I hope I didn’t look as
foolish as I felt.
I was talking with a
group of women after church, and one of them said something that left me
dumbfounded.
Earlier in the week, one
of us found a simple freeware computer game and emailed it to the group. The
game proved to be addictive—we were all spending more time than we could afford
playing it. We commiserated about our lack of self-control, but none of us
seemed to be taking the conversation seriously until one woman said, “I was
convicted about wasting time with the game, so I deleted it.”
That simple statement hit
me like a frying pan to the back of my head. The idea of deleting the game had
never occurred to me. I knew that the game itself was neither good nor
evil. I knew that to play a game in my free time was a liberty I possessed. I
also knew I was abusing that liberty over and over by playing when I should have
been working. But I wasn’t taking my sin (of neglecting my duties at home)
seriously enough to do what it would take to stop sinning.
Jesus taught about this
idea in Matthew 5:29-30.
If your right eye
causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose
one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your
right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better
that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.
(ESV)
Jesus has ordered us to part with anything that causes us to sin, even
something as valuable as my right eye or your right hand. He commands us to take
every sin seriously. And that includes the sin of wasting time to the
neglect of our duties as church members, wives and/or mothers.
According to the
Entertainment Software Association, “Forty percent of all players [of computer
games] are women and women over 18 years of age are one of the industry's
fastest growing demographics. Today, adult women represent a greater
portion of the game-playing population (33 percent) than boys age 17 or younger
(20 percent).” [1]
And according to a study
commissioned by Pop Cap Games, “Contrary to prevailing stereotypes, the average
social [i.e. Facebook] gamer is a 43-year old woman. . . . 38% of female social
gamers say they play social games several times a day.” [2] It’s not
necessarily wrong that women are spending some free time this way, but
it is certainly an area of life that believing women need to monitor and
control.
Let me be clear. All
entertainment (including computer gaming) is not a waste of time. But when an
entertainment causes me to neglect caring for my family, serving my church,
Bible-reading or prayer, I need to take it seriously. I do not have the option
of half-heartedly bemoaning my lack of self-control as I continue playing Angry
Birds on my cell phone. The situation calls for radical change. Real repentance
means not just to recognize and be sorry for my sin, but to actually turn away
from it.
So does that mean that we
should all delete every video game, burn our Wiis and boycott Facebook? Probably
not. But what it does mean is that as redeemed women, we should be careful to
think about our entertainments soberly, so that we are willing to give up
whatever we need to in order to lead holy lives. Those things we may be called
to “pluck out” or “cut off” will be different for each of us. For one woman, it
might mean putting the gaming system in the closet for a few weeks. For someone
else, it might mean unplugging the computer during the day or deleting a
Facebook account until the habit of wasting time with it is broken.
For me, it meant going
home to delete a computer game.
Copyright © 2012 Susan Verstraete.
Copyright © 2012 Susan Verstraete.