea party, wrestling on the bed, making forts in the basement, or racing across the backyard. Play.