BY JACK WARD
PASTOR, TOMAHAWK MISSIONARY BAPTIST CHURCH
Someone has called this the “amusement” age. This preoccupation with self and amusement has overtaken us so that in the United States alone, the amusement business has been growing at an average rate of $6 billion a year since 1965.
Thrills and chills are available on demand. Popular amusement parks offer themes and thrills of all sorts, including spectacular shows and breathtaking rides. And there are the video games, which rival TV itself, one of the most pervasive sources of amusement. One estimate is that $5 billion or more is spent in a single year on video games and that during a single year, people play them for the equivalent of 75,000 manned years. Over and above that, something like an additional $1 billion is spent annually on games that can be plugged in and played on television sets and computers in our homes and on our phones.
There can be little doubt that we have become a generation addicted to amusement more than to the things of God. The United States probably has the greatest percentage of people going to church on a more or less regular basis. The spending habits of the American public make it quite evident that token attendance to religious duties is in no way allowed to interfere with most people’s amusements.
One survey taken some years ago that is still relatively valid today showed that in one year, Americans spent $16 billion on amusements, $10.5 billion for alcohol, $5 billion for tobacco, $2 billion for travel, $325 million for cat and dog food, $304 million for chewing gum, and $76 million for lipstick. During the same period, the total given for foreign missions by all Protestant churches in the United States was said to be only $145 million – less than half of what Americans spent on chewing gum.
If these figures are only reasonably accurate, isn’t it evident to you and me now that people are lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God?
2 Timothy 3:4-5: “Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures (amusements) more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.”
I’m not saying amusements are bad in moderation. But when we become more preoccupied with taking vacations than we are our own daily walk with Christ … when we are more concerned with finding good restaurants than finding lost souls … when we become more concerned with getting our needs met than we are for the needs of others, then we have a problem with self-amusement.
Are we so bored that we must be entertained all the time? I think the problem is that we are not satisfied with life, so we turn to amusement. It becomes something to take our minds off our dissatisfaction with life.
True pleasure and true satisfaction are only found in Christ Jesus. Psalm 16:11: “In thy presence is fullness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.” Psalm 36:8: “They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house; and thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures.”
Colossians 2:10: “And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power.” 1 Peter 1:21: “Who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God. Psalm 43:5 Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.”
Through faith in Jesus Christ, man finds complete satisfaction and complete spiritual and (even if I might dare so) mental health.
Bottom line is that man will never be satisfied with himself. He will always seek amusement and pleasure elsewhere but never find it. Proverbs 27:20: “Hell and destruction are never full; so the eyes of man are never satisfied.”
Hear Pastor Jack’s sermons and find out more at tomahawkmbc.com.