Jeremiah 13:12 – The Persistent Entertainment Gospel
12 “Therefore you shall speak to them this word: ‘Thus says the Lord God of Israel: “Every bottle shall be filled with wine.” ’
“And they will say to you, ‘Do we not certainly know that every bottle will be filled with wine?’
In Calvin and Hobbes: The Essential Treasury by Bill Watterson, Hobbes frightens Calvin with a story about men being controlled by machines. Then Calvin looks at his watch and jets off because his favorite shows on TV.
The vintage is different in Jeremiah 13:12, but the principal forces are the same. God engages and convicts the human heart concerning its self-inflicted predicament with creative word pictures reconfiguring everyday elements. Convicted, the heart wriggles away by constructing the meaning to the message which requires the least repentant change.
The winebibbers in Jeremiah's day are no better and no worse than those dulled at present by the expectation of constant entertainment. God's Gospel regularly penetrates our media haze with clear entrées to timeless Truth, offering by grace to grapple even in our leisure with the idols embedded in our hearts. Yet we, like Jeremiah's original audience, so construe the challenge and invitation as a reinforcement that all is right with our status quo.
Of course the wine will keep flowing, we say with them in order to drown out either by alcohol or by opiate of sound and light the impending prophetic challenge. We have become practiced at fending off reflection and conviction, seeking the next hit of pleasure rather than the ultimate pleasure which Tim Keller assures is always on the far side of obedience rather than the near side.
The King of the universe stands at the door and knocks, offering to remediate us in His ultimate good in the language of our hearts, the idiom of our age, and we, with forbearance He makes possible, stop Him before He relates the bad news which makes the Good News so good.
How is that habit working for us, really? Shakespeare knew the answer in a much more dreary, less constantly enabling day when he wrote in Henry IV, Part I, "If all the year were playing holidays, To sport would be as tedious as to work; But when they seldom come, they wish’d for come, And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents."
Reducing all the input God grants to soundbites of distraction and self gratification, our souls are starving for Truth, and deep down we know it. Like Xerxes in Esther, even the people around us have become props to be manipulated for our entertainment and willful distraction from the condition of our sphere and our souls.
Even worse, perhaps, we pass the habit on to those we are teaching to interpret the world, and to look more deeply, or not. Parents dull perpetual questioners who might, not yet inoculated to a world of pleasure as purpose, be guided to the true Gospel. "Too many fun days," admits Kristen Welch in Raising Grateful Kids in an Entitled World: How One Family Learned That Saying No Can Lead to Life's Biggest Yes, "make the boring ones harder to bear."
Thus reinforcing our willful distraction, we don't wait for the next verse. We don't actively consider whether God's grace to us in the present moment might involve the temporary pain of conviction. We thus perpetuate the system we know is not working in order to fight against the One Who can make all things, including us, new.
“And they will say to you, ‘Do we not certainly know that every bottle will be filled with wine?’
In Calvin and Hobbes: The Essential Treasury by Bill Watterson, Hobbes frightens Calvin with a story about men being controlled by machines. Then Calvin looks at his watch and jets off because his favorite shows on TV.
The vintage is different in Jeremiah 13:12, but the principal forces are the same. God engages and convicts the human heart concerning its self-inflicted predicament with creative word pictures reconfiguring everyday elements. Convicted, the heart wriggles away by constructing the meaning to the message which requires the least repentant change.
The winebibbers in Jeremiah's day are no better and no worse than those dulled at present by the expectation of constant entertainment. God's Gospel regularly penetrates our media haze with clear entrées to timeless Truth, offering by grace to grapple even in our leisure with the idols embedded in our hearts. Yet we, like Jeremiah's original audience, so construe the challenge and invitation as a reinforcement that all is right with our status quo.
Of course the wine will keep flowing, we say with them in order to drown out either by alcohol or by opiate of sound and light the impending prophetic challenge. We have become practiced at fending off reflection and conviction, seeking the next hit of pleasure rather than the ultimate pleasure which Tim Keller assures is always on the far side of obedience rather than the near side.
The King of the universe stands at the door and knocks, offering to remediate us in His ultimate good in the language of our hearts, the idiom of our age, and we, with forbearance He makes possible, stop Him before He relates the bad news which makes the Good News so good.
How is that habit working for us, really? Shakespeare knew the answer in a much more dreary, less constantly enabling day when he wrote in Henry IV, Part I, "If all the year were playing holidays, To sport would be as tedious as to work; But when they seldom come, they wish’d for come, And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents."
Reducing all the input God grants to soundbites of distraction and self gratification, our souls are starving for Truth, and deep down we know it. Like Xerxes in Esther, even the people around us have become props to be manipulated for our entertainment and willful distraction from the condition of our sphere and our souls.
Even worse, perhaps, we pass the habit on to those we are teaching to interpret the world, and to look more deeply, or not. Parents dull perpetual questioners who might, not yet inoculated to a world of pleasure as purpose, be guided to the true Gospel. "Too many fun days," admits Kristen Welch in Raising Grateful Kids in an Entitled World: How One Family Learned That Saying No Can Lead to Life's Biggest Yes, "make the boring ones harder to bear."
Thus reinforcing our willful distraction, we don't wait for the next verse. We don't actively consider whether God's grace to us in the present moment might involve the temporary pain of conviction. We thus perpetuate the system we know is not working in order to fight against the One Who can make all things, including us, new.
In a world of instant gratification, it is truly difficult to reconcile a philosophy of waiting for the 'ultimate pleasure' of which Keller writes. As I walk through one of the most difficult times of my own life (so far), I can empathize with the people in Jeremiah's day who regressed into the happiness that could be squeezed from the moment rather than utilizing the narrow path to ultimate happiness. So in the midst of what Lewis described as God's shouting to me in my pain, I can only cling to the truth that regardless of the storm around me, the surpassing worth of knowing Christ truly is superior to domestic and professional peace. Thus, I look to God as he continues to reveal to me the "condition of [my] sphere and [my] soul" and strive to not be distracted by the endless stream of entertainment around me. Sorry I have been absent lately, thank you for the post my friend.
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