No doubt, this confession comes as a shock to many of my readers, friends, and family members. Unfortunately, it is both true and embarrassing. But there is no going forward without a confession and owning up to the fact that my addiction is limiting my effectiveness and my experience of the love of God, and therefore, it is a drag on everything else in my life. Even now, as I struggle to come clean and get the help I need, the impulse to go and get my next fix, to indulge my flesh, to get an immediate rush, is clouding my mind and my focus. I want to run away from the confessional of this space.
At the same time, I am questioning my motives in telling anyone. Am I just looking for sympathy or pats on the back for honesty? My heart is so deceitful; it is nearly impossible to know. On the other hand, if I don’t go public with my shame, I wonder if I will have the power to make the changes that need to be made. And I certainly increase the doubt in my own heart that I would ever be able to be restored and help anyone else who struggles with the same (or a similar), addiction as I do. But like all addicts, I need accountability. I need my brothers and sisters, familial and spiritual, to pray for me and challenge me in my faithfulness to live as I ought. My amazing wife needs me to be more, to be better than I have been. My children, though out of the house now, deserve better. My neighbors and the pastors I serve need a passionate follower of Jesus, not a shadow of one.
How did I come to this? How did I fall so far? Like any other addict, I suppose.
By small, incremental steps. By choices I thought were unimportant, or minimally important, or foolishly thinking I could fly near a flame that I could control. But today, as I read the 18th chapter of John Piper’s 31-day devotional titled Pierced by the Word, I know differently. Here’s the first two paragraphs:
YOU HAVE ONE PRECIOUS LIFE
Is TV Too Big a Part of It?
IF ALL OTHER VARIABLES ARE EQUAL, YOUR CAPACITY TO know God deeply will probably diminish in direct proportion to how much television you watch. There are several reasons for this. One is that television reflects American culture at its most trivial. And a steady diet of triviality shrinks the soul. You get used to it. It starts to seem normal. Silly becomes funny. And funny becomes pleasing. And pleasing becomes soul-satisfaction. And in the end, the soul that is made for God has shrunk to fit snugly around triteness.
This may be unnoticed, because if all you’ve known is American culture, you can’t tell there is anything wrong. If you have only read comic books, it won’t be strange that there are no novels in your house. If you live where there are no seasons, you won’t miss the colors of fall. If you watch fifty TV ads each night, you may forget there is such a thing as wisdom. TV is mostly trivial. It seldom inspires great thoughts or great feelings with glimpses of great Truth. God is the great, absolute, all-shaping Reality. If He gets any airtime, He is treated as an opinion.
Jesus is not an opinion. He is my Lord, and my intoxicated addiction to media, and sports, and TV has got to change. Pray for me. Pray that my life would be free of its enslavement to entertainment of any kind so that Jesus will have His rightful place in my life.
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