We’ve probably all heard the phrase “playing god,” and many of us might even have been accused of playing god. But what does it mean when someone says that? Is it different in a “secular” context than in a religious context? And why do people use this language when we’re discussing complex, contested issues? And most importantly, what does this language do? How does it work? Dan looks at these issues in this episode.
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Hello and welcome to the series It's in the Code, part of the podcast Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Dan Miller, professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
Excited to be with you, as always, in this format for these discussions.
As always, I want to begin by thanking those of you who support us at Straight White American Jesus in so many ways.
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So thank you for that.
And as always, thank you for those who've reached out to me.
Invite anybody to do that.
Daniel Miller Swag.
DanielMillerSWAJ at gmail.com.
I closed the gap on my email deficit, my gap between emails I receive and my chance to respond to them.
It has opened up a bit again this week as academically we come into things like midterms and stuff like that, but I am resolved.
I am continuing to respond.
I am trying to close that gap.
I value so much the insights, questions, provocative questions, and responses that you provide.
Please keep them coming.
This series, in particular, depends upon you to keep moving forward.
Throw this out there.
I've gotten a few thoughts, a few ideas that I'll be looking at, but as we come into the holiday season, I'm interested in thoughts you might have for topics or themes or issues that The coded language, the coded practices, the coded messages that we spend our time talking about in this series.
Would love to hear if there are those that you think maybe coming into this season, we should spend some time talking about.
Today I want to dive in, and the past couple episodes focused on the idea of fear.
Faith over fear and so forth.
Some great responses and insights about those topics from folks.
I thank you for those.
And it led me to sort of mention another kind of, really, like a goldie oldie, I think I said, I can't believe that I haven't done an episode on this, but it was the notion of playing God.
And I call it a Goldie Oldie because it's probably one that everybody's heard before, right?
There are times on this series that I'll talk about topics that I know that if you're not familiar with a certain kind of religious subculture, you're never going to have heard that.
If you don't have a certain kind of religious person in your life or your circle of acquaintances, you'll never have heard this.
This one is one that I think all of us have probably heard, right?
The idea of playing God.
And it's so well known.
I think it has a certain degree of general usage outside of any kind of specifically religious context.
It's still a concern or an accusation.
We're used to the accusatory nature of telling someone they're playing God here in a couple minutes.
It's still a concern that's alive and well, and I think it connects well with the idea of faith over fear, right?
The idea being that when we quote-unquote play God, we're acting, among other things, out of fear.
That fear leads us to play God, whatever that means.
So let's dive into this, right?
And let's do what we do.
Let's start with the basic idea.
Like, what is at the heart of this?
I explained to a student this week in class, it's funny, sometimes you say these things and you're like, oh, that sounds pretty good.
And I thought this sounded pretty good, that part of what I was working with students to learn how to do is to make what is implicit in what we say or what we do or things that we read or whatever, to take what is implicit and make it explicit.
I think it's a good part of what we do in this series, right?
We take things and often we have an implicit sense of what they do.
We implicitly understand their effects.
But I want to make that explicit.
I want to bring that to the surface and look at it.
And that's a good place to start with this one.
So returning to that point that I introduced just a minute ago, the most obvious starting point for me here is that this is an accusation.
If somebody says you are playing God, they are accusing you of something, right?
It's not a laudatory statement.
They're not saying you're doing something that you should be doing.
They are accusing you of something.
So, if you've ever had this accusation leveled against you, you know immediately that it puts you on the defensive.
You're put in the position of having to try to prove that no, you're not, right?
Oh, you're playing God.
No, no, I'm not.
No, I'm not.
That's not what I'm doing.
I'm not playing God, right?
Immediately, rhetorically, you are put on the defensive.
You're on the back foot.
And that's part of what this is.
That's part of how this phrase operates when it's used.
So it's an accusation, but here's the question, right?
An accusation of what?
Again, I have conversations with people, I reflect on my own experiences, and we have this sense of like, oh, the way that it works, what it does is it puts me on the defensive, but then we're like, huh, but why?
A lot of times we recognize the effect something has on us, but when you go in to sort of tease out why, how does it do that?
That's the part that eludes us.
That's what I'm talking about.
I was trying to make the implicit explicit here.
So what kind of accusation is it?
An accusation of what?
And here I think most of us probably have an intuitive sense of the answer to that.
It's the idea of trying to do something that we as human beings are not intended to do, or trying to control something that we simply don't have the capacity to control.
And here I'm thinking even with its broadly sort of secular usage, its usage outside of religion, right?
And I've heard it in those contexts.
I've heard people who are not You know, not in a religious context, or maybe not religious people.
It's not a discussion of something explicitly religious, and they'll still use this language.
That's what it is.
