Entertainment vs. Glory

As it turns out, my thoughts on video games (see previous entry) were only the tip of a much larger iceberg. The larger category, I'm coming to see, is the idea of entertainment in general. We have so many ways as a society to distract our minds and keep ourselves from having to think meaningful thoughts. It seems like we are endlessly trying to amuse ourselves. We run from silence like the plague and constantly need more and more activities to fill up our "leisure time."

Why?

Before I get there, let me take a step back and talk about my personal journey a bit. Up until last week, for the past year or so I'd been feeling this nameless frustration in my spirit. The best way I can think of to describe it is that my soul, if you could hear it, would sound like a car trying to start but failing. Some real churning was going on, but it seemed that no progress was being made, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why this was happening. It was like a fire was burning inside me, but it was only getting barely enough oxygen to keep burning. Ever felt like that?

Anyway, I tried to pray about it a little, but I didn't feel like I was getting anywhere. So, probably because a lot of aspects of my life were still going well, I basically just tried to put it out of my mind. That's where video games come in, because they have been my trademark method of putting things out of my mind for pretty much my whole life. In essence I just closed my ears and eyes and ran to entertainment, which had always been enough to distract me in the past.

This time, though, it wasn't working. I couldn't distract myself with schoolwork, with sports, or with entertainment. The more I tried, the more I was left thinking that my life didn't really make sense. Everything kind of came to a boiling point once I graduated from college this spring. Suddenly I had all this free time and no idea what to fill it with. What I ended up filling it with was pretty much nothing, at least nothing of real value.

Finally, the Lord just blew through all of my crap and spoke to me. I was at a baseball game in Chicago with my parents, and God drew my attention to a few middle-aged guys who were sitting around us. Each of them had downed like six beers (at $6.50 a pop, I might add) and they were sitting there in a semi-incoherent state, alternating between watching the game and watching two fairly inappropriately dressed women sitting near them. God just said, "Is that who you want to be?"

The next day, we got home from Chicago in time for me to go to the Saturday night service at the Cleveland House of Prayer (also known as C-hop. If you've never been there, you really should check it out: http://www.clevelandhop.org/ ). Anyway, the message and worship were all about seeing the beauty and glory of the Lord, how God is surpassingly great, the best thing we could chase after. It was all stuff I thought I had heard before, but this time God really made me hear it and revealed himself to me in a new way. He challenged a lot of how I had been spending my time, and he showed me a much better plan.

See, here's why my life wasn't making any sense: I had been saying that God was awesome and glorious and great, but I was spending my time on so much other stuff. I said the right things, but my life showed that I was looking for glory in the wrong places. That night, though, God showed me a glimpse of His glory. To be honest, it made all the things I had entertained myself with look really pathetic in comparison. I felt like so much of my life had been a total waste. I understood in a much deeper way this thing the apostle Paul said: "Whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him..." (Philippians 3:7-9).

Knowing Jesus was the one thing that held any satisfaction whatsoever for Paul. The rest, he was ready to toss out the window. It's kind of like how Mary sat at Jesus feet and Jesus said that was the "one thing" that was needed. It's a lot like how David said, "One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple" (Psalm 27:4). In fact, it's exactly like that.

So, back to the question of entertainment and distraction. The question, as you may remember, was "why?" The answer, as far as I can tell from these verses, is that we haven't seen enough of the glory of the Lord. What did David want? To see, to gaze at, the glory of God! As he did that, it became the only thing he had any desire for. As a friend of mine said to me recently, God is God and we're just creatures, so life is obviously about him, not us. So basically, if we still have this insatiable desire for our own entertainment, it just means we haven't seen enough of God's glory yet.

Why entertainment? Because we haven't had a revelation of the glory of God.

The thing is, we can't make it happen. A revelation has to be revealed. God has to show us his glory, and we can't force him to. But, he does promise this: "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart" (Jeremiah 29:13). If we make him our "one thing," he promises that we will see his glory in a way that makes everything else pale in comparison.

It's not a one time deal either: God revealed himself to me through the teaching and worship that night at C-hop, but even though it was a turning point for me, that one night won't be enough to keep me going for the rest of my life. I need "to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord," to stare at it, burn it into my eyes, and just overall to keep on looking at it. That's what will make my life make sense and keep me going, not entertainment or any other pursuit except Jesus and knowing him more. And for that to happen, I need God to reveal it to me. I sure didn't find him, because I was looking in the wrong places. He found me. That's why He is the one thing I ask for, that I would meet him where his glory dwells.

Will you ask God to reveal his all-surpassing glory to you? If he does (and he will), you'll never ask for anything else.