The Temptation of Procrastination
People were created in the image of the Creator-God which should mean that people are therefore creative and are creators, but because of sin we have a resistance to creativity that is called the temptation of procrastination. When we fall into it we become consumers rather than creators, and it can become a viscous cycle of time wasting activity.
I read this two years ago and bookmarked it. After preaching on temptation and bringing up how social media can be a pretty big one I thought it might be a good time to share with you guys in case you don’t follow Seth Godin or may have missed his post. Note that the lizard brain refers to the part of us that is reactive and will remain in control unless we engage the other higher orders of thinking.
Seth’s Blog: Modern procrastination
Modern procrastination
The lizard brain adores a deadline that slips, an item that doesn’t ship and most of all, busywork.
These represent safety, because if you don’t challenge the status quo, you can’t be made fun of, can’t fail, can’t be laughed at. And so the resistance looks for ways to appear busy while not actually doing anything.
I’d like to posit that for idea workers, misusing Twitter, Facebook and various forms of digital networking are the ultimate expression of procrastination. You can be busy, very busy, forever. The more you do, the longer the queue gets. The bigger your circle, the more connections are available.
Laziness in a white collar job has nothing to do with avoiding hard physical labor. “Who wants to help me move this box!” Instead, it has to do with avoiding difficult (and apparently risky) intellectual labor.
“Honey, how was your day?”
“Oh, I was busy, incredibly busy.”
“I get that you were busy. But did you do anything important?”
Busy does not equal important. Measured doesn’t mean mattered.
When the resistance pushes you to do the quick reaction, the instant message, the ‘ping-are-you-still-there’, perhaps it pays to push in precisely the opposite direction. Perhaps it’s time for the blank sheet of paper, the cancellation of a long-time money loser, the difficult conversation, the creative breakthrough…
Or you could check your email.
I would encourage you to engage in a social media, texting, cell phone abandoning, fast and then try to create something with your time. What might you make?
The nature of the comments, and a request for more comments
So, the nature of the first comment yesterday, “People don’t make rational decisions; they make emotional ones. Rational campaigns fail.” is a summary of what Ben Arment took away from a book he was reading written by Facebook’s Paul Adams entitled Grouped: How small groups of friends are the key to influence on the social web (Voices That Matter)
Now, of course the book and Paul Adams’ view is one of the marketer. He states what retail has known forever, which is why everything from condoms to candy to the latest “As Seen on TV” gadget sits at the checkout line. The goal of the marketer is to sell something, and in the end they just want to make a living.
The second comment, “Calling people to repent of their sin and follow Christ should be a rational decision.” is mine only for the sake of sparking a discussion.
On Facebook my friend Beth commented that to exclude the emotional is not giving Christ all of us, and results in what is only a mental ascent. I think I agree with her evaluation; however, I do not think we lead with the emotional as the marketer may because we do not want to sell a product in order to make a living, but rather we want to help make someone family.
In the end, we do not want the King Size M&M’s to get the same kind of attention that Jesus gets when it comes to choice.
And often I think that is where we can fall short as the Church, because we have reduced “repent and proclaim allegiance to Jesus” to a checkout aisle product push when it should be a timely and time consuming counting of the cost (Luke 14:28).
The Age of Christian Entitlement
“I know Jesus will forgive me.”
The last three posts have been a bit of a rant on sin that has been brewing for a while, but finally came to a head when I received the previous quote in an email. If the context for the quote were from one who was broken by the gravity of their sin, humbled by their failure, and is moving in a new direction then there is a tremendous amount of hope in that quote. But if the context is instead one of entitlement and apathy, then nothing but despair and frustration surface.
I probably didn’t coin this phrase, The Age of Christian Entitlement, but in my quest to understand my generation’s misunderstanding of the gravity of sin along with our inability to comprehend the love of God it came to me. In an effort to convert we, the Church, have tried to help people minimize their sin. We say things like, “You are no worse than me.” or “I’m just as bad.” The intention is to try to help people feel like they can be forgiven, but I wonder if it just makes them feel more comfortable with their sin. In our own lives we try to get as close to the line between sin and righteousness without going over instead of fleeing the line in the direction of righteousness. We tell people how much God loves them thinking that their desire to be loved will somehow convince them. Many have been baptized under the impression that God loves them and because of that love will excuse their sin. We have removed repentance from the equation, and that failure is leading to a lukewarm faith in America.
I’ve used phrases like the Age of Comfort to describe the American condition and how it has filtered down into the hearts of my own children and their friends who have been led to believe that not only are they entitled to iPhones, internet, cable, cars, clothes, and college, but heaven too. This overwhelming sense of fairness that plagues our youth, especially in the Bible Belt, makes them unable to comprehend how God would be unwilling to forgive them for their sin.
What entitles us to forgiveness, what entitles us to be co-heirs to the throne of grace, is that we have been transformed, changed, gone through a metamorphosis. It is not a change we have made, but have desired and regardless of how the Calvinist might spin it I do not believe God changes those who do not at least desire it, desire Him. While God may in fact be the one who moves us to that desire it does not negate the fact that we must be willing participants in the change process. I’ve already talked about how forgiveness in and of itself is a change here.
The Entitled Christian just wants the Get Out of Hell Free card, or the “get out of this set of circumstances which feels a whole lot like Hell free card.” They do not want or desire the change. They do not want or desire to realize the gravity of their sin. They do not want or desire intimacy with Christ if it requires change, repentance, transformation, metamorphosis.
I doubt the quoted person is reading my blog, but if you are…
There is NO “Get Out of Hell Free” card. You are not playing Monopoly, and there is more on the line than mortgaging Boardwalk. There is no forgiveness without repentance! You say you are a Christian, but your actions are the same as before. Just because you can add “taught the Bible” to your resume does not undo what you have done. Repent, my friend. Please, for your sake, for my sake, for the sake of the relationship you have with your kids and with your friends…repent. You are not entitled to anything but Hell in this life and the next unless you do, unless we all do.
We are not entitled to Christ!
Just Repent!