Lent is a season of preparation and waiting. If we are faithful to the purpose, we spend 40 days challenging our faith and preparing ourselves for the grief of Good Friday, followed by the joy of the resurrection on Easter Sunday.
This week, the theme of our Lenten journey at my church is “Too Entertained.” Celebrities, video games, movies, television, cell phones, computers – we are inundated with the culture of our times instead of the Jesus culture for all time. We think nothing of missing a Sunday service but wouldn’t dream of missing The Big Game or the latest celebrity gossip. Charlie Sheen is sacrificing his life for drugs and fame and we can’t get enough of it, while we shun Good Friday where Jesus sacrificed his life for our salvation. Too Entertained, indeed.
Technology is a wonderful thing. It has made life easier and safer, and given us extra hours in which to pursue activities purely for pleasure. God does not ask us to give up all earthly pleasures. On the contrary, God gave Adam his helpmate to make his life more pleasurable. Jesus turned water into wine at a wedding party. Time and time again the Bible refers to Jesus spending time with the people who were most important to him.
But when the pursuit of pleasure overtakes everything, it is a detriment to what is real and important in our lives. We have all seen teens walking around the mall, each one frantically tapping away on their cell phone while in the company of their friends, together, but alone, each in their own little electronic reality. They appear mesmerized by the screen they are holding in their hand, to the neglect of the people who are right there in front of their faces. It is sad, I think, that they have lost sight of the flesh and blood friends they are with for the illusion of what isn’t there.
Much like a teenager wrapped up in their cyberlife, I think many of us have substituted entertainment for time with God. I find it oddly disturbing that people can tell me all about the lives of the cast of characters on American Idol, but don’t know the last time they cracked the cover of their Bible or said a meaningful prayer that wasn’t a list of demands. We live next door to people and don’t know their names, but feel like we know total strangers because they are on television. We are distant, removed from the nitty gritty realities of life, instead of focusing on God and his place in our lives.
As I have thought this week about my own personal entertainments, the superficial pleasures available in our modern culture which I put before my faith, it was not hard to come up with any number of ways where I have focused on the profane realm instead of the sacred plane. I realized that for me, being too entertained is not about any particular thing. The problem won’t be solved by eliminating cell phones, or internet, or television, or movies or athletic events or award programs or board games, although that may temporarily remind us that we are focused on a higher goal.
Being Too Entertained is about putting other pursuits ahead of the love of our Lord, and the search for His presence and will in our lives. Dying on a cross is not entertaining, unless you count “The Passion of the Christ.” It is harsh. It is cruel. It makes us uncomfortable to think of Jesus hanging there with nails through his wrists and his feet, his life ebbing away with the blood running from his body, the final words he heard the mocking jeers of a crowd more focused on the entertainment of watching a man die than on the salvation of their own souls. In the act of sacrificing himself for us, that love which passes all understanding built the path to true joy and happiness, both in this life, and in the one to come.
The next time you have a conflict between church and another activity, remember that Jesus died, not to entertain you in an over-budget movie, but to save your soul. He was real, he was human, he felt our pain, and he took it with him into his battle with Satan for our souls. If we faithfully seek that path, eternal joy and satisfaction will be ours.
The world can keep its cheap entertainment. Give me Jesus, and my joy will be for all eternity.
