What Entertains Me?

Proverbs tells us that “folly delights the heart of a fool”. If that is true, then I must be a fool. I look at what entertains me, I look at what I want to consume in the media and I have to admit that it is folly. How much of what passes today for news is just gossip. How much of the news is really what the Germans call schadenfreude, meaning to delight in the misfortune of others. Rather than being moved to compassion, we gloat and mock those who suffer from their own poor choices or the choices of others. We have elevated mockery to an art form and it now passes for comedy. I know because I am amused by it.

This morning I read Psalm 12:8 which reads, “The wicked freely strut about when what is vile is honored among men.” I was struck that this is an apt description of our times. Our culture is a mess. We exalt lust, greed, and all kinds of sin. Not only do we do evil, but we heartily encourage others to do it. We are not content to wreck our own families and kill our own children in the womb, but we export our twisted values around the world. While I do not approve of the jihadists who label America “the great Satan”, I can understand what has so angered them.

But I am a study in contrast, because I find myself simultaneously repulsed by what I observe and strangely drawn to it. Like a man who sees a tragic accident about to happen, but who cannot avert his eyes, but watches it unfold with sickened fascination. I have grown accustomed to evil. It is said that familiarity breeds contempt. The first time you witness evil it is sickening and traumatic, the second time is shocking, the third time it is surprising, and by the fourth and fifth time it is accepted as normal. I have been desensitized by the sheer volume of evil on constant display every where I look. I cannot walk down the street without seeing more flesh on display than our forefathers could have imagined in a brothel. Does it sicken me? Not so much. At the least my eyes gloss over it, but more often than not I feel the desire for a surreptitious glance in the direction of the lurid display.

What is vile is honored among men. We are entertained by meanness and vanity. Revenge has replace justice and cunning has replaced honor. The good and pure are people to be pitied or mocked and are not by any means to be emulated. We are a generation of cynics, scoffers, and mockers. We are biting and devouring each other, and those who excel at this we pay handsomely and call them comedians and entertainers. I have allowed my culture to define what is funny, what is entertaining. I drink down what the world serves up. More than that, I hunger and thirst for it. I want more entertainment, more escape. No sooner do I finish one helping then I begin to wonder what the next helping will be.

Whether through print media, television, movies, music, or the ubiquitous internet, a constant stream of delicious poison is available to us, and I feel like I just can’t get enough. I can hardly wait for the next opportunity to turn off my mind, shut down my filters, and retreat to a semi-vegetative state while filling my find with banality or worse with toxic thoughts and images that slowly and subtly warp me while creating a hunger for more. I feel it is natural, normal, in fact, it is my right to be amused, even to amuse myself to death.

Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or worthy of praise – let your minds dwell on such things. Lord, rescue your people! Oh Lord rescue me from the quagmire I have helped to create through my participation. Help me to be in the world, but not of the world.