Introduction & Definition of Fun

This is the first of two (Lord willing) lessons on something you may not have heard much about. There’s not a lot of resources on this, but I am happy to bring it to you. I call it the biblical theology of fun.

Since that’s been in the bulletin and people have heard I’m going to be talking about it, I’ve fielded a lot of questions: “What is a theology of fun? Why are we talking about this?” First, I feel like it would be helpful to define what I mean by “fun.” Fun is shorthand for the enjoyment of or taking pleasure in experiences, sensations, people, or things in life.

By that definition, hopefully every day you have lots of opportunities to have fun. It’s enjoyable—built right into the definition. We like to have fun; fun is something we enjoy doing. In some senses, we live in a world dominated by a pursuit—often an idolatry—of fun. So why a theology of fun? Because fun must be viewed in proper relationship to God.

Why Discuss Fun?

Over the years, teaching in student ministries, I love how the kids just ask straightforward questions like: “Is it okay to have fun?” That’s not something I get asked often by adults, but junior highers and high schoolers who see the world living for fun, often sinning in their pursuit of fun, wonder: they look at the Bible and at the call to live for the glory of God, the reality that we are aliens and strangers here, that we aren’t living for this world and its pleasures. We’ve been crucified with Christ, so we’re not living anymore; it’s Christ who lives in us. So they ask, “Is it okay for us to have fun?”

I’ve also spoken with newer believers—on-fire believers—who are committing their lives to Christ, taking weekends and weekdays to evangelize strangers and neighbors. When I invite them to have fun—maybe come over and play a game or go on a hike to enjoy the sunrise—they might give me a funny look, as if to say, “Why would I do that? I don’t have time for fun. This world is passing away; there are people dying without Christ. I have to go preach the gospel.” There’s something good in that impulse to want to sacrifice your own joy for the benefit of others. Jesus did that, right? For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross. But even in that suffering, there was joy—He was pursuing a greater, selfless joy.

There is also something valid about thinking, “I don’t want to live for fun, because that’s what I used to live for.” The world is dead set on pursuing pleasure and fun as ultimate—just get through Monday to Friday so we can have the weekend, because that’s when “fun” starts. Work hard so you can retire and have as much fun as possible before you die. We used to live there—we were all dead in our transgressions and sins.

Our Former Pursuit of Fun

Open your Bible to Ephesians 2. It’s understandable why someone might question whether it’s okay to have fun when you consider that our old life was dominated by fun as an idol.

Ephesians 2:1 says, “And you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we all formerly conducted ourselves in the lust of the flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.”

We all were once not Christians, just like the rest. How did we conduct ourselves? According to the lusts of the flesh. We consulted ourselves and said, “Does this maximize my joy? If yes, I’ll pursue it.” The problem was we were setting our target far too low, seeking satisfaction in the gifts, not in the Giver. Once we realize that’s how we used to live, we see God’s called us to something greater. We no longer live for this world as if it’s ultimate. We’re citizens of heaven. So people wonder: “Should we have fun at all, if our old life was all about fun?”

As Smedley once summarized from Ecclesiastes, only Christians can have true fun. Only Christians are rightly related to fun because only Christians are rightly related to their Lord. The world wastes their lives living for pleasure, chasing the next dopamine hit, scrolling social media, partying, constantly searching for satisfaction but never finding it. They get a moment of fun, then it vanishes. In sports, for instance, you see a team win the Super Bowl, but there’s an anticlimax afterward. They’re already asking, “How can I do that again?” There’s no lasting satisfaction. Our bodies and this world are passing away, but to the world, that’s all that matters, so they try to find ultimate satisfaction in the trivial.

Living as Citizens of Heaven

Philippians 3:19 describes those who are enemies of the cross: “Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.” This doesn’t mean they only live for food, but that they live for fulfilling their own wants. By contrast, verse 20 says our citizenship is in heaven, from which we await our Savior, Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body. We used to worship fun, but we’re not part of that dead world anymore.

In Luke 12:16–21, Jesus tells a parable of a rich man whose land was productive. He planned to build bigger barns and store his crops so he could retire and enjoy life: “Eat, drink, be merry.” But God said, “You fool! This very night your soul is required of you. Now who will own what you prepared?” That man lived as though the ultimate goal was to have fun in this world. He stored up treasure for himself and was not rich toward God—a fool’s errand. We were made for ultimate things. As Jeremiah Burroughs said, if your hope is in this world only, you’re a wretched creature. That’s exactly what happens when people have a great deal in this world but don’t know how to use it for God.

The right response to the misuse of pleasure or fun is not a total rejection of fun, but a proper alignment of it in relation to God. Ecclesiastes and other scriptures teach this. God’s greatest gifts—money, sex, power, food, work—are the very things the world abuses sinfully. That doesn’t mean we reject the gifts themselves. We’re warned in Colossians 2 and 1 Timothy 4 about a false religious impulse to say, “Don’t handle, don’t taste, don’t touch.” The problem is not in the things themselves but in our hearts. We need to be rightly related to God.

