Summer is upon us again, signaling the exodus to the outdoors where people will — among other things — enjoy playing games in the open air. Our love of games seems innocent enough to our secular culture, but upon reflection this perennial and fascinating behavior points to deeper significance than just having fun.
Other summer favorites like theatre and cinema have drama in common with sport and games. We enjoy watching a competitive game as we enjoy watching a play or a movie; in all these things we are spectators. But when it comes to participating in a game, playing it rather than watching it, this drama makes itself felt in a unique way.
Theatre and cinema make the drama of life visible, but playing a game allows one to experience it. In a game, the players are the actors, but the story doesn’t unfold according to any script. The story is created moment by moment according to the choices of the players. The game imitates life by molding together circumstances that we have no control over, with individual freedom to deal with those circumstances as players choose. The essence of the game is the drama of human choices confronting contingent circumstances — the fact that nothing has to unfold the way it actually does. Hence in playing the game one experiences the mystery of conflict, the glory of sacrifice, the triumph of overcoming, the shame of cowardice, and the exaltation of the hero from a first-person perspective.
It is in this way that the game accentuates the drama of existence. We have the freedom to make choices; our life is a moral drama. This is how the game can be a training ground for virtues like courage, fortitude, and sacrifice. Participating in the game reveals and sharpens the moral aspect of existence, encompassing it symbolically into a physical contest of a few hours — a microcosm of man’s whole life. The baskets, touchdowns, goals and rules of our games are arbitrary; they all have the same function, providing a context for success or failure by throwing up obstacles and challenges and then fading into the background as the game becomes a living allegory of the whole of our lives, which is a continual struggle.
In this struggle we sense something fundamental; there is a meaning to this struggle, a challenge to fight and to overcome. In this sense do not all games share in the pattern of the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel? Jacob must struggle all the night long with the angel before receiving a blessing at the break of day. It is, in fact, a test; and the blessing is won through his perseverant effort. Thus the con-test becomes like a symbol of our spiritual quest. A team, a player becomes the “other” that, like Jacob’s angel, challenges us, testing us, calling us to struggle towards our goal. It is not surprising that St. Paul likens our spiritual life to a battle — instructing us to fight the good fight — and also as a contest, a race where we are expected to run so as to win the prize. But it is only in Christ that we can win this race. Pope John Paul said of Christ that “He, in fact, is God's true athlete: Christ is the ‘more powerful’ Man (cf. Mk 1:7), Who for our sake confronted and defeated the 'opponent,' Satan, by the power of the Holy Spirit, thus inaugurating the kingdom of God.”
Thus we can say that the contest reminds us of the nature of our life as a battle, a test, where we are expected to struggle courageously and to overcome. This is important because secular society sends the opposite message. For example, it is widely assumed, because of an atheistic mythology that permeates Western culture, that free will is an illusion. This is the ultimate tragedy, that a life which is not truly dramatic can’t even be tragic. Despair would reign if all the world was not really a stage and men were not its actors; for there would be neither merit nor glory, and no point in struggling. We would be condemned to live at best as passive spectators. So as long as men are playing games, engaging in contests, and enjoying sports, the real quality of human life will be revealed. In a culture of passivity the game reminds us that we are not just spectators, but players in a contest in which we are to struggle like Jacob and to prevail in the One Who told us not to be afraid because He has overcome the world — God’s athlete in Whom we are called to become heroes.
Brian Killian is a freelance writer and a columnist for the Atlantic Catholic. He writes from Nova Scotia and enjoys receiving feedback at noumena1@hotmail.com.
This article previously appeared in the Atlantic Catholic and is used by permission of the author.
