When my oldest daughter, Elaine, was 4, I watched her chase a soap bubble across the yard, utterly spellbound, and it struck me as a tiny window into how God should have felt as he watched Adam and Eve encounter each of the animals in Eden. Likewise, after I discovered that my youngest, Olivia, had held a full conversation with me while cutting our kitten’s whiskers under the table, I felt attuned with God’s anger when he flung his judgments at Israel through the prophets.
These sorts of moments, and a thousand others, make raising kids and constructing a family spiritually illuminating tasks—especially after they ask theologically stimulating questions like “Does Jesus wear undies?” And although the creators of Bluey, an Emmy-awarded animated kids’ series, appear to haven’t any overtly religious leanings, the show unexpectedly taps into unseen realities.
If you haven’t yet discovered Bluey, let me catch you up. The series, streaming on Disney+, centers around a family of Australian blue heelers: six-year-old Bluey, her younger sister Bingo, Mum (Chilli), and Dad (Bandit). Each episode is lower than 10 minutes long and targets a preschool audience—but the favored show draws all ages, and, in 2023, was the second-most acquired streaming program with 43.9 billion minutes consumed.
When the producers announced that an extended episode was slated for season 3, the general public grew panicked that the show could also be ending (thankfully, it’s not!), revealing just how deeply the series meets a necessity in our culture—and I feel it’s value exploring why.
The Heelers are only your average Australian family, with no superpowers or high-stakes problems to resolve. But through their togetherness, these 4 transform the peculiar moments of family life into something more. In particular, Bandit and Chilli’s commitment to twiddling with their kids each inspires and indicts the merely human parents watching—and sometimes even brings us to tears.
But greater than that, it’s my belief that Bluey delights and dismays us this manner since it’s eschatological, pointing to the style of creative togetherness we’ll all experience in the future in the brand new creation.
Before having kids, I scoured parenting books for effective methodologies; but 11 years in, I often find myself tactically bankrupt. I mean, how exactly do you handle one child’s jealousy that the opposite child is sick and gets to remain home from school? But the wonderful thing about Bluey is that it acknowledges and solves these sorts of challenges—not through a didactic blueprint but through, of all things, improvisational and imaginative play.
Throughout the show, Bandit and Chilli wholeheartedly enter Bluey and Bingo’s worlds. They join of their children’s games and follow their zany rules assiduously—whether it’s freezing when a chord on the “magic” xylophone is struck, diving to avoid wasting the balloon from falling during “Keepy Uppy,” or acting like robots or sick patients—anything to inhabit the on-the-ground domain where their kids’ ethical and spiritual development is day by day being formed.
Unintentional though it might be, the Heelers’ parental play takes seriously Jesus’ words, “Let the youngsters come to me, and don’t hinder them, for the dominion of heaven belongs to corresponding to these” (Matt. 19:14), and even models Christ’s self-effacing humility in meeting us on our level. In each narratives—biblical and animated—the little ones’ stinginess, laziness, fearfulness, cheating, and a lot of other juvenile behaviors might be redeemed and transformed.
Take Peter. As Erin Dufault-Hunter, associate professor of Christian ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary and an acquaintance of mine, identified to me in the future, “After his resurrection, Jesus repeatedly asks Peter, ‘Do you like me?’ (John 21:15–17). It’s a game with words, one which recalls Peter’s braggadocio and betrayal and eventually turns him right into a tender shepherd of the church.”
Even though Bandit and Chilli sometimes ask very relatable questions—like “Can’t we play a game where I lie down?”—their near-constant willingness to take pleasure in their kids’ whimsical antics can even cause many parents to feel inadequate. In a recent podcast in regards to the show, NPR host Stephen Thompson described binge-watching Bluey right after he’d launched his son on his college profession. “I don’t think that was good for my emotional health,” he said, presumably since it made him doubt the standard of his parenting when it was already too late.
I, for one, resonate with these insecurities. Truth be told, I’m terrible at twiddling with my kids like Bandit and Chilli. I’m reminded of myself in a second-season episode called “Let’s Play Octopus.” Bluey has her dalmatian friend Chloe over, and Bandit pretends he’s an octopus capturing the women as they try to steal his treasure. Afterward, when Chloe goes home, she tries to copy the experience along with her own dad—who’s, let’s assume, a bit too stiff and hyper-rational to drag it off. Exasperated, Chloe exclaims, “You’re not playing it properly,” to which the confused dad replies, “But that is how I play it.” Cross-armed, Chloe quips back, “Bluey’s dad is more fun than you.”
I’m that parent. And I feel I’m an unnatural player because, for much of my life, I’ve been focused on being productive—thanks, partly, to the ever-industrious Protestant work ethic. As a working mother, I seek to maximise my day, grasping and collecting each scrap of time like a scarce resource that I can put toward “useful” ends. But beyond my idolatry of efficiency, I’ve struggled with an anemic theology of play. After all, what possible role can childlike play perform that adult-like purposefulness can’t? In short: a giant role.
Studies show unstructured play can greatly profit our youngsters—nearly half of whom are affected by a growing mental health crisis. As Courtney Ellis, creator of Happy Now: Let Playfulness Lift Your Load and Renew Your Spirit, points out in a bit for CT, “Playfulness is important to human flourishing” and might be defined as “anything that brings us joy and connection.” This means the advantages of play also extend to complement the congregational lifetime of the local church family—and our walk of religion.
In his book, Far Too Easily Pleased, Jesuit scholar James V. Schall reminds us that “leisure describes the lifetime of God.” God created the universe not because he felt compelled to or because he lacked something. And because the triune God, the Father created the world along with the Spirit and the Son (Col. 1:15–17)—whipping up magma, mountains, and mammals out of sheer freedom and love. God created the complete inhabited world, partly, for us to rejoice in it and praise him for it (Prov. 8:31).
As Thomas Aquinas said, “God plays. God creates playing. And man should play if he’s to live as humanly as possible and to know reality, because it is created by God’s playfulness.”
Joyful play is an indispensable ingredient in making us fully human in his image—which implies God can and does use play for our sanctification. Our whole purpose as creatures is, because the Westminster Catechism so aptly summarizes, “To glorify God and enjoy Him perpetually” (emphasis mine). And if God created play, and all that God created will in the future be renewed in the brand new creation, then we will expect that this sort of uninhibited play awaits us in heaven.
As Felipe do Vale says in one other piece for CT, “The resurrection just isn’t a cosmic Etch A Sketch, where God shakes all the things to start out over; it’s a divine commitment to what has already been made and declared excellent (Gen. 1:31).” The same God who created the frolicking chimpanzees on the zoo blesses the young children who quite literally ape them. This means our greatest play times are yet to return—and our earthly glimpses of play speak to an eternity of joy. And while we cannot yet imagine it, I actually have a sense the experience will likely be infinitely higher than “Keepy Uppy.”
I do know I’ll never parent in addition to the fictional Heelers do (although my shining moments might just add as much as the length of 1 Bluey episode)—and my kids probably won’t resolve conflict as effortlessly as Bluey and Bingo appear to (which is why I’m investing in a university fund and a therapy fund for every of the women).
Still, on a practical level, Bluey challenges me to make room for more spontaneity and inventive collaboration with my daughters every day. And as I do, I do not forget that the utopia it depicts is coming soon: a perfected humanity having fun with complete and inventive togetherness for all eternity—together with our self-giving, playful Creator.
Katherine Lee is a poet and a mom working on a memoir in regards to the ways her motherhood has been defined by the ladies in her family. Her master’s in theology has informed these pursuits in surprising ways.
