Entertainment

I got a link on facebook from my good brother Bob about entertainment.

It was a link to something written by John Piper. I have copied it here for you to read, and then made my own comments/questions afterwards:

"How can I Break Free From An Addiction To Entertainment?"

By John Piper May 25, 2009

The following is an edited transcript of the audio.

I believe I do love Jesus, but most of the time I'd rather spend time being entertained than spend time in God's word. How do I break this hold that entertainment has on my heart?

That's a very good question. And I think it's especially relevant because we live, I think, more now than ever, in a day when entertaining kinds of things are immediately accessible.

I was thinking the other day of the difference between our temptations and, say, 250 years ago, the day of Jonathan Edwards. Edwards would write about the folly of young people getting together to do "frivolous conversation" or other worse things. ("Bundling" it was called: getting in bed together and keeping your clothes on, that sort of thing. Just spice up life a little bit. Life gets boring in New England 250 years ago.)

Today we carry in our pockets radio, television, internet, and games, and anything that would be titillating, fun! And "fun" is a word in the church today that's just rampant! It's an adjective, it's a noun, it's a verb, because we do ministry in order to fit this mentality.

I'm deeply concerned about that. I want to stand for seriousness about God, instead of making him palatable by making him "fun"! Turning him into another piece of entertainment.

So this question is, "How do you break free from that kind of addiction?"

Recognizing it is a huge step in the right direction.
Seek the Lord earnestly about it. Pray like crazy that God would open your eyes to see wondrous things out of his law.
Immerse yourself in the Bible, even when you don't feel like it, pleading with God to open your eyes to see what's really there.
Get in a group where you talk about serious things.
Begin to share your faith. One of the reasons we are not as moved by our own faith as we are is because we almost never talk about it to any unbeliever. It starts to feel like a kind of hothouse thing, and then it starts to have a feeling of unreality about it. And then the powers of entertainment have more sway in our life.
And so those would be some of the things, but ultimately it's a gift of grace to feel the glory of God.

One last suggestion: think about your death. Think about your death a lot. Ask what you'd like to be doing in the season of life, or hours or days, leading up to meeting Christ. I do that a lot these days. I think about the impact of death, and what I would like to be found doing, and how I would prepare to meet him and give an account to him.


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It is no coincidence that Bob sent this to me as I have been going over these very issues this past week.

How much entertainment does one person need?

Does the average believer spend more time in the Word, giving of their lives, sharing their faith, building up the brethren.....or....

....watching tv, going to movies, listening to music (even "christian" music can become an idol if we are spending more time in it than with the Lord), reading books and magazines?

I will be 52 years old this year. Now I realize that unless I have a tragic accident or an unforseen fatal illness, I probably have a good 20 years left, and maybe even a bit more than that. However, while that would mean that death is not knocking on my door, he certainly is walking in my neighborhood. Twenty years will go by very fast.

What good will all the entertainment do me then?

Why do we waste so much time entertaining ourselves...is it to numb the pain and realization that there are people all around us that are lost without Christ and headed for eternal separation without Him?

Maybe it is because we don't want the quiet time, the introspective time, the time it would take to look good, hard and long at our own lives and where we need to improve on our relationship with the Lord?

I don't know that I have any of the answers to these questions....but I look forward to your thoughts and comments on what John Piper wrote and what I brought up.

Still trying to follow Jesus,
Pastor Dave