Made Lonely by Holiness

I'm sure some of you have experienced the very thing we're going to talk about today.

Watching on a screen together with your friends and maybe on a phone and suddenly you feel

this stomach dropping sense of isolation come over you because you realize that your

personal convictions are miles away from your friends, the people you call brothers

and sisters and Christ who are laughing at something that you cannot laugh at.

So you sort of draw back and now, you know, you're the freak, you're the prude weirdo.

How do you handle that experience?

That's today on Ask Pastor John made lonely by holiness.

Kate and Anchorage Alaska writes in with this very story, Pastor John, I want to ask

this humbly knowing that I'm not in God's place of judgment.

When I look at my peers, young Christians, I see such nominal faith.

From scripture, shouldn't we see believers pursuing personal holiness and yet I rarely

see this?

I feel this in my life as loneliness when it comes to entertainment.

I'm often the only one offended by vulgar pop lyrics or crude video clips while diversions

consume too much of many Christians' lives anyway.

And I see what my supposed brothers and sisters find meaningful.

I think there is nothing for me here.

How do I handle the isolation I feel when my conviction seems so different from other

believers and when I feel increasingly isolated from friends over this?

I share Kate's dismay at how many professing Christians, young and old, embrace as their

frequent form of entertainment in movies and television, a level of immodesty and immorality

and filthy language, and gender leveling feminist ideology, and arrogance and revenge

at a whole cluster of empty worldliness.

It calls to mind, 1st Peter 4, 3 and 4, the time that is past suffices for doing what

the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties

and lawless idolatry.

With respect to this, they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood

of debauchery and they malign you.

Now, they ostracize you.

What's wrong with you?

Weirdo, square, legalistic, old-fashioned, out of step.

The difference is, I suppose, that these professing Christians that Kate is talking about

would say that they're not living in those sins, they just enjoy watching them or at

least they don't mind watching them in order to be able to say, well, he's a very good

actor or that plot was very clever or the cinematography was cutting edge or the action

was scintillating anything to justify soaking their minds in a visual and verbal and conceptual

world of unbelief and sin.

But whether they're doing the sin or watching the sin, it's obvious, as Kate says, that

there is very little passion for personal holiness, that's the problem.

Little concern with Jesus' statement, blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see

God or Peter's statement.

You shall be holy for I am holy or Paul's statement.

What fellowship has light with darkness?

What accord has Christ with belile or what portion has a believer with a non-believer?

What agreement has the temple of God with idols for we are the temple of the living God

let us bring holiness to completion in the fear of God.

Peter makes the same observation, which is very relevant for Kate's concern, that if

you find yourself out of step with worldly entertainment, he says they are surprised when

you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery and they malign you.

Or perhaps in her case, maybe not malign, maybe just ostracize or put down with the

accusation of legalism or self-righteousness, or maybe just quietly roll their eyes and

drift away.

So the first thing for Kate to do, I think, is to settle it in her mind and her heart,

that she is not going to be carried along like a jellyfish in the current of culture,

but is going to be like a dolphin that swims with freedom against the current where necessary

in order to stay on course in the heaven-bound stream of God's word.

That is what she needs to do, just fix it in my mind.

This is the freedom I am going to enjoy and pursue.

And Kate, don't get to the point where you say, as I heard one pastor say about a compromised

lifestyle, well, if you can't beat them, join them, why would a person say that?

Because it's hard to stand alone, that's why.

But my guess is, Kate, that you're not alone.

Not as much as you think you are, probably, I don't know that for sure, but probably

not.

It seems to me that the Bible wants us to take heart, that when we think we're just about

the only one left, the Bible says, no, no, no, no, there are 7,000 people have not bowed

the need to bail, Romans 11 and 4.

It's just an encouragement that very often when we think we're the only one left or there

are only a few, there are more, there are more.

But when you think you're the only one, there are probably dozens of others who feel the

same way you do, and not only that, but among those very ones, those friends who are involved

in the sinful entertainments, perhaps there are some whose consciences are troubling them

and they're looking for an alternative.

That might imply that you should not only pray that God would lead you to other friends

who would love the encouragement of your friendship and your standards, but perhaps

you should also propose alternative ways of getting together with those very friends

who are watching all those questionable movies.

It might be different kinds of leisure, different kinds of recreation, or it might be something

more significant that you would lead in forming a band of people who would do some kind

of significant ministry together.

Maybe the most important thing for Kate is to focus on God Himself through His Word,

so that your own mind is so saturated with the spectacular riches of Christ, both now

and for eternity, that you actually outrejoice your worldly friends.

I'm thinking of Psalm 4, verse 7.

You have put more joy in my heart than they have when they're grain and wine abound.

What your friends seem not to realize is that not only are the pleasures of worldly entertainments

shallow and short lived, but they are also forming, shaping the soul so that it is increasingly

difficult for the soul to have any taste for the deeper and lasting pleasures.

That's a great tragedy.

I have felt this in my own life.

In those seasons, when I have drifted toward a preoccupation with the pleasures offered

by this world, I find myself not only growing narrower and shallower and more trivial and

artificial, but also less able to savor God's Word, and less able to feel the wonder of

the unsearchable riches of Christ, this is an extremely dangerous place to be.

We should tremble, and I am so, so thankful that in all these decades, God has stepped

in and rescued me again and again.

Maybe one last suggestion.

Be sure to take the long view.

Most people live their lives with so little attention to the future decades of their life

and the future ages of their life after death that they live their lives out of touch with

the greatest realities they don't think about them.

Kate, live with a view to eternity.

Innovate capacities of pleasure that go deep now and last forever.

Pray for your friends.

Surround yourself with a few who care about spiritual things, eternal things.

Be a part of a healthy church that puts a premium on personal holiness as well as global

missions in public justice and be confident that God is going to work everything together

for your joyful likeness to Jesus.

Yeah, the real reason we reach for entertainment, soaked in sin, isn't boredom.

It's from a delight deficit.

And this opens the door to so many practical questions on navigating modern media.

So do we avoid a few bad scenes or do we avoid the whole movie altogether with its bad

scenes?

Should we recharge or self-medicate with entertainment?

What do my entertainment habits say about my own soul?

Do I love entertainment more than I love God?

How do I break free from an addiction to entertainment or gaming?

It's a lot.

A lot to cover and a lot we have covered on the podcast and for all of it, see the chapter

on television movies and fun in the Ask Pastor John book starting on page 291.

Or more thoughts on all of this.

Speaking of happiness, will you be happy in a million years?

It could be.

I'm Tony Rankie.

We'll talk about it next time with Pastor John, see you Monday.