The idea of trying to do something that we as human beings aren't intended to do, or trying to control something that we simply don't have the capacity to control.
We are trying to play God.
I think it's sort of akin, if you're looking for a kind of a reference or a point of reference here, a place to kind of anchor the understanding of this, I think it's akin to the way that insurance companies might refer to acts of God when, you know, the policy may not protect against acts of God or something like that.
Well, those aren't intended as theological statements, right?
They're not saying that if the sky opens up and God speaks or acts or, I don't know, smites your car or house or something like that, that you're not covered.
Right?
It's intended to capture the sense of events, you know, usually weather events, disaster related events or whatever, to capture the sense of events which lie beyond the control or agency of human beings.
God, in quotes there, is a kind of placeholder.
It's not a theological statement.
God is just a placeholder for what it is that exceeds our capacities or our responsibilities or something like that.
So I think that's part of what's at the heart of the sort of general sense of this, the sense that you might hear in any context where it's used religious or not, okay?
But I think there's also a specifically religious intonation to this that sort of adds to it.
I talk about this with my clients a lot that I think there are lots of things that we deal with As individuals, there's lots of ways that maybe language or actions of others affect us.
And often what religion does is not so much change that experience, you know, as such, but it intensifies it or it adds layers on it.
And I think the religious piece here sort of amps this way up.
So it's obvious, right, that the secularized version of this originates in religion.
The reason why somebody talks about acts of God and so forth is because, you know, it's a discourse about God.
It comes from a time when I think the general usage reflected a more broadly religious and specifically Christian society, right?
And it's sort of lingered on, but the phrase is still common in religious contexts.
And again, as always, with what I say, I'm not talking about all religion, obviously, religions that don't talk about gods aren't going to talk about, you know, playing God.
Some religions that do talk about gods or worship gods are not going to use this language or not Speaking of every religious person everywhere or every brand of religion, but in a certain kind of religion, the phrase is common.
And as always, you know, I'm most familiar with with American Christianity.
And so this is a phrase that is still common in those contexts.
And it applies to a wider range of issues.
I think you get this language when it is in a religious context or expressing a religious sensibility, let's say a religious sensibility.
It applies to a wider range of issues than it will when it is used more broadly.
And I think it kind of carries a social force, a social punch, if you like.
It packs a punch within a religious context that's a lot greater than in a more general popular context.
And I think this is because within a religious subculture, the phrase is more literal.
I talk about literalism sometimes and I say that nobody's there's no such thing as a biblical literalist and so forth and I mean that but in this case it's literal right if somebody's accused of playing God or they're being warned that they shouldn't play God it's an accusation they are undertaking actions that are properly God's not human beings not just as in the secular sense that you're doing something that exceeds our capacities or you're dabbling in things humans weren't meant to dabble in or something like that but no now that literally
You are undertaking actions that belong to God.
You are abrogating a responsibility or an agency that only belongs to the divine.
You are transgressing a line that has been drawn by God.
So playing God, then, it's what Christians call a sin.
There's something sinful about this.
But I think that there's a sense in which it's not just any sin.
I think we've talked about this before, the slogan that, you know, all sin is sin and that there's no differences between them.
But in practice, we know that within certain kinds of the religious groups that are going to talk about sin, there are fundamental differences in level.
And this is this is like one of the big ones, one of the big capital S sins, because I think it amounts to a form of blasphemy.
In playing God, we are attempting to occupy a space that belongs only to God.
We are replacing God with something else.
We are claiming a kind of divine status.
It's an emphasis on blasphemy, right?
And so I think this is why It exerts so much force in a religious context is because it's it's a really big accusation for those in that context for whom those kinds of accusations matter people who don't want to be sinful people who
Believe that blasphemy is you know sort of the worst thing that you can do there There's a place in the Bible where says the only unforgivable sin that's sort of terrifying to label it that packs a lot of rhetorical and theological and bodily force So that's a piece of it, but now let's take our deeper dive.
Let's do what we do, right?
That's the rhetorical force.
But as always, I want to look at, so what does that do?
What is the work that this phrase does, right?
As always, I'm interested in the way that the things we say aren't about communicating information.
They're about doing something.
And sometimes that something is communicative, but oftentimes it is something more than that.
Okay?
So I want to look at the work that this phrase does.
And this is why I think this matters.
It's not just a theological accusation or judgment of blasphemy or otherwise.
It's a kind of trump card.
It's a conversation stopper.
It is intended as an accusation that cannot be overcome.
It's a rhetorical hand grenade that is thrown into conversation or debate, and it's never used in good faith.
And what I mean by that is, as soon as somebody accuses you of playing God, they've taken all their toys and gone home.
There's nothing you can do.
There is no legitimate response to that.
Right?
So let's think about some examples when this phrase is used, like sort of classically, It's used in discussions of things like end-of-life care in medical contexts, right?
