I’ve just got back from a Schoolies trip to Vanuatu with Scripture Union. It was an incredible time. Stay tuned for a bunch of blog posts with some reflections. The topic was “Don’t Waste Your Life”, I spoke from Ephesians about God’s purposes for his people. While reading Don’t Waste Your Life, by John Piper (available for free), I was challenged to think about the time I waste on the Internet. We don’t have a television, but it’s very easy to waste precious hours on the internet that then nullifies the decision to not have a TV. It was liberating to not go online while in Vanuatu!
Here’s a snippet from Piper (p. 120-121 DWYL):
Television is one of the greatest life-wasters of the modern age. And, of course, the Internet is running to catch up, and may have caught up. You can be more selective on the Internet, but you can also select worse things with only the Judge of the universe watching. TV still reigns as the great life-waster. The main problem with TV is not how much smut is available, though that is a problem. Just the ads are enough to sow fertile seeds of greed and lust, no matter what program you’re watching. The greater problem is banality. A mind fed daily on TV diminishes. Your mind was made to know and love God. Its facility for this great calling is ruined by excessive TV. The content is so trivial and so shallow that the capacity of the mind to think worthy thoughts withers, and the capacity of the heart to feel deep emotions shrivels. Neil Postman shows why.
What is happening in America is that television is transforming all serious public business into junk. . . . Television disdains exposition, which is serious, sequential, rational, and complex. It offers instead a mode of discourse in which everything is accessible, simplistic, concrete, and above all, entertaining. As a result, America is the world’s first culture in jeopardy of amusing itself to death.
Postman’s cultural critique, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, is brilliant. Go here to download Piper’s book.
Stay tuned for more Vanuatu posts!!
My sister-in-law Michelle was on this trip and had the best time – great job!!
michelle is a champ!! hope you’re having a good holiday.
the irony of this blog post… i’ve spent more time on facebook in the last 3 days than the 3 months prior!!! (just been stalking vanuatu peeps waiting for new photos!!)
ironically, i found this article by surfing the internet.
haha dodd. thanks for dropping by!