Are you ready?
Now what were your thoughts when I ask the question?
Are you ready for the rapture? Are you ready for the return of Christ? Are you ready to go to dinner and the mall? Just what are you ready for? Are you ready for prime time?
Those of us who write commentary generally need to have an answer for everything. But I have to confess, this is something that I am struggling with and have been for many years.
A long time ago, I know the television show "Saturday Night Live" had the "Not Ready for Prime Time Players." I don't know if they still have something similar, I gave up late night television some time ago. But the question still remains, is the church, or more precisely, are Christian individuals and families ready for prime time?
Last week when I was discussing my weight gain from my candy making endeavors, these acts were really an initiative to get my prime time life together. It was a good attempt, but it ended in failure, not because the goals were not good, the problem was in the application.
When I was growing up my prime time model, was as prime time commenced, the family would gather in front of the television and watch the nightly presentation of programs. Some where relatively early in the ritual, my mom would get up and make each of us a soup bowl of Safeway Snow Star vanilla ice cream with Hershey's chocolate sauce. Concluding that gluttonous feast, my dad would "rest his eyes" until it was time to go to bed.
I do not have any thing in my upbringing to prepare me for the truly serious attempt to be ready for prime time. Not in the watching the tube sense, but in the sense of not wasting three hours every night. Hours that will never come again, but have been lost for eternity. This requires a discipline, more than my disciplined life has been able to handle consistently, at least until this point.
Now it would not be a good idea to ask you what is your individual participation in this nightly prime time waste, I have enough problems with my own. But as I have thought about this aspect of modern American life, I have come to the conclusion that most citizens of the developed world, not just America, are not really ready for prime time, except in the couch potato sense.
Look at what the three hours of prime time "entertainment" buys you.
1. The opportunity to consume additional quantities of food mostly through boredom, and because of the time of consumption, it is generally converted to fat.
2. The occasion to watch senseless and many times vulgar sitcoms and dramas designed by some of the most intelligent people on earth, to make you even less connected to your meaningless life.
3. Once in this state of altered consciousness you are exposed to fifteen minutes of commercials each hour, again designed by intelligent people, trying to manipulate you to by more useless products that add nothing to your well-being.
4. Feeling like it is some type of reward that you have earned, instead of learning to cook a family meal at home, or even buying preprocessed meals, on your way to prime time you treat everyone to "dinner" at some highly advertised chain, or order in pizza from same. In the process you have rewarded your family with tons of saturated fat, sodium, and other "nutrients," with little regard to their long term health effects.
5. On the way home you stop by the mall, pop can take the kids to the video & game store, while mom can go to Victoria's Secret. Maybe some new stuff from there would heighten the interest. For some reason you don't seem as interested in each other as you used to be.
How can the evangelical church expect God to restore the church, bring revival and change the world, if most of the church is content to only grow a ring around our guts, from sitting on our posterior, spending money on the trivial?
I began writing this at a recent men's conference. Perhaps that gift was an attempt by God to show me He was with me in this prime time endeavor. I actually took my laptop out into the main sitting room to see if I could strike up a conversation with someone. After that happened, and just as I finished the paragraph above, I realized I had run out of things to say.
"Oh, God, what should I do now." Then, just as I was folding my machine, I heard behind me three men discussing the same topic. I explained what I was doing and ask to join the conversation and perhaps query for some examples.
To tell you the truth, I thought they all had it together. At least well beyond my meager attempts, especially lately. But reflecting upon the whole situation, I believe I have really hit on something here. This is an area where only God can bring success, but we need to be actively committed also. I'm also getting the idea that this battle is going to be a lot like the war on terrorism, when will it ever end?
Now here is where my training as an engineer/scientist comes into focus. We need a model, a model of perfection. That's easy, from my experience, the only people in America that don't have problems with prime time, are those who through their own choice are caught in UIS. Isn't it great, just three little letters and we have created a potential model to solve the prime time crisis. UIS stands for University Indentured Servants. This model is the prevalent mode of life for university graduate students and collegiate athletes.
