How Do I Break My Entertainment Addiction?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Welcome back to the podcast.
00:00:06.120 | We talked about entertainment on Friday,
00:00:08.440 | about how much entertainment is too much entertainment.
00:00:11.960 | And today we push the conversation forward
00:00:13.920 | a little bit further.
00:00:15.240 | What if entertainment has become an addiction?
00:00:18.440 | How do we get unstuck?
00:00:20.400 | Here's the email for today.
00:00:21.960 | Hello, Pastor John, my name is Cesar,
00:00:24.440 | and I am writing to you from Peru.
00:00:26.960 | I thank the Lord for the blessing
00:00:28.800 | that is your ministry to me.
00:00:30.740 | In the past three weeks,
00:00:32.680 | I've been disturbed by the following situation.
00:00:35.800 | I cannot break my addiction to entertainment.
00:00:39.000 | I'm convinced that the short-lived emotions
00:00:41.120 | of entertainment do not compare
00:00:42.660 | to the pleasures found in a deep life of communion with God.
00:00:46.540 | But I can play a video game for three hours
00:00:49.000 | and feel my emptiness and dissatisfaction as a result.
00:00:53.600 | But the next day, my desire for more entertainment
00:00:55.480 | is renewed and this has turned
00:00:57.200 | into a horrible, vicious cycle.
00:01:00.520 | I'm very stressed with this situation.
00:01:02.320 | I wanna grow spiritually.
00:01:04.280 | I do not wanna waste my life in trifles.
00:01:07.240 | Pastor John, what would you say to Cesar?
00:01:09.760 | - As I prayed for Cesar and what I might say to him,
00:01:14.760 | what seemed good to do is to take three of his statements
00:01:20.840 | and show how they're not accurate.
00:01:25.480 | Give me space here, give me time now.
00:01:26.880 | This is gonna sound a little blunt
00:01:29.480 | and how one of them points a way forward.
00:01:33.840 | Number one, he says,
00:01:35.800 | "I cannot break my addiction for entertainment."
00:01:39.520 | No, Cesar, that's not true.
00:01:42.480 | You can stop playing these games three hours a day,
00:01:46.360 | wasting your time.
00:01:47.760 | By labeling this habit an addiction,
00:01:51.500 | you might be giving yourself a partial pass.
00:01:55.720 | Whatever you think addiction means,
00:01:58.920 | it's probably not what you think it is.
00:02:01.920 | When you waste three hours of your precious life
00:02:05.560 | playing a video game over and over,
00:02:08.620 | this is not something you can't stop doing.
00:02:13.120 | Let me illustrate.
00:02:14.420 | If a man walked up to you while you were playing
00:02:17.480 | a video game and lit a blowtorch and said,
00:02:22.000 | "If you don't stop playing this video game,
00:02:24.480 | I will burn your eyeballs out with this blowtorch,"
00:02:27.360 | you'd stop, period, blunt, done.
00:02:30.480 | Of course you would.
00:02:31.600 | It's ludicrous to say you can't stop.
00:02:33.740 | You can stop.
00:02:35.120 | Or let's put it positively.
00:02:36.280 | If a man walked up to you with a million dollars in cash
00:02:40.160 | and convinced you that it was his
00:02:42.880 | to give to whomever he please,
00:02:44.440 | and he offered it to you, all of it,
00:02:46.960 | if you just stopped playing that game.
00:02:49.240 | (laughs)
00:02:50.080 | It's just ludicrous to say you wouldn't stop.
00:02:51.960 | You'd stop.
00:02:52.880 | Of course you would stop, and you would stop.
00:02:55.800 | You're not in bondage to that game.
00:02:57.900 | You can stop.
00:02:59.160 | You can walk away from it.
00:03:01.080 | And I promise you, with a blowtorch in your face
00:03:04.280 | or a million dollars in your pocket,
00:03:05.760 | it would be easy to walk away.
00:03:09.360 | The fear of pain or the pleasure of money
00:03:14.360 | would have instantly replaced your desires for that game.
00:03:20.400 | So that's my first qualification of something you said.
00:03:23.080 | Number two, Cesar, you say,
00:03:27.440 | "I am convinced that the short-lived emotions
00:03:31.520 | "of entertainment do not compare to the pleasure
00:03:36.440 | "that there is in a deep life of communion with God."
00:03:40.540 | No, Cesar, you're not convinced of this.
00:03:44.120 | You say you are, but these are just words.
00:03:47.740 | Jesus said, "You will know them by their fruits,"
00:03:51.840 | Matthew 7:16.
00:03:53.840 | And the essential thing he meant was,
00:03:56.760 | "People say many things, feel many things,
00:04:00.800 | "think many things, but a decisive test is fruit.
00:04:05.800 | "Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes
00:04:09.620 | "or figs from thistles," he said.
00:04:12.360 | So three hours on a video game, day after day,
00:04:16.540 | wasting your precious life is not a fruit
00:04:20.000 | of being convinced that communion with Jesus is better.
00:04:23.600 | It's not.
