Is entertainment depriving you of true pleasure?
Last month, I was on the phone with a friend and we had started discussing how we felt that God was calling us away from social media and YouTube. Social media wasn’t as difficult for us (though we both recognized the involuntary way our fingers reach to click instagram when we are bored or in between tasks). YouTube is and has always been the cherry on top that breaks the camels back. I don’t know why, but this is the one that is the most difficult to resist.
I realized that whenever I found myself with free-time, whether it was between schoolwork, phone calls, or just between tasks, I turned to YouTube to fill the space. The background to my day, to my showers, to my lunches, to my drives, to my transitions from one area of the house to the other were always vlogs or any other form of content to fill my mind. It felt productive to listen to something while I folded clothes or prepared breakfast.
Eventually though, I found myself itching to do something while I ate. Discontent with just being even just for 5 minutes. I found myself struggling to occupy my mind without a string of voices and topics filling the background. I found myself struggling to be still with God.
Instead of making room for the Lord’s voice in all of the silent places of the day, I was flooded with noise.
Noise can even be Christian in nature. Much of the things I consumed were faith based but there is, has been, and will always be a difference in hearing others talk about God and hearing the voice of Christ yourself.
As I felt God prompt me again to pull back, I felt dread and a little deprivation. It felt like the Lord was depriving me of pleasure and fun.
On the phone my friend shared a quote:
“God himself is the originator of all pleasure. The enemy can only pervert those pleasures.”
This was GOOD. It went along with what Paige (I reference her a lot so I’ve decided to just put her on a first name basis) says in her book, In Weeping & Rejoicing: Emotions and Theology in Life:
“Put simply, it is for joy that we sometimes forgo joy. Indeed, we only forgo lesser joys for greater joys, but never joy itself. Our problem is not that we pursue pleasure, but that we are too short-sighter to fight for th whitest forms of pleasure. C.S. Lewis puts it this way:
Indeed if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gosepels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires are not too strong but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered to us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
— We underestimate the goodness of God.
like WOW.
“We stop short of the greatest pleasures when we are satisfied merely to taste and see worldly goods instead of stretching ourselves to taste and see that he is good (Psalm 34:8)
It all goes back to my friend’s original quote. We are deceived, trained to believe that pleasure is found in anything else outside of God, when he is the source of pleasure, the creator of it. He is goodness himself. The feeling that I was being deprived was a lie. Another quote that reminds me of this is this:
The biggest mistake humanity has made about the pursuit of happiness goes back all th way to our first, most fundamental mistake: the faulty notion that obedience keeps us from our full potential for joy and that disobedience unlocks access to joy otherwise denied to us. — We are trained to believe that it Is through living autonomously that we will find joy.
A powerful thought.
As we were talking, it dawned on me that YouTube, and other forms of entertainment are cheap imitations of pleasure. The Lord was trying to show me more.
Don’t get me wrong, there is a place for worldly pleasures, we see this in Ecclesiastes, but too often to make them idols or expect them to be our path to satisfaction and they will always fall short or empty.
He is trying to show us true pleasure, what it is to truly delight in this life that he’s given us, but are you content to enjoy surface level imitations?
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Jesus, you are good. Too good for words. I love you deeply. We love you and are astounded by you. Jesus help us surrender cheap pleasure with discipline. Empower and inspire us to forgo lesser joy for the ultimate joy. Shape our days and thoughts. Change our patterns and passions to form towards you. Reveal to us that we can find true joy beyond the Netflix series, the YouTube binges, the gaming streaks, and help us trust that you will meet us in the midst of our sacrifice. You will fill that void. You can give us true rest. True joy. True satisfaction. Help us hold each other accountable and guard our hearts in this journey. Have your way, only with you. Lord , open our eyes to the things we are being distracted away from in the stupor of entertainment. Help us accept your grace but not abuse it! In Jesus name Amen!