Now for the prize, a good paying job, personal fulfillment, fame, and in a very minute minority of male athletes, in football, basketball, and baseball, the chance to make the big time. Maybe even to play in prime time. It is a highly disciplined life, because it has to be. Everything you do, has to have a purpose, hopefully most multi-tasked. So your meals become also your social time. Any television the same. You have your indentured job, your classes, your studies, and what ever is left over, you sleep. But you sleep because you are tired, or more precisely exhausted.
Similar to the UIS, is EIS or Enterprise Indentured Service. In this model the university is replaced with some enterprise organization that in some way contributes to your education in return for loyalty or real indentured service. Most people will never understand the joy of these professions, if you haven't been there, done that, and got the shirt. Both of these models, however are most appropriate to the life of a single person
Now the really scary thing, is that I am portraying this as some sort of utopian life style. Every day, everything has it's place. You got here by some choice you made, and also something you are good at. One of your gifts. Notice however, structure and discipline comes from without, by necessity.
The MP&K (Mom, Pop, and Kids) model doesn't come out too well against this external discipline. Take an example from my dad. After a day of dealing with MinP (Monsters in Puberty) he was tired. Add to that, dealing with parents wondering why you had to discipline their little angel(s), you get the picture. Now this is a rewarding life, where you can change the lives of hundreds of young citizens every year.
What about the vast majority of the world's population that "lead lives of quiet desperation?" Daily they perform meaningless stuff, for people who really don't care about you as a person, to meet some sort of deadline that really doesn't matter, even in the temporal, little lone the eternal. If you look at it from that perspective, its not only a miracle that "I can think at all," but even more also to ask, "What can I do to make it better."
The one thing you can see as the causative agent for good in any of these models is the concept of bettering oneself and one's family. But in respect to family situations, our models must make this prime time into true quality time. Other than that, God help us, my wonderful descriptive models don't help at all. All is vanity, chasing after the wind. Aha, the wind blows, where it must go, no one can control it.
Remember now your Creator in the days of your youth,
Before the difficult days come,
And the years draw near when you say,
"I have no pleasure in them":
While the sun and the light,
The moon and the stars,
Are not darkened,
And the clouds do not return after the rain;
In the day when the keepers of the house tremble,
And the strong men bow down;
When the grinders cease because they are few,
And those that look through the windows grow dim;
When the doors are shut in the streets,
And the sound of grinding is low;
When one rises up at the sound of a bird,
And all the daughters of music are brought low;
Also they are afraid of height,
And of terrors in the way;
When the almond tree blossoms,
The grasshopper is a burden,
And desire fails.
For man goes to his eternal home,
And the mourners go about the streets.Remember your Creator before the silver cord is loosed,
Or the golden bowl is broken,
Or the pitcher shattered at the fountain,
Or the wheel broken at the well.
Then the dust will return to the earth as it was,
And the spirit will return to God who gave it
Ecclesiastes 12:1-7Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter:
Fear God and keep His commandments,
For this is man's all.
For God will bring every work into judgment,
Including every secret thing,
Whether good or evil.
Ecclesiastes 12:13,14
We are not ready for prime time, because we have made ourselves to be prime time, or more precisely we worship our lazy nature. Prime time is our chief conditioning agent. Prime time exists because there is a profit to be made promoting it. Take away prime time in your life, and God will create a substitute. I think the Bible calls it faith. We have not, because we seek Him not. So why is it Christians, the only truly free persons on the earth, do not honor God by bettering themselves in prime time service to Him who set us free?
The answer is we are not ready, and furthermore even though we make lip service to the contrary, our actions speak much louder than our words of praise
Then He said to them, "Take heed what you hear. With the same measure you use, it will be measured to you; and to you who hear, more will be given. For whoever has, to him more will be given; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him." Mark 4:24,25
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