Vulgar taste. Why do we like things that are crude?Why do we crave drama? Why do we desire to hear the horrid details of someone's life? Why are we consumed by celebrity gossip? Are we that bored that we can't find better things to think about?
The apostle Paul writes in his letter to the Phillipians a list of things that one should think on. He writes:
"Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things.
Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me - put it into practice.
And the God of peace will be with you."
Philipians 4:8-10
I imagine his instruction applied to those moments of our leisure time when we are mindlessly channel surfing and stop on some new reality TV show that is meant to appeal to our carnal nature. And we wonder why we have such little peace! We are thinking about all the wrong things.
And OH, BOY, look out if something dramatic happens to us or someone close to us! We are going to shout it from the mountain tops, sharing every tragic detail until our listener feels pain at hearing of our difficulty. So maybe we aren't that obnoxious, but we certainly would like for others to know the depth of our pain. There is such a fine line between sharing our lives with others and gossip, isn't there?
Proverbs 20:19 says, "A gossip betrays a confidence; so avoid anyone who talks too much."
I guess the point I am trying to make is that we ought to spend less energy getting all the details of an event understood and more time finding the silver lining. We need to be careful about what we watch on TV, what crude things we fill our minds with and instead be content with Silence. And when something moves us deeply, our first reaction should be to lift it before the LORD and ask him to reveal His hand.
And sometimes we should be content to keep things to ourselves.
No comments:
Post a Comment