MInTheGap

We’re at a unique point in time.  Profound statement it is not, but
never before in history have we had as much as we do now and as little
as we do now both at the same time.

The latest time that this concept struck me when I was at home over the
weekend and I looked at some of the conveniences that we have.

• Television: 
  Never before could we watch a war unfold, see things happening
  thousands of miles away, have selections of everything from preachers
  teaching the Word to worldly men and women showing all manner of
  depravity.
• Movies: Never before could we have movies that
  we could play on demand in digital quality, filtering out language,
  violence, and sex if we so choose.  Never before have characters in the
  Bible been popularly portrayed as tomatoes, cucumbers and Asparagus.
• Electricity: The thing that takes a power outage for us to truly appreciate.
• The
  Internet: A place where you’re reading this post– one in millions of
  entries on multitude of topics ranging from the sublime to the depraved.

I could go on, as I’m sure you have multiple ideas running through your head now.

Is it possible, that with all of these conveniences (including all
sorts of appliances and time savers) that we’re really in a much more
deceptive war than the one that the Christians in the first century AD
were in?  It must have been pretty obvious to the original Christians
which way they must choose– proclaim Christ and be lion food, don’t a
live.

Now we are constantly making decisions and weighing
things on how bad they are.  Over time we’ve seen sitcoms go from the
funny Dick Van Dyke Show to Friends. 
Yet Christians do a comparison game with “what else is on” and say that
some things are ok, and others are not.  People have rightly raised the
argument that we’re against profanity, but violence is ok.  Or we’re
against sex on TV, but some other vice is fine.

The latest is the whole ABC Monday Night Football issue with the ad for Desperate Housewives
in it.  I could have a whole post on this show– and what it says for
our culture who had this show number one for weeks.  However, here we
have a ad that is now being talked about all over– and make people
want to check out the show.  Again– the attempt to surprise and get us
to toon in.

I could go on with TV, but back to the point. 
How do we as believers navigate this?  Some people refuse to buy things
from Proctor and Gamble because of their stance.  Others refuse to have
long distance with some companies because they support cause X.  Does
that mean that those that don’t believe that one should drink should
boycott the neighborhood grocery store?  Are we truly responsible for
what someone else does with their money?

These are some tough
questions, and over the next posts, we’ll take a look at some of these
and see if the Bible has something to say– or at least get my opinion – of what we should do in these tough times.

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