Entertainment: The Gospel of Avoidance

I know that this has often been true in my own life:

“… In our entertainment-saturated culture we find another kind of gospel, however — the gospel of avoidance. And this gospel is about putting our faith in distractions. We use entertainment to save ourselves from the pain of our lives. Unlike the real gospel, though, the ‘good news’ of entertainment doesn’t truly save us from our problems. It only masks them, helps us repress them. Keeps us from becoming the men God created us to be.

Rather than going to the cross, many of us take our wounds to our computers, TVs or game consoles and say, ‘Here, you take them.’ And all these technologies oblige … for a time. At some point, though, we have to press the off button, go to class and face the challenges of the world outside our entertainment bubble. What do we do then? Distract ourselves to such a degree that we haven’t got the time to ponder what’s really going on in our lives?

That’s the gospel of avoidance. And for too many of us, it’s our only saving grace. …”

- Matthew John, Entertainment: The Gospel of Avoidance

Thanks to The Shepherd's Scrapbook for the quote.