Anne Taylor Robertson 12: Surprised By Joy

“I should be sorry if I were understood to think, or if I encouraged any reader in thinking, that this invincible disklike of doing things with a bat or a ball were other than a misforture. Not, indeed, that I allow to games any of the moral and almost mystical virtures which schoolmasters claim for them; they see to me to lead to ambition, jealousy, and embittered partisan feeling, quite as often as to anything else. Yet not to like them is a misfortune, because it cuts you off from companionship with many excellent people who can be approached in no other way. A misforture, not a vice; for it is involuntary. I had tried to like games and failed. That impulse had been left out of my make-up; I was to games, as the proverb has it, like an ass to the harp.”
While the confession of playing sports like a donkey plays the harp is a hilarious illustration, I find in the middle of this that Lewis’ thoughts on playing games for companionship to be very interesting. Does he see playing games as sin because they lead to unhealthy competition, jealousy and bitterness? Or does he simply use the metaphor of games to mean sinful behavior? Christ went to the darkest places of the world to be with people, and he spent time with the ‘most’ sinful people; but he never partook in sin. I wonder where his people will go, and where they should stop. Should they stop? Modeling Christ, they should also go to the darkest places, but they should never partake. This is something I wonder about.