Here's an easy way for you to support the worldwide outreach of Lutheran Public Radio Incorporated and create a will for free.

Free will offers a secure, online estate planning tool that can help you create a will for free in about 20 minutes.

Through free will, you can help us educate future generations of Lutherans through programming like issues etc the word of the Lord

indoors forever are 24-7 sacred music and talk stations and the publishing of books

learn more at freewill.com slash issues etc.org pastor Brian Wolfmiller author of the

Issues etc book of the month finally free three lessons in the parable the prodigal, author of the Issues, Etc, Book of the Month, Finally Free,

Three Lessons in the Parable, the Prodical Son.

One of the major points that's often missed is that Jesus with this parable of the prodigal

Son is calling those Pharisees and scribes away from their complaining, grumbling at the mercy of Christ, and to join the angels in

rejoicing over the repentance of a sinner. Learn more about finally free at issues etc.org. How is the Christian view of leisure similar and different from contemporary culture, the classical world, the middle ages, and modernity?

Welcome back to issues,, Etcetera.

I'm Jeff Schwartz, sitting in for Pastor Todd Wilkin,

joining us for the remainder of this hour to discuss the Christian view of leisure,

Dr. Joel Bierman, Professor of Systematic Theology at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis,

author of several books, including Day 7 for Work, Rest, or Play, and a recent column for the Lutheran

Witness magazine titled Leisure Suit You. Dr. Beerman, welcome back.

It's good to be on with you again.

Dr. Bierman, how does our culture define leisure?

Well, leisure is a really interesting word. We're all familiar with it. We hear leisure,

and we think immediately of relaxing, vacations, weekend, time off. For us, leisure is all about

inactivity and, you know, doing what we want to do. So I would say our culture, if we get kind of

technical about it, would define leisure as those pursuits or those non-pursuits that we would say fulfill ourselves, that we are doing purely for their own pleasure, purely for our own enjoyment, for our own indulgence.

...