Escapist Entertainment, Part 1

-Written by Paeter Frandsen

It's been a rough day. I've been constantly surrounded by people who require large amounts of emotional energy to interact with. Tension has been building as I notice my productivity being interrupted and I begin wondering how long it will take for people to notice that I'm falling behind. I seem to keep running into problems I have to solve that are outside my strengths. By the time the day is over I urgently want to put thoughts of it all behind me. I want to go somewhere and do something that will remove me from the feelings of stress and the expenditure of energy that have been my default mode of existence all day long. More than anything else, I want to escape.

Escapism,(noun): the avoidance of reality by absorption of the mind in entertainment or in an imaginative situation, activity, etc.

Geeks have the best means of escapism in the world. I dare you to tell me different. TV, film, books, comics, video games, board games, role-playing games, each of these is only one medium through which we can explore entire worlds creatively fleshed out for our enjoyment. And we live in a time when these forms of entertainment, rather than being only for geeks, are becoming increasingly popular. This means that competition to create these escapist experiences is fiercer, resulting in products that are more captivating than ever before. Not to mention more accessible at nearly a moment's notice and sometimes with little or no financial cost.

My preferred mode of escapism is video games. Specifically, role-playing games with large worlds to explore, countless quests to undertake, and the constant progression of character stats and skill development. Fallout 3, Skyrim, Neverwinter Nights and now Baldur's Gate 2 are just a few of the titles that I've found myself diving into the first chance I get after a long work day. And certainly they provide a good distraction from a day filled with draining activity. But I've noticed that they often don't seem to be enough to really help me hit that "reset button".

I can end a three hour gaming session, not refreshed from effectively "escaping" my day, but actually frustrated. There have been times when, at the end of a night of gaming, I feel angry as soon as I realize I have to be done and go to bed (or face being exhausted the next day). The experience didn't recharge me like it may have before. It didn't give me the release I thought it should.

So I'll say to myself, "I'm getting bored of this game. Time to find a new one." Then I'll spend a few days of free time scouring reviews online in search of a new game to buy that will fulfill the need that my current game does not. I buy the game and start playing it and then, you guessed it, rinse and repeat.

A few months ago, the sound on my iphone stopped working. I could still hear phone calls, but could no longer hear sounds through the external speaker or headphones. This meant that I couldn't really watch videos or play games on my phone anymore. At first, this was very frustrating to me. But then it awakened me to the fact that I had been taking every possible opportunity to stimulate myself with geek entertainment.
At some point early on I could have said it was work related, as I like to be connected to geek culture so that I can talk about it readily online or on my podcast. But at some point it went beyond work and just became about me and my desire to be constantly entertained.

Around the same time I noticed the pattern of frustration with my games that had been developing. I finally concluded that the problem was not with my entertainment, but with me. I woke up one moment and realized that I had been "escaping" into entertainment, and the realization disgusted me. "I don't want to escape to some GAME," I thought to myself in frustration. "I want escape to Jesus!" And if Jesus is who he says he is, why in the world would I ever want to escape to anything else?

Both scripture and enough life experience will inform us that entertainment is not where our fulfillment, comfort and restoration ultimately come from. The author of Ecclesiastes ultimately found only weariness in the things meant to comfort and fulfill him.

(Ecclesiastes 1:8-10, ESV) All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”? It has been already in the ages before us.

The author had incredible wealth and began experimenting with ways to give himself fulfillment.

(Ecclesiastes 2:7-11,ESV) I bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house. I had also great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem. I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces. I got singers, both men and women, and many concubines, the delight of the sons of man. So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me. And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.

We have a natural tendency, which I've seen firsthand in myself, to look for our own ways to comfort ourselves. We search for personal rescue in all the wrong places. For some it's food, for lots of geeks it's entertainment.

Isaiah describes a scenario in which a man designs his own god to rescue and take care of him. The man thinks up the concept and then uses raw materials to create it. He cuts down a tree and gets a big block of wood from it.

(Isaiah 44:16-20, ESV)  Half of it he burns in the fire. Over the half he eats meat; he roasts it and is satisfied. Also he warms himself and says, “Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire!” And the rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, and falls down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says, “Deliver me, for you are my god!” They know not, nor do they discern, for he has shut their eyes, so that they cannot see, and their hearts, so that they cannot understand. No one considers, nor is there knowledge or discernment to say, “Half of it I burned in the fire; I also baked bread on its coals; I roasted meat and have eaten. And shall I make the rest of it an abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood?” He feeds on ashes; a deluded heart has led him astray, and he cannot deliver himself or say, “Is there not a lie in my right hand?”

In this scenario, the man was looking for something to rescue him.“Deliver me, for you are my god!”  He says to the idol. As Isaiah observes, we don't naturally have the knowledge or discernment to realize that this thing we're looking to for rescue has no power to rescue us.

Now before I continue, I need to make something clear. I am not about to renounce entertainment and call it a waste of time. (Though it can be that when given too much priority.) I'm not about to condemn it all as a source of corruption. (Though some entertainment can corrupt us.) But I think I can say confidently that entertainment should not be a means of "escape" and certainly not a means of comfort. Can it remind us that God is good and the source of wonderful things? Absolutely, if we train our minds to associate our entertainment with him.

(James 1:17, ESV) Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

But is entertainment where we should turn for comfort? I think that will only lead to relational separation from God and personal misery.

Consider this passage from the book of James:

(James 4:1-10,ESV) What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. 

In context, James is talking about truly engaging our day to day lives in light of our faith. These verses specifically address the common desires for fulfillment and peace that we all have. We're missing something. Even as believers in Christ we often feel unfulfilled. We know there is something we don't have that we want, and it frustrates us not to have it. It can make us feel entitled and grumpy around our friends and family. As James says, "You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel."

Granted, we might believe with our minds that God is our ultimate source of fulfillment, and ask for fulfillment of the miraculous variety. In other words, we might ask for Jesus to "magically" make us feel content and fulfilled. But we either don't consider or refuse to acknowledge that fulfillment through Christ is found by "abiding" Christ.

(John 15:5, ESV) I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. 

"Abiding" in Christ is relationship with Christ. And relationship requires an investment of time.

In Part 2 I'll share some of what I think that kind of time looks like and why I went from hating it to loving it in a matter of days.