One issue that came up as I shared the chapter/article with a student was the issue of the role of hobbies and normal recreational 'stuff.' When does a healthy hobby/recreation/diversion become unhealthy?
Obviously in the beginning of the article, I'm somewhat railing and ranting against an entertainment culture that is so clearly out-of-whack that it deadens us rather than enlivens and enriches us.
I think that as I've considered the question, the answer is in the words themselves: recreation and diversion. When it's healthy and appropriate and good, recreation is, quite literally, re-creation. It re-creates us in a physical, emotional, and/or spiritual sense. It participates in God's "again-making" that some day will be perfect and eternal. In this sense, healthy sleep habits are the perfect model of re-creation. When we wake up refreshed, renewed, and ready to embrace the works that God has gone ahead and prepared in advance for us to do with him on this new day, his day, then we have, indeed had a foretaste of his perfect re-creation.
Diversions, on the other hand, just do that--they divert our attention and minds from things that will only be there when we get back. Diversion becomes escapism and avoidance. Not that being 'diverted' is always a bad thing--I've often been diverted from a problem and come back to it much fresher as a result---but in a culture that is suffering from diversion-saturation, we would do well to ponder if all our diverting is ceasing to serve healthy purposes and ends. Re-creational ends, rather than simply avoidance or escapism.
The trick with this, of course, is that much of it is largely subjective. At the beach, my wife will read People magazine and I will read Eugene Peterson, and God uses both to re-create us as we rest. What starts as recreation can turn into diversion...and the other way around. But I think the vocabulary of recreation and diversion is at least a start in understanding what activities are healthy and what no longer serves us as it should.
1 comment:
AK - Yeah, I'm in too, at least in wrestling through these two seemingly similar yet opposite ideas. When we travel to the lake (yes, still as often as possible) I find that even in the same place some weekends I really rest well and some weekends it's just a diversion. Weird part is now I'm starting to realize it in the middle of the weekend, not just at the end, which kinda asks the question on Saturday if I'm gonna grow up or not before the weekend's over:)
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