November 02, 2011
Mockery
Many of the current cast members on this season’s Survivor are
professed Christians. They openly pray for strength in competitions, endurance
for staying in the game and for God’s will to be done. Survivor is a game of
strategy and even though manipulation, lying and deceit are all part of the
game, believers play to win. In the last episode I think Coach, who highly
values his integrity as a believer, crossed a spiritual line. He lied about
being in possession of an immunity idol and to get out from under the lie, he
then sent his team members on a wild goose chase. The chase ended with Coach miraculously
finding the idol. I get the gamesmanship. What I don’t get is that before the
search Coach called the tribe together in a prayer circle and holding hands
petitioned God in the name of Jesus Christ to help them find the idol…which he had in hip pocket all along! Now
the entire tribe is singing praises to Jesus because the Lord helped them find
the idol. “Do not be deceived: God cannot
be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.” (Gal 6:7 NIV)
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----Ah, come on! It’s just a game, only entertainment! Isn’t there a place of escape where the stress and strain of real life can be left behind, and the suspense of competition can scintillate in the heart and mind without the confinement of high and narrow moral roads? I mean, every day we have to be concerned about our behavior being just right, our communications being honest, and our minds being attentive to religious codes always set a hop, skip, and throw ahead of where we naturally are. Do we have to live our lives in this classroom of constant self-discipline, self-criticism, and self-abasement to be holy and glorifying to God? Can’t we just have a little fun now and then? A little break from the action?
-----Conscience is a pretty cool process. We like to think that God just innately creates it in every individual, writing His laws upon their hearts. In a sense, He does that. But not in the technical sense. In many ways, the conscience a person grows up to have is satisfactory to God. But like the rest of who and what we are, our consciences belongs to us. We build them from the moral materials our culture presents using the social senses we developed: empathy, respect, consideration, and such. But conscience is neither indestructible nor unalterable.
-----Most people guard their consciences from destruction by not continually searing them. But most people don’t realize how malleable the conscience is and how much it really does change. And it is good that it does change. Improvement is a change. But, like I hope we learned from an Obama in the White House: not all change is good change. Look at the signs of death, destruction, and mayhem all over this world throughout history; I think most change is not so good. Change needs a careful monitoring.
-----Conscience strengthens when it is exercised, like muscle. But in the absence of inner stress, conscience is reasonable and can be modified. Changed, that is, like maybe improved. Peace is an absence of stress. And peace affords the mind some pretty amazing capacities for understanding, of which, by the way, Proverbs speaks quite highly. So, with the Bible in mind, peaceful periods of contemplation and meditation can improve our consciences. (I LOVE Paul’s definition of the kingdom of heaven as being righteousness, peace, and joy, in the Holy Spirit. All are highly effective upon the conscience.)
-----But something else produces periods of low stress, too. Entertainment. Especially humorous entertainment. However, the important mental function of contemplative meditation is highly reduced during entertainment. This is why entertainment is so dangerous. It produces a low stress environment effective for altering conscience while diminishing the self-control process of guarding against any deleterious changes. And shazzam! We entertain ourselves right into debauchery. Note the different effects upon our society between the trashed era of Lassie, Lone Ranger, and Bonanza programming and the new era of Seinfeld, Sin City, Brokeback Mountain, and the likes.
-----Lie about possessing a “lost” object and pray for its recovery so you can again lie about having found it so the lie about your highly valued integrity as a believer will not be discovered! It’s just entertainment. Yes! And a shameful greasing of the social skids for sledding conscience straight into the gully of Gehenna!
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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