Rejecting Asceticism & Enjoying God’s Gifts

Colossians 2:20 says, “If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of this world, why, as if you were still living in it, do you submit to decrees—‘Don’t handle, don’t taste, don’t touch’?” Those commands sound spiritual, but they have no value in restraining the flesh. Similarly, in 1 Timothy 4:1–5, Paul calls such teaching “doctrines of demons” when people forbid marriage or advocate abstaining from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. Everything created by God is good and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.

That doesn’t mean we pursue every pleasurable thing without restraint. God gives good gifts with parameters. Even in the garden, God said, “Eat from every tree except that one.” But we’re not to reject good gifts out of fear of idolatry; we instead receive them with thanksgiving, recognizing they come from God. If it’s something we can receive without sinning, we can enjoy it as a gift.

Fun as Part of God’s Good Creation

Charles Simeon once said there are but two lessons for a Christian to learn: to enjoy God in everything and to enjoy everything in God. That’s essentially living out James 5:13, which says if anyone is suffering, let him pray; if anyone is cheerful, let him sing praise. We bring everything—suffering and pleasure—before God in prayer and thanksgiving. This is how we align fun with God.

Point number one: God created fun as a gift. In Genesis 1, we see the refrain “God said… it was so… God saw that it was good.” God made the world and all its capacities for us to enjoy it. Fun did not happen as a distortion of creation; enjoyment of God’s gifts was present even before the fall. God made food to be more than mere nourishment—He gave variety like peppers, fruit, coffee, and so on. He made companionship, marriage, work, and the joys that come with accomplishing a task. God made us with the capacity to enjoy these things. He made us in His image. Psalm 104:31 says, “Let Yahweh be glad in His works.” God takes pleasure in His creation, and we mirror that when we take pleasure in what we make or see. Ultimately, these good things should point us back to Him.

Enjoying God in All Things

God created not only the things we enjoy, but our ability to enjoy them. Our senses—taste buds, smell, sight, hearing—are gifts from God. He could have made everything bland. Instead, He designed our brains to find pleasure in these experiences. We get glimpses of this beauty in the world—a sunrise, the Grand Canyon, a wonderful meal—although our capacity to enjoy them is diminished by sin. Nevertheless, we see hints of what we were made for, and what we will fully experience in the new heavens and new earth, untainted by sin.

So, we should train our hearts: “Thank You, God, for taste buds. Thank You for my eyes. Thank You for these experiences.” We don’t live for those experiences, but we thank God for them, receiving them as gifts from our loving Father. If God instead calls us to a prison cell with a drab wall, that’s His will for us; we won’t experience as many pleasures, yet He can still give us a song in that prison—like Paul and Silas. But if He gives us many gifts, we should receive them with thanksgiving and humility.

God Gives Us Things to Enjoy

First Timothy 6:17 says we are not to set our hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. God’s purpose in giving people wealth is that they would enjoy it as His gift. But if they trust in wealth itself, it’s a path to destruction. God wants us to enjoy His gifts rightly—imitate our Father, be generous and ready to share. Ecclesiastes tells us wealth, possessions, and the power to enjoy them are gifts from God.

Solomon says in Ecclesiastes 5:18–19 that finding enjoyment in your work, food, and drink, and having the power to enjoy your possessions, is a gift from God. The world, ironically, is full of grumbling even though it pursues joy. But believers can truly enjoy the simplest meal, work, or recreation because we know it is from God.

Fun Was Never Meant to Be Ultimate

Fun isn’t intended to be ultimate or ultimately satisfying—even before the fall. John Piper expresses it well in Living in the Light: Money, Sex & Power: all creation was meant to communicate the supreme beauty and worth of God. Everything we enjoy ultimately exists to show that God is more desirable than all those things. Paradoxically, that’s how they become most satisfying in themselves. If you chase fun as ultimate, it disappears. But if you chase God as ultimate, you find even more joy in the gifts He gives.

Psalm 16:11 says, “In Your presence there is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” That doesn’t mean we ignore earthly gifts. We enjoy them, but as pointers to the Giver.

Acts 14:15–17 illustrates that God left a witness of Himself in the good He did—giving rains and fruitful seasons, filling hearts with food and gladness—so people would see it as evidence of the living God. As 1 Timothy 6:17 also says, God provides us with everything to enjoy. So be thankful. Go out with eyes to see the joys God has made, and recognize your capacity to enjoy them as a gift from Him. Sin corrupts this (we’ll discuss that next time), but for now, rest in the fact that God created fun and wants us to receive it gratefully.

Closing & Prayer

We’ve seen that God created fun and that He designed us with the capacity to enjoy Him in His creation. Next time, we’ll look at how sin has corrupted our relationship with fun and why only Christians can truly have fun. Let’s pray.

God, thank You for these bodies You’ve made. Thank You for this world You created, filled with good things, and for giving us the ability to enjoy them. We were born in rebellion, worshiping those created things instead of You. We deserved judgment, but by Your mercy, You made us alive with Christ, changing us from the heart so we don’t live for this world’s fleeting pleasures but for You. Now that we’re rightly related to You, we can truly enjoy these things as gifts, not idols. Guard us from loving this world, and help us receive Your gifts with thanksgiving, sanctifying them by Your word and prayer. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.