Quantity is the greatest foe of quality.
When we think about destructive sins, we tend to make it an issue of quality: good versus evil. Gambling, substance abuse, pornography, vulgarity, violence, these all register on our Family Feud-style board of vices. We tend to view our life as a mortal struggle between these toxic and destructive vices and our better spirit's of altruism, worship and justice.
Nevertheless, many of us who don't smoke, chew or even date boys (or girls!) who do, still find our selves hopelessly far from our ideals. What is hindering us? We are overlooking the insidiously suffocating swell of idle quantity.
Consider the following scenario. You've chosen NOT to watch films with nudity or egregious violence. You steer clear of seedy shows like Dirty Sexy Money, Desperate Housewives or Sex in the City. Instead you watch Extreme Home Makeover or Dancing with the Stars. You don't look for porn online--just sports and celebrity news (read gossip). You don't gamble, but you do play online games like chess or and fritter away hours on facebook.
What is going on? You're tithing your time to nothingness. You're spending 1-2 hours each day in non-scandalous idleness. It is suffocating the beauty of your life; it's quality.
The counsel of Scripture is clear:
"Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil."That "the days are evil" implies something of a diurnal default. From this idea came the notion of "redeeming" the time. This involves great vigilance; viz. being "very careful."
I posit here that the beautiful life is the life of raw engagement in the mess of the world--a rugged life of order-bringing.
Jesus' brother James confronts us with the truth that "Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins." This is startling. We know of the priest and levite who crossed the road to avoid the dying traveler. Isn't the quantity of our amusement (muse = think/consider; a-muse = don't think/consider) only an active neglect of the world's deepest needs? When we consider such neglect on par with commission of obvious sin, it casts our time and energy spent in a searching light.
Stephen Ambrose recounts an episode in his book D Day of a group of para-troopers who, upon finding an abandoned village stocked with liquor and food, carouse away the night of the invasion in revelry. Europe was quaking under the fascist Nazi regime, millions were being killed in concentration camps and their allied comrades were being slaughtered on the beaches and plains. Meanwhile, these men were drinking themselves into a stupor--a vile decision, deserving of court martial. Would we have judged them any different if they had found season one of Touched by an Angel or a wireless connection by which they could peruse their facebook feed?
I wouldn't have. You see the point was less about what they were doing than what they weren't doing.
If you'll note my "links to vice" section, most deal not with links to qualitatively sinful sites.
If we focused our attention on the quantity of our time and activities, we might live the beautiful lives we pine for. This is in no way intended to denigrate the toxicity of the scandalous sins nor the value of avocational rest. It is intended to be a reminder of the non-neutrality of time and activity. The beauty of our lives hang in the balance.
"Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do it."
