play God

idiom

usually disapproving

: to make decisions that have a very powerful and important effect on other people's lives

lawyers who play God with people's lives

Examples of play God in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

And my year was the only year that stood alone, where the audience got to play God, not the players inside the house. —Dalton Ross, EW.com, 20 June 2022

For all the science contained in science-fiction, there’s always been a germ of theology embedded within it, a genre-specific commandment: Man shall not play God. —John Anderson, WSJ, 2 Sep. 2020

Built from memory in the sublime — after both human and host-led society has crumbled — Westworld’s first fully functional host is now ready to play God. —Abbey White, The Hollywood Reporter, 16 Aug. 2022

Bunbury Theatre presents the show about the evolution of the play God of Vengeance (Got fun nekome) by writer Sholem Aschg. —The Courier-Journal, 10 Aug. 2022

Who’s decided to play God with their lives, and why? —Tom Nolan, WSJ, 25 Mar. 2022

There’s no question that Silva is right: People are reshaping the kelp forests through the steady uptick of carbon emissions, whether or not coastal communities choose to actively play God among the underwater invertebrates. —Sierra Garcia, Wired, 18 Sep. 2021

Gates's efforts to play God extend to his plans for the atmosphere as well. —Joseph Simonson, Washington Examiner, 18 Feb. 2021

Whether humans get the recipe wrong, as in the earlier novel, or make beings smarter than the humans who spawned them, as in the case of Čapek’s play and its offspring, humans pay the price for aspiring to play God. —John M. Jordan/mit Press Reader, Popular Science, 26 Jan. 2021