In chapel and church we sometimes sing songs that talk about giving everything we are to God. We say that we give our whole lives over to God. In essence, that's what we do when we accept Christ as our Savior, but what about the smaller aspects of our lives?

There are some things that we obviously need to give up—smoking, lying, cheating, stealing, etc. But then there are more difficult issues—such as how much TV to watch, what movies to watch, what music to listen to, or how much time to spend with God. Watching TV/movies are not necessarily bad, but they aren't very good either. When I think of all the time I have used to watch a TV show that I won't ever remember, I know that there are a lot of other useful and beneficial things that I could have done during that time instead.

Another aspect is how healthy it is for me. One summer I watched the first three seasons of "The Office." Later I realized how much of a bad influence it had on me. The show is extremely humorous and enjoyable, but it is also filled with sexual jokes. I am sure that watching "The Office" does more to hurt me than help me in any way. It is definitely not a pleasing thing to the Lord. So I decided to stop watching it. 

This goes for any "fuzzy" area of life. Is it good for me? Bad? Neutral? What does God think of it? I heard a good analogy on the radio a little while ago about cartoons. In most cartoon shows, a character can be punched, slapped, beat up, kicked out a window, blown up, run over by a car, and thrown off a cliff. But in the end the cartoon character is perfectly fine. This is the way we often think our spiritual lives are. We think that we can allow all kinds of harmful things to come at us and they will simply bounce off. But this isn't true. There are all kinds of things that have the potential to hurt our spiritual lives, including TV shows, movies, and music. 

When we think about how we can obey God better, I think we often focus on the sins that we should stop doing. But we need to go farther than that. I think that sometimes instead of asking "What should I not be doing?" we should ask "How much am I willing to give up for God?" How much TV (that isn't harmful) should I give up? How much useless internet surfing am I willing to give up? Of course, God doesn't want me to over-work myself, but sometimes I waste way too much time on wasteful things.

Perhaps the monks had it right. They decided they would give up all kinds of worldly things and devote all of their time to God. 

1 John 2:15-16 says, "Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world." (NIV) Plus the Bible says we are to be in the world, but not of it. 

How far do I go with this passage? It seems pretty extreme. But then again, Jesus was extreme, and we need to model Him. How do I not love things in the world? For instance, what if I didn't care much for watching movies. That would actually be really sweet! If I didn't want to watch movies, I not only could do something more useful, I would want to do something more useful. I might watch an occasional movie for fun, but not very often. Now that scenario would be awesome! 

But I do like to watch movies, which isn't necessarily bad. But I'm praying that God will make me less attached to worldly things like movies, and more attached to Him!