00:04:24.440 | Number three, you say,
00:04:27.820 | "I can play a video game for three hours.
00:04:31.060 | "Then I feel my emptiness and dissatisfaction,
00:04:34.620 | "but the next day, my desire for more entertainment
00:04:38.120 | "is renewed."
00:04:40.360 | Well, actually, Cesar, the word renewed is an understatement.
00:04:46.160 | It's not renewed, it's re-enthroned.
00:04:49.800 | It takes its place as the king of your will,
00:04:53.840 | which means that you then take your seat passively
00:04:58.840 | at its feet and you do its bidding like a slave.
00:05:03.040 | That's the way Paul describes it in Romans 6:12.
00:05:05.880 | He said, "Let not sin therefore reign,"
00:05:10.880 | that is, be king, "in your mortal body
00:05:14.200 | "to make you a slave,
00:05:16.900 | "to make you obey its passions like a slave."
00:05:20.580 | Now, you may ask, I suppose other people are asking,
00:05:23.480 | "Why are you being so hard on Cesar?
00:05:27.420 | "He wrote in for help, for goodness sakes.
00:05:29.640 | "Don't beat him up."
00:05:32.220 | I'm not beating up Cesar.
00:05:36.140 | I'm showing him that he is being beaten up
00:05:40.920 | by these two-bit pleasures called video games.
00:05:45.400 | Two-bit, no-count, low-grade, wasteful video games
00:05:50.400 | are beating him up, deceiving him,
00:05:54.000 | making him a lackey and a slave.
00:05:56.320 | I'm trying to give voice to Jesus' words in Matthew 5:28.
00:06:01.320 | Let me just paraphrase.
00:06:02.760 | You'll recognize the words.
00:06:04.840 | "I say to you that everyone who is suckered in
00:06:08.080 | "by a fluttering eyelashes of a video game
00:06:10.640 | "commits adultery with the game in his heart.
00:06:14.160 | "If your right eye causes you for a video game to sin,
00:06:19.160 | "tear it out, throw it away.
00:06:21.900 | "For it's better for you to lose one of your members
00:06:24.320 | "than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.
00:06:26.180 | "And if your right hand causes you
00:06:28.380 | "to be glued to a video game, cut it off.
00:06:31.620 | "Put a blowtorch to it.
00:06:34.720 | "For it is better that you lose one of your members
00:06:37.560 | "than your whole body be thrown into hell."
00:06:40.200 | That's the way Jesus talks about blowtorches to the face.
00:06:44.960 | So, Cesar, when you say,
00:06:48.280 | "I am very stressed with this situation.
00:06:51.360 | "I want to grow spiritually.
00:06:54.260 | "I do not want to waste my life in trifles.
00:06:57.960 | "I believe you.
00:06:59.820 | "I believe you.
00:07:01.240 | "There is a real battle going on in your soul
00:07:04.880 | "as in all of our souls.
00:07:06.880 | "And I rejoice that you feel stressed by this situation."
00:07:11.560 | That is a very good sign.
00:07:14.860 | So here's my counsel.
00:07:17.600 | Tear out your eye and cut off your hand.
00:07:21.120 | Now, that is get rid of all the apps
00:07:27.240 | that suck you in and make a slave of you.
00:07:31.320 | Just tear 'em right off your phone.
00:07:33.320 | You know, I mean, tearing out your eye
00:07:35.360 | surely has an application to your devices.
00:07:38.640 | Say with Paul in 1 Corinthians 6, 12,
00:07:42.120 | "My body is not my own.
00:07:44.820 | "I've been bought with a price, the blood of Jesus.
00:07:48.200 | "I will not be enslaved to anyone else.
00:07:51.700 | "He is my master."
00:07:53.680 | Then turn away from the games
00:07:55.560 | and receive the million dollar gift from Jesus.
00:07:59.560 | No, no, no, no, way understatement.
00:08:01.820 | Billions, billions, and billions of dollars worth of reward
00:08:06.820 | better than anything else.
00:08:09.380 | - Thank you, Pastor John,
00:08:11.260 | for turning our eyes from our screens
00:08:14.300 | to the beauty of Jesus Christ.
00:08:15.900 | I appreciate that.
00:08:17.700 | And we are back on Wednesday
00:08:20.420 | to hear from a woman who is waiting,
00:08:22.260 | waiting for her husband to leave the home.
00:08:25.020 | It's not an uncommon question.
00:08:26.300 | Specifically, are wives responsible
00:08:28.960 | for changing their husbands?
00:08:31.220 | First Peter 3 seems to say yes.
00:08:33.620 | And Pastor John will give us his take on that.
00:08:36.060 | That's on Wednesday.
00:08:36.900 | Until then, you can find over 1,300 past episodes
00:08:39.940 | in our archive.
00:08:40.780 | Go to our online home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:08:44.940 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:08:45.980 | We'll see you back here on Wednesday.
00:08:48.120 | (whooshing)
00:08:50.440 | (whooshing)
00:08:52.780 | (whooshing)
00:08:55.100 | you