Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Media Frenzie

3 January 2011 (after spending a solid week with no TV or movies)

Do You know how much time we use on entertainment? Football, movies, videogames. Youtube, facebook, etc. It has become such a default filler it is insane. To stop and think that people had approx. 2 more hours in their day where they weren’t sitting down looking at a screen simply because they didn’t have as much media entertainment. I was asked the other day by a college student when I said that I didn’t have netflix and an xbox, what do you do then? That is where we have gotten to. We are products of our world.

The TV has only been around for 60 years of at least 15,000 years of human history and we act like it is a must to survive or have a fulfilled life. The sports teams that we follow and allow take up so much of our brains have only been around 60(NBA), 100(NFL) or 150 (MLS) years too. The internet is less than 25 years old. Cell phones less than 20. Yet we act like we are stuck to those things for information and connection to live a full life as humans, that it is scary? It is just another way we have let the lies of the media get the best of us just like the need for debt. Does the entertainment industry sicken or scare anyone else as much as it does me? I don’t want to be the killjoy and i am just as guilty because i use it but the fact that I could easily spend 6 hours watching sports with a friend per week another 4 watching movies and another 2-4 on tv and youtube with friends just freaks me out. That’s two hours a day I spend doing nothing but taking in temporary stuff. Kind of freaks me out.


But you know what also freaks me out is becoming a workaholic. Tv is one of those lazy options to try and balance out life with fun, but I’m not sure that I like that as my fun option. Just because I need to balance out my work hours, doesn’t mean I should add something in that is just as much worthwhile or antiproductive as working too much. $55 a month on TV or 6 nights of bowling and other fun. I just need to be intentional about getting out and playing.

Having outside time, play time, and also personal ministry time. Time, time, time, Always biding for time. I didn’t realize that was going to be my tension and ongoing struggle in this life God. Why is it? Because there is too much we can do, that I want to do, too many people to include, too many problems to fix and ways to grow, too many ways to prepare for the next step and also just enjoy the people and the amount of people I already enjoy. I really do need to take my life in check and decide which way I want my life to go before it runs away with me. What do I want to become and make sure that I am continually striving to be that. What is it that you truly desire for me to become and have called me to and to hold on to those things with my dear life but never as much as holding on to You. Things are always up for change and discussion because it is a relationship with You where you are Lord, not me.

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