Contexts like, you know, discussing euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide or different kinds of things like this.
And it's the argument that to end life quote-unquote artificially is to play God, to intrude into God's territory.
It has also been used to shut down abortion debates.
Now, we talk about abortion a lot on our series and our shows.
And on the one hand, when we're talking about abortion, it's just the sense that it's murder and so forth.
But the question always comes up, well, what about the exceptional cases?
What about rape or incest or health of the mother or health of the fetus or what have you?
And that's where this will come out.
Right?
So it will say rape and incest are bad, they're terrible, they're horrific, but we can't end that fetal life.
We don't know what God might have planned for that life.
It is not our role to play God and decide what will come of that life.
Yeah, this pregnancy is a risk to the mother, maybe even a fatal risk, but we have to trust God.
We have to know that God has a purpose.
We have to know that God could make a miracle, a medical miracle, if God wanted to and preserve this mother.
If we go in and terminate that pregnancy, we are playing God.
Or in the case of an infant who's going to be born with debilitating mental or physical disabilities, Or who will have a very short life that's going to be full of pain and misery and so forth.
And I say, well, we understand that's tragic and we're not heartless, but we can't play God, right?
If God wants to take that baby home to be with God, God will do that.
It's not our choice or our call to do this, right?
I have also encountered this in discussions of trans and gender non-conforming people.
People who will say, look, you know, I guess If their gender expression is different than what was assigned, I feel for them.
I don't know what that's like.
I can imagine that's difficult and so forth.
But you know, we can't play God.
God had a reason for assigning gender.
That's something that God does, making us the people we are, and we have to accept that.
If we try to change that too much, including things like gender and sexuality and so on, we are playing God.
And on and on and on and on.
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In the new novel, American Prophet.
I was the one who dreamed about the natural disaster just before it happened.
Oh, and the pandemic.
And that crazy election.
And don't get me wrong, I'm not bragging.
It's not like I asked for the job.
Actually, no one would ask for this job.
At least half the people will hate whatever I say, and almost everyone thinks I'm a little crazy.
Getting a date is next to impossible.
I've got a radio host who is making up conspiracies about me, a dude actually shooting at me, and an unhinged president threatening me.
But the job isn't all that bad.
I've gotten to see the country, and meet some really interesting people, and hopefully do some good along the way.
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Just look for American Prophet by Jeff Fulmer.
That's American Prophet by Jeff Fulmer.
Here's my point.
In every case like that, where this is used, it's not really an argument that's offered.
Right?
These are all things that are debated.
They're things that I am happy to debate with people.
But when somebody brings out the Playing God card, they're not making an argument anymore.
It's an attempt to stop the conversation entirely.
To say that questioning positions on these topics amounts to playing God is essentially saying that the argument is out of bounds.
It's to say there is nothing here to argue.
These issues are settled and they have been settled by God and to question settled positions is to question God.
That's what it amounts to.
It's a conversation stopper.
It's not a move in an argument.
It is an end to argument.
So to accuse somebody of playing God, it is to assume a position of unassailable authority.
I know we talk about this a lot, but I see this so much in religious discourse, where appeals to divine authority are a way of elevating one's position in such a way that it cannot be questioned by others.
And it's the same thing here, right?
And then I think this is the further sort of ramping this up within a religious context.
To play that card is also to make a claim to occupying a position of faith rather than a position of doubt or fear, right?
Those of you who want to say that abortion should be allowed in these cases, those of you who want to affirm Gender-affirming care for trans and gender non-conforming individuals.
Those of you who want to have discussions about the life of the mother or the health of the fetus, you're acting out of fear and not faith.
Brings us right back to the episode from last time, right?
So the only legitimate response is not argument, it's not discussion, it's repentance.
All you can do is give in to your opponent, recognize that you're out of line, and fall into step behind them.
So surprise, surprise, when we dig a little deeper into the phrase to see what it actually does, we find that its real aim is to maintain existing structures of authority and to silence dissent about legitimately difficult topics.
So that's one part of the decoding.
And those are sort of meta-level issues.
And I can hear the people now that says, that's great, but Uncle Ron, right?
Let's talk about Uncle Ron.
I've heard Uncle Ron say this.
When these issues come up, he says this, he says, we can't play God.
That's all good, Dan, but I can't come at him with like all of this stuff about unassailable authority and what else?
What do I say to Uncle Ron?
So here's my response to that, right?
For the Uncle Rons of the world, prepare yourselves.
There are also some very obvious, I think, very down-to-earth weaknesses with this language that I've been able to score some points when I'm talking with people.
I've been able to get them to hear me a little bit in a way that they couldn't.
The first is, I think, there's something ironic about presuming to speak for God when you accuse somebody else of playing God.
