According to J.I. Packer, in an essay entitled Leisure and Lifestyle: Leisure, Pleasure and Treasure, evangelicals have paid relatively little attention to thinking about leisure, emphasizing ‘work rather than leisure, activity rather than rest, and life commitments rather than life-style choices.’  This is as it should be, since pre-occupation with leisure is unhealthy, a symptom of the deadly decadence that has already set in in the Western world.  See 1 Jn 2:15f.  ‘All around the world, as capitalist consumerism and the market economy grind on, carrying all before them, leisure and life-style are becoming areas of entrapment for Christian people.  Failure to see this as a fact, to perceive it as a problem, to think about it in biblical antithesis to the ruling secular notions, and to plan to operate as God’s counter-culture in these areas would be to indicate that we were already falling into the traps, or (to change the metaphor) being blown up in the minefield.’

Problems we face:-

1. Idolatry.  ‘Whatever controls and shapes one’s life is in effect the god one worships’.  It is possible, accordingly, to make a god of leisure activities.
2. Hedonism.  This means the enthroning of pleasure is life’s supreme value and goal.  Popular Western culture is largely hedonistic, and we are constantly exposed to its brainwashing influences through the media and other influences.  The pursuit of pleasure is allowed to dominate all of our choices, includnig sexual behaviour and intimate relationships.  On the other hand, anti-hedonism (the idea that life should be all ‘blood, sweat and tears’) should be avoided also, although the term ‘Christian hedonism’ (Piper) is somewhat misleading.
3. Utilitarianism.  This is the view that the value of anything is found in the extent to which it is useful and productive.  But even leisure may have intrinsic value, rather than just as a means to an end; its value may be more than simply ‘re-creating’ us for more productive activity.  The Christian work ethic is misreprented when taken to mean a sanctified workaholism, for God has given so many things ‘for our enjoyment’, 1 Tim 6:17.  Leisure is more than a periodic pit-stop before further work.

The redeemed life is ideally thought of in terms of ‘wholeness’, ‘balance’, ‘proportion’ (Aquinas), ‘moderation’ (Calvin).  The life of Jesus is a model of Aquinas’ four cardinal virtues – prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude.  Paul’s delineation of the fruit of the Spirit, Gal 5:22f, provide a character profile of such a life.

Positive principles of the redeemed life:-

1. Duty to God.  We live in obedience to him out of gratitude for his grace.
2. Love towards my neighbour.  ‘Love seeks the well-being and advancement of the loved one in every way that it can; it is a matter of the mind and will more than of the feelings, and of sustained commitment rather than momentary intensities.’
3. Freedom.  See Gal 5:1.  This consists in (a) freedom from the need to work for salvation; (b) freedom from the restriction imposed by the typical enactments of the OT law; (c) freedom in the use of enjoyment of all created things, 1 Tim 4:4f; 6:17; (d) freedom in the sense of fulfilment and contentment in working for God (‘in whose service is perfect freedom’).
4. Openness to God, to receive his gifts, including gifts of leisure and pleasure.

The Role of Leisure

Leisure time is time that we use for our own pleasure on a discretionary basis.  Absolute leisure activites are those that we do simply because we want to.  Semi-leisure activities are those that we both want and ought to do, such as attending public worship, doing volunteer work, or reading to keep ourselves informed.  All leisure is a gift from God which, when used wisely, ‘provides rest, relaxation, enjoyment, and physical and psychic health.  It allows people to recover the distinctly human values, to build relationships, to strengthen family ties, and to put themselves in touch with the world and nature.  Leisure can lead to wholeness, gratitude, self-expression, self-fulfilment, creativity, personal growth, and a sense of achievement.’ (Ryken)

Relevant biblical teaching:-

1. The duty of rest.  This is established by Gen 1:1-2:3, and reinforced by Ex 20:8-11; 31:12-17.  ‘This prescribed rhythm of work and rest is part of the order of creation.  Human beings are so made that they need this six-plus-one rhythm, and we suffer in one way or another if we do not get it.  The leisure or at least semi-leisure, of a weekly day for worship and rest is a divine ordinace that our work-oriented world ignores to the peril of its health.  In today’s community as Christ faith fades, soceity’s standards fall, and economic competition becomes more cut-throat, the historic function of the Christian day of rest as a bulwark against employer’s demands for a seven-day week is being increasingly circumvented, and the outlook is somewhat bleak.’
2. The goodness of pleasure.  Eccle 8:15.
3. The rightness of festivity.  The Bible is full of feasts.  See Lev 23; Jn 2; Mt 11:19.  ‘All through the Bible the feast table is the place and the emblem of refreshing, celebratory fellowship – a very proper leisure activity, and certainly one to encourage.’
4. The reality of stewardship.  We are stewards of our time, our opportunities, our abilities, our bodies, and of this earth.  Stewardship means that in our freedom to use created things for our enjoyment, we take care ‘not to seem to approve what is immoral and demoralizing, nor to expose others to unhelpful influences, not to play with fire ourselves.’  Recognition of our stewardship ‘should incline us to choose among the leisure activities that we enjoy those that brnig us closest to God, to people, to beauty, and to all that ennobles.’  See Phil 4:8.

The Place of Pleasure

God takes pleasure in being God and in doing what he does.  The garden of Eden pictures human pleasure before the Fall, and Rev 7:16f speaks of the pleasure that will become the permanent condition of the redeemed.  See also Psa 16:11; 36:8.  Pleasure may therefore be good and holy, although it can also be sinful and vile.  ‘If pleasure comes unsought, and if we receive it gratefully as a providential gift, and if it does no damage to ourselves or to others, and if the delight of it prompts fresh thanksgiving to God, then it is holy.  But if the pursuit of one’s pleasure is a gesture of egoism and self-indulgence whereby one pleases oneself without a thought as to whether one pleases God, then, however harmless in itself the pleasure pursued may be, one has been entrapped by what the Bible sees as the pleasures of the world and of sin (see Lk 8:14; 1 Tim 5:6; 2 Tim 3:4; Tit 3:3; Heb 11:25; Jam 4:3; 5:5; 2 Pet 2:13; cf. Isa 58:13).  The same pleasure experience – eating, drinking, making love, listening to music, painting, playing games, or whatever – will be good or bad, holy or unholy, depending on how is it handled.’

Contempt for pleasure, far from being an indicator of superior holiness, is actually a symptom of the Manichean heresy (the view that the material world and everything it yields is evil).  The Greco-Roman world that confronted the early church was so pleasure-mad that it is no surprise to find that patristic writers spent more time attacking sinful pleasure than in celebrating godly ones.  This perspective was carried into the Middle Ages, in which world-renouncing asceticism was thought of as the highest form of Christianity.  The Reformers and Puritans struck a better balance.  ‘Religion was never designed/To make our pleasures less’ (Watts).

‘It is supremely ironic that, after two millenia of Christian culture, the West should now be plungnig back into a self-defeating hedonism that is horribly similar to the barbaric pagan life-style of the first century, and that is should be doing so in the belief that the Christian religion is basically anti-human because it does not set up pleasing oneself as life’s highest value.’

The Use of Treasure

Jesus announced that it is impossible to serve both God and mammon (money), Mt 6:24.  A conscious refusal to serve money is a necessary part of the Christian life-style.  See 1 Tim 6:17-19.

J.I. Packer, Collected Short Writings, II, 381-392.