Choosing to Build
I wrote part of this post a couple of weeks ago, but did not get around to putting it up. It seems even more relevant now as I work out what is important with my busier schedule.
These are the texts my thoughts stem from:
Proverbs 25:28 “He who has no rule over his own spirit, is like a city broken down without walls.”
Proberbs 14:1 "The wise woman builds her house, but the foolish pulls it down with her hands."
Our pervasive media can be a temptation. Some aspects do not tempt me at all. I do not want to watch TV, and rarely sit down and watch it. Rarely = about half an hour every two weeks at most! Similarly with movies. I went to Narnia a couple of weeks ago, and loved it, but usually I have no desire to go to movies or hire them.
The Internet is my temptation. There is so much that is good on here, and you have choice and interaction. The information I have been exposed to has helped me a lot. I love reading blogs and researching. I also have heaps of weblog posts running around in my head that I would love to write. I don’t think it would be “wrong” to spend more time online.
The reason I limit myself is simple: I want to be a wise woman, and build my house. Aunty Val, a great-great-grandmother of two, is waiting to be picked up for lunch. My Teacher’s Aide study needs to be done. My niece needs to be spoken with, cuddled, and taken for a walk. A mentally ill church member who struggles with housework needs her washing done. I need to take care of my back problem with exercise and rest. Friends are coming for dinner. Outside cyberspace the sun is shining, and my garden is growing.
As R.C. Sproul Jr. wrote in Every Thought Captive, May/June 2005, "It's true enough that the Bible doesn't say you can't listen to talk radio. It doesn't say you can't read or write blogs. It doesn't say, as far as I know, you can't read magazines from fly-over territory. And as such, I'm not saying it either. But just as we encourage folks to have lots of children not ultimately because we think contraception is a sin, but because we think children are a blessing, so here the issue isn't whether you're allowed to drink in this or that from the broader culture. The question is, aren't there better things to do with your time? And by that I don't merely mean more work-y kind of things. I mean more joyful kind of things."
If I shirk small duties and joys in the "real" world, in order to purue online interests, I am like the foolish woman pictured in Proverbs 14:1 who pulls down her own house. There are few more graphic pictures of opposing your own wellbeing, and that of the people God has placed in your life.
