TOD 03.13.08

Some of my favorite questions are the ones that trouble me and linger without being fully answered. Here’s an example. What does it say about us that our ordinary activities of life don’t make it into movies? Though eating, doing laundry, changing diapers, mowing the grass, and going to church might be in a movie, they aren’t ever the bulk of it.

Rather, movies are always made entertaining by omitting, exaggerating, and accelerating elements of reality. Is it evidence of a pathology that we desire to consume something so other than the actual life God has given us? Is it a defect to want a life that is free from monotony? Is it a form of idolatry to be enticed by and to deliberately seek entertainment which is devoid of all the things that make up the vast substance of ordinary life? Are we saying that God did it wrong in the way He made us…that His gift of life was too poorly made to deserve replication in our artwork? Further, what tasks in ordinary life go undone when we indulge in such distracting entertainment?

Perhaps the only thing more troubling than such questions would be the person who finds them untroubling at all.