I wonder if it’s the possibility of false or disproportionate hopes that’s the problem. In the case of fantasy, the Biblical promise of heaven is nothing short of “fantastic” and hearing and believing it is an important use of our imaginative capacity. To buy into other fantasies and abandon that hope as I pursue entertainment would be tragic.

There is also a reflection on pleasure by Phillip Jensen in his book ‘By God’s Word’ where he concludes ‘Pleasure is a by-product, not an end goal. Pleasure is found in things and in people, but people must matter more to you than your own pleasure if you are to find true pleasure in them. He who pursues God will rejoice and be glad in all the good things God has given him – from football to ballet, from gherkins to steak. And the greatest pleasure of all he will find in the person of God himself’.

I suggest that once we work out the place of pleasure, then re entertainment, a good place to start might be ‘Be holy as I (God) am holy’ 1 Peter 1

I find the Bible entertaining—it has ironies, unexpected twists & turns that make me laugh—like Eglon and his goons in Judges 3; Dagon falling on his face in 1 Sam 5; the way idols are mocked in Isaiah 44; and the way the disciples just don’t “get” Jesus in John 4:31-33 and 11:11-12, 16. 

Good secular entertainment doesn’t just entertain; it also communicates a world view.  It is happy escapism, but not just happy escapism; it affirms some sort of morality, some sort of teleology.  Perhaps we should work towards redeeming entertainment, and using it as a vehicle for communicating the Biblical world view.  Perhaps we could do what C. S. Lewis did in Narnia: not just predictably parrot the gospel story, but set up a world that is based on a Biblical world view, and get characters to have adventures in it. 

What d’you think?  Any budding playwrights out there…?

I’m not advocating a six-day work week, on the contrary, I think that there is plenty of work in ones own home that needs to be done…  But entertainment has become a predominant feature of our lives – should we be spending more hours a week on idle entertainment than personal prayer, Bible study and worship?  More hours being entertained than in corporate worship, Christian fellowship and reaching out to the lost?  I would guess that most Western Christians would spend more hours in a week being entertained than they would on all those listed activities combined.

Hasn’t God made creation inherently entertaining?

For example:

Job 39:13 “The wings of the ostrich wave proudly, but are they the pinions and plumage of love?  14 For she leaves her eggs to the earth and lets them be warmed on the ground,15   forgetting that a foot may crush them and that the wild beast may trample them.

16   She deals cruelly with her young, as if they were not hers; though her labor be in vain, yet she has no fear, 17 because God has made her forget wisdom and given her no share in understanding.

I wonder whether this large umbrella term ‘entertainment’ needs qualification. After all, I find my children entertaining very often but I would never describe them as my ‘entertainment’.

More to muse over, I guess.