Book Review: Holy Play: The Joyful Adventure of Unleashing Your Divine Purpose by Kirk Byron Jones
I discovered Holy Play: The Joyful Adventure of Unleashing Your Divine Purpose by Kirk Byron Jones when a friend recommended it to me. She had found the book helpful to her while going through a personal and vocational transformation and she knew that I was in search of new options for service and ministry. The process of discerning what I would do next in my life was very exciting, but at the same time, it was quite stressful as well. Holy Play addressed both the excitement and the stress with fresh insights, practical suggestions, and genuine understanding. The book offers useful insights to people of faith, not only at critical turning points in their lives, but wherever they may be on life’s journey
The book is written for a general audience and, depending upon one’s religious values and spiritual sensitivities, a reader might find it provocative or affirming, but will never find it boring. Holy Play integrates well basic theological and psychological concepts regarding personal growth and vocational discernment. A sampling of the chapter titles gives a sense of the author’s style: The Tyranny and Triumph of Choosing, The Divine Adventure, Our Great Beloved Partner, The Wild Thrill of Wide-Open Possibility, Not Just Creature but Creator, and Joyfully Playing Your Dreams. Each simply-stated theme unveils subtly Jones’ deeper and broader perspective about the nature of faith and his understanding of God’s active involvement in our lives. Words and the ideas they convey have power to influence what we think. In turn, what we think guides our actions. He offers a critique of the image of God as our cosmic bell hop waiting to respond to our beck and call. His proposition is more substantive than just the idea promoted in popular Christian preaching that our goal is to find the purpose that will then drive our life. His alternative orientation involves that we and not God are responsible for what we do, want, or have in life. He suggests that we rethink through the consequences of what our believing that God is always present with us in the choices we make and how we live their consequences changes us and the life we create. So much of Christian teaching and preaching makes faithful living seem joyless. His ideas about playing, dreaming, creating, making choices, and coping with our experiences reflect his personal experiences, growth and the nature of his theological insights about how we may discover God’s intentions for us and the sense of personal power that comes from having done so
Holy Play assists us in the universal and on-going human struggle to live a substantive, joyful, and meaningful life. Jones implies that our everyday serious engagement or play with life can reflect the meaning of faith and the mysterious and revealing ways of God. We are not alone in that process. Holy Play takes us one step further. It reminds us that the best we offer one another comes from our own authenticity and creativity
In addition to readers actively exploring a new direction in their own faith journey, Holy Play will be helpful to those who do pastoral counseling and those who preach. It helps the reader to be more imaginative about how we think about our relationship with God and God’s concern for us. With so much focus currently on “prosperity,” Holy Play offers a refreshing alternative view of faithful living that makes the book well worth reading.
Jossey-Bass, 2007, Hardcover, 208 pages
$21.95, ISBN: 978-0-7879-8452-6
