Live the Good Life - Live Devout

 
 
The Epistle for this great feast states that "grace" has appeared to all men and has given us instruction, namely we are to:
1. deny ungodliness and worldly desires
2. live soberly
3. live justly and godly
4. look in hope for the coming of Christ.

This epistle struck me as a confrontation to living a life of fantasy.  What do I mean by fantasy?  I mean, living in such a way as to avoid a confrontation with reality.  Let me give some examples.  First, we love entertainment...a good movie, an exciting football game, a rousing orchestration.  These things are not bad in themselves, however, what is the effect of a "good movie"?  If the effect is to take us "outside of ourselves" and our daily troubles by immersing us in a fantasy world than we could argue that that is not "living soberly".  This is especially true when the movie also has us "accepting and approving" immoral behavior by watching it on the screen.  (Ps. 118:37 says "Turn my eyes from vain things.")

What is so bad about enjoying a little fantasy world?  The trouble is the escapist attitude that often comes with this type of entertainment.  It turns the heart off, and the soul gets put on the back burner in a way.  Our pleasure receptors are teased and everything is focused on this non-reality - this entertainment.  Anyone only need watch children after an exciting action movie to see the fantasy world bleed over into reality.  The children start to act out what happened in the movie and try to make it more real to themselves.  In avoiding reality, adults are ultimately avoiding God and His reality.  Jesus, in His Passion and Death, is the ultimate acceptor of reality, namely, the reality of sin, damnation, and of course redemption.

Now don't get me wrong, fantasy has its place.  The great classic moral fantasy tales can teach children lessons that cannot simply be injected into their minds and hearts with prolonged lectures.  I would point one to Micheal O'Brien's book "Landscape with Dragons" for a wonderful exposition on good vs. evil fantasy literature.  But, to stretch fantasy into adulthood is to keep adults childish.  I picture grown men crying at the loss of their football team in the finals, or a mom fidgeting this her new iphone like a 5 year old plays with a new toy on Christmas day!  It is a new drunkeness, an avoidance of the realities that come at us, and the epistle for today calls us to a new soberness.

So let us live sober, embrace reality, especially the ultimate Reality, Christ Himself in His fullness and Truth. 

God bless you!

 


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