Mark 4:19 -- Distractions

But they start worrying about the needs of this life. They are fooled by the desire to get rich and to have all kinds of other things. So the message gets choked out, and they never produce anything.

Mark 4:19 (CEV)

Distractions are everywhere. 

We're constantly bombarded by this world in an effort to distract us, to shift our attention this way and that. Always after the next thing, or the next event. Televisions, movies, social media, these are all constant sources of distractions in our lives.  Lust and love rip our attention from everything, with the ending of these relationships the worst offenders of all. Even serving others can be a distraction, an effort to take our focus off of things, to keep our hands busy so we don't need time to reflect on our own lives. 

And we all love it. We eat it up, and let these distractions consume us. 

Neal Postman wrote a book entitled Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business.  In it, he discussed Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World, and explicitly wrote this about Huxley's vision of the future, "Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy."

As Postman wrote, and Huxley feared, the problem with these distractions, is not the distraction itself. Rather it's the fact that these distractions are empty.  They lack substance and vitality.  It's not the fact that there's a movie or television show to watch or a book to read, it's the fact that the movie or book lacks inspiration. It doesn't provide any sustenance, or a fuel to our relationship with God. So often, these movies don't even provide true entertainment. 

Rather, it's just a short jolt of adrenaline, or a nice feeling. It doesn't cause reflection or provoke thoughts. The purpose is to be popular. 

This type of entertainment doesn't make us better, it simplifies us; mentally, emotionally and spiritually. 

This even applies to so-called Christian entertainment. 

Even to some of the praise and worship songs we sing.

I've stood in a church, were everyone was singing a wonderful, upbeat, thriving song about loving Christ, which had words within it which I knew contradicted the Bible. I did not, sing. Worse, when I asked about it, when I pointed out the issues about the lyrics, I was presented with a counter-argument that I was thinking about it to hard, and that it was a Christian song, so the words did not really matter. 

What can the response to that be?  How could the words not matter, when the words were the only thing that truly made it a Christian song?  

But that worship leader, and all of the congregation had been distracted. They had been distracted so much by the enjoyment of singing that song, that they had not paid attention to what they were actually singing. 

We, as Christians, are not supposed to be like that.  We're supposed to know the Bible. We're supposed to live life. 

And we're supposed to think.

We, as Christians, should produce and consume art that makes us think. Our entertainment, should be things that point out the flaws in all of us, the depths that we as humans can fall, as well as the heights to which we can soar. We need to see all of this, all of the human condition in order to effectively communicate about salvation. 

Journal Prompt: What distractions do I have that cause me to neglect my spiritual journey? 

Mark 4:19 -- No Goals, Pursuit

and the anxieties of this age, and the deceitfulness of the riches, and the desires concerning the other things, entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful.

Mark 4:19 (YLT)

I work in a very dedicated and defined Goal based industry. As a programmer, I have goals constantly. Deadlines, and product requirements. How many issuers per reporting cycle is acceptable, and even how many times clients can lose connectivity to the software as a metric.  Lines of code. Total aggregated bill hours as an average of time spent.

All of these metrics and things to aim for just clutter my life.  

And then you stroll down the self-help section, and see it cluttering the shelves there.  A quick search of the self help section on the kindle, provides the following book list:

• GO! How to Get Going and Achieve your Goals and Dreams : A book for women and girls by Marcia K. Morgan
• Goals! How to Get Everything You Want -- Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible by Brian Tracy
• Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals by Heidi Grant Halvorson Ph.D. & Carol S. Dweck
• The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals by Chris McChesney & Sean Covey
• The One Goal: Master The Art of Goal Setting, Win Your Inner Battles, and Achieve Exceptional Results (Free Workbook Included) by Thibault Meurisse

And it goes on and on. A crushing weight of expectations.  We teach our children, and ourselves that we all need these goals to aim for. That we should have some defined point to which we're struggling and pushing ourselves.  That everything we do, and try, should be a struggle against the odds grasping at this random point that we've defined for ourselves. 

Now don't get me wrong. Goals aren't bad in and of themselves. Having something to aim for can be helpful. It's a necessity of fact in the business world.  If I didn't have goals as a developer, how would my boss know that I'm meeting my duties to him and our clients? 

But when we look at goals as the end all and be all of our existence. When we focus on the anxieties of this age and the deceitfulness of the riches, then we're taking our focus off of what's truly important. 

Basically, the old saying "It's not the destination, it's the journey" has the truth of things. We don't need to focus our lives and selves on the goals. Doing so, takes our attention from the one true goal of a Christian life.  Rather, we should focus ourselves on our pursuits. 

And our pursuits should be focused on the Lord.  Jeremiah 29:13 reads "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart." 

God is clear on this. When we seek him, when we pursue him, and not the goals of this world, then He will provide.  

Journal Prompt: How can I change one of my life goals into a pursuit for God?