To me, it feels like there's something contradictory there.
I'm going to tell you, you can't play God, but I'm kind of doing that in taking the position of being God's spokesperson here.
Right?
So as soon as we start telling anybody what it is that God demands, there's a sense in which we've already kind of cut the legs out from an argument that somebody's playing God.
Okay?
The second way to respond, though, and I think this is maybe the weightiest, is that the idea of playing God is so loose, it's impossible to know where it applies.
And this is one of those things where you can do the thing everybody hates, where you answer questions with questions, or you just give them some questions to think about.
So, okay, I hear you, Uncle Ron, what you're saying about end-of-life care, but why isn't seeking any medical care playing God?
Every time we use medical care of any kind, we're intervening against nature in some case.
When we extend life, we are acting against nature.
Every time somebody has a life-saving medical treatment of any kind, They're arguably playing God if playing God means going against the natural course of things.
I think really of like invasive surgeries where people are on life support and they have machines breathing for them and pumping their blood and whatever and really amazing things that extend life.
Is that playing God?
Now there are some Christian groups have always argued that that kind of thing is and other religious groups have made those arguments as well.
I disagree with those positions, but I'll tell you there's some consistency there.
But most of the Uncle Rons in the world are happy to go get basic medical treatments of different kinds.
And the question, well, why isn't that playing God?
Right?
We also exceed, you know, what we might call our God-given capacities in a million times every day.
We fly over the air.
We go in vehicles that can travel underwater.
We use amazing technologies that were unfathomed.
Millenia ago, let alone just a few decades ago.
I'm sitting here wearing corrective lenses, overcoming the eye issues that I have through nature, right?
And what have you.
Why aren't those things called playing God?
If we're going to avoid playing God, don't we need to maybe get rid of all that stuff too?
So it turns out that this supposedly robust theological insistence, it's really, really selective.
And this is the thing, I will bet you, I bet money that Uncle Ron can't give you any principled or theological reason why he argues for it where he does.
Why it is that it applies in hot-button issues like abortion or end-of-life care or trans care or something like that, but doesn't apply to a million other things where it obviously should.
Right?
So that's another response.
The third one is that many of the same Christians who insist that we shouldn't play God also affirm a theology that says that's exactly what we're supposed to do.
When I grew up, some of the rhetoric has changed, but it is still there.
But conservative Christians have long opposed, and I remember hearing this in church services and things when I was growing up and beyond, They have long said that they oppose efforts at environmental management and, you know, that they don't believe in global warming and so forth.
They don't think that humans should have environmental regulations and sort of on and on and on.
Why?
Because the Bible says that God has given human beings dominion over the earth.
The contemporary version of this usually is wrapped up in climate denial arguments, right?
And that's when you say, OK, Uncle Ron, cool, but if we've been given dominion over the earth, right, which you think, Uncle Ron, you're opposed to environmental action and rules and you think climate change is a hoax and so on and so forth.
But if we've been given dominion over the earth, we've been tasked with acting as God's representatives.
Playing God is exactly what we're called to do.
But if it's what we're called to do, then it's what we're called to do.
And accusing somebody of playing God loses its force.
There may be real arguments to be had about all those hot button issues, but you don't get to just play a Trump card and say, yep, that's playing God.
It's out.
You can't argue with me.
See what Uncle Ron has to say about that.
Alright, we're out of time.
I need to wrap this up.
If you are in, or have come out of, or are familiar with particular kinds of religious communities, you'll have felt the force of being accused of playing God at some point.
Or you'll have seen this rhetoric used.
And again, I talk about Christian religious communities because that's the world I know best, but this is a case where there are lots of other theistic traditions where this language can come up.
It can show up in Muslim communities.
It can show up in Jewish communities.
And so this language will be familiar to a lot of people.
I've talked with a lot of people who describe, as I sort of noted earlier, being caught up short by this language, feeling that there's no way to respond or argue, and not always knowing why.
That's one of the things that happens with, I think, the experience of so many things we look at in this series, is people have responses, or these things have effects on them, and they're not always sure why they have those effects.
I hope this gives us a sense of part of the why of that.
Why does it affect us the way that it does?
And next time, maybe it gives us an opportunity to not be caught so flat-footed, right?
The next time that, uh, what do we got coming up?
I guess probably Thanksgiving is the next major holiday coming up.
Maybe some folks will have some, you know, Halloween get-togethers or things like that.
The next time Uncle Ron wants to start talking about issues in the news and pontificating and saying we shouldn't play God, try out some of those lines.
See if there's a response to that.
See if that's a way of trying to keep the argument open rather than letting it be closed off.
As always, again, thank you for listening.
Thank you for supporting us.
It is always so encouraging and also humbling to hear from you, to see the support.
