Jesus was a “man of sorrows” (Isaiah 53:3) who told his followers to deny themselves and follow him to Golgotha with crosses on their backs.  He said those who try to save their lives will lose them, but “whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 16:24-25). The apostle Paul said, “I die every day!” (1 Corinthians 15:31). The Christian life is a life of death. So for the sake of those who want to lose their lives for Christ, here are 12 ways to die while playing volleyball. (more…)

I think that much exposure to sensuality, banality, and God-absent entertainment does more to deaden our capacities for joy in Jesus than it does to make us spiritually powerful in the lives of the living dead. . . .

All Christ-exalting transformation comes from “beholding the glory of Christ.” “Beholding the glory of the Lord, [we] are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18). Whatever dulls the eyes of our mind from seeing Christ powerfully and purely is destroying us. . . .

It’s the unremitting triviality that makes television so deadly. What we desperately need is help to enlarge our capacities to be moved by the immeasurable glories of Christ. Television takes us almost constantly in the opposite direction, lowering, shrinking, and deadening our capacities for worshiping Christ.

One more smaller concern with TV (besides its addictive tendencies, trivialization of life, and deadening effects): It takes time. I have so many things I want to accomplish in this one short life. Don’t waste your life is not a catchphrase for me; it’s a cliff I walk beside every day with trembling.

TV consumes more and more time for those who get used to watching it. You start to feel like it belongs. You wonder how you could get along without it. I am jealous for my evenings. There are so many things in life I want to accomplish. I simply could not do what I do if I watched television. So we have never had a TV in 40 years of marriage. . . . I don’t regret it.

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Think about your death. Think about your death a lot. Ask what you’d like to be doing in the season of life, or hours or days, leading up to meeting Christ. I do that a lot these days (John Piper).

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Josh Harris on his decision to quit Facebook for a year:

But even if I weren’t writing a book, I don’t need another reason for staring at a computer screen. I’m constantly needing to evaluate how much time I spend emailing, browsing and blogging. Now obviously a lot of that activity is good, useful work. But sometimes it can be a time-waster. I think God’s been helping me improve at knowing when to unplug from cyberville and connect with the real, rich world of reality–playing with my kids, talking to my wife, taking a walk. Throwing Facebook in the mix of my online options is just a little too much for me right now.

The other reason I feel right about making my time with Facebook just a visit is a little harder to explain. How do I put this? I found that it encouraged me to think about me even more than I already do–which is admittedly already quite a bit. Does that make any sense? Without any help from the internet I’m inclined to give way too much time to evaluating myself, thinking about myself and wondering what other people think of me. If that egocentrism is a little flame, then Facebook for me is a gasoline IV feeding the fire. I need to grow in self-forgetfulness. I need to worry more about what God is thinking of me. I need to be preoccupied with what he’s written in his word, not what somebody just wrote on my “wall.”

And, finally, I need to read more. There are so many good books I want to read and so little time. If I added up the few minutes here and there that I spent checking Facebook this past week it wouldn’t be an insignificant amount of time. I’d rather give that time to reading.

Anyway, all of the above is totally personal and is in no way an indictment on other Facebookers. This is just where I’m at right now. Who knows…I might be back when the kids are grown and the book is written and I have more self-control.

Although I don’t have a Facebook, I still struggle with a lot of these same temptations to waste my life online:  YouTube, weiqi, this blog, maybe even DesiringGod.  I think I’m going to try to take a month, and “unplug from cyberville,” for the sake of joy!

No more posts ’til February.  I’ve been known to go back on these decisions before, so if you see a new post, call me, and encourage me.  Or just write a nasty comment.

HT: Justin Taylor