Firefly and Dating,or...well, yeah. Firefly and Dating
As I alluded to earlier, I've been holding onto this post for about 2 weeks now. I meant to go through it again and clean it up, but I decided that I'd rather just post what I have. Hopefully it makes more sense to you than it does to me. :-) God has me on a crazy intense road, but He's brought me this far, and He will lead me to the end. (Remember the last post?) For now, though, I'll return you to your regular unscheduled blog post.
While the TV series and the behavioral pattern may appear to have nothing in common, I pulled a lesson from each and both of them. Allow me this opportunity to share what I believe is God's heart as revealed to me.
At Fall Conference (the IVCF fall retreat, as you may recall), Jay Pathak (pastor of Arvada Vineyard Church) was speaking. Pastor Jay brought a powerful message about how Christians today focus on "being a Christian" and "doing the right things" rather than merely following Jesus as Jesus Himself commands. Time fails me now to explain all the implications that this has had in my life since. The main point that God keeps bringing is that life isn't about being good, or even about sharing your faith with others. It's about loving God first of all, then as a natural outgrowth of that, loving others.
Yeah, so Firefly. And dating. Yeah. About that...
Firefly is a science-fiction television series. It was aired on Fox for a short time, then cancelled. I had heard good things about it but hadn't seen it, mostly because I "don't watch TV." Why don't I watch TV? Because, as everybody knows, TV is bad and is a conduit for bad things. Right? Maybe.
And now onto dating. In the same way, "I don't date." (The quotation marks here are not for sarcasm, but rather because it is indeed an exact quote.) From the time I was young (not that I'm old now), I was raised on Bill Gothard, Josh Harris, and the like: Dating is a "Bad Thing", and courtship is the only "Good Thing." Is that a wrong teaching? I don't think so. It kept me on the strait path (and the straight path) for many critical years.
About 3 weeks ago, I had a chance to re-evaluate both of these paradigms at the same time. Remember the "Loving God and loving people" thing? As I thought, I attempted to assemble the pieces in different ways as you would a puzzle. Maybe this piece goes here, maybe that piece goes there. If they don't fit, you take them back out and try them somewhere else.
The Sunday evening after Fall Conference, I was over at my friend Nick's house, doing computer stuff. We were waiting for an operating system install (which can take over an hour of just waiting), and Nick asked if I wanted to watch a movie while we waited. I looked through his list of movies, and noticed that he had Serenity. One night last year, my roommates and I were going to watch Serenity (a movie based on Firefly), but ended up watching a lesser movie. I decided to seize my opportunity at Nick's house. Serenity is a good movie, and I enjoyed it. It was a good enough movie that I wanted to see the series. Nick offered to burn it onto DVD-R for me, but forgot in the ensuing time.
I was visiting with one of my classmates as we were working on a team project a couple weeks ago, and mentioned that I wanted to watch Firefly some time. She owns the series on DVD and offered to loan it to me, an offer that I quickly accepted. I started watching a couple days later, and quickly became enthralled - the series is well-written and well-executed. Then I realized that I was indeed "watching TV." Hmm...isn't this a "bad thing"? Well, does it say in the Bible that "TV is bad"? Not that I could find. The danger is the time drain and the potential to absorb corruption. In the first case, I am strongly restricting "Firefly time" to after homework and other important stuff. In the second, while containing some ideological issues (Is piracy acceptable in a nearly-lawless state?), Firefly also brings up interesting questions requring contemplation. As long as the positive outweighs the negative, I'm OK with it.
However, I had to be humble and admit to myself that I'm watching TV in a form, something that I have strongly condemned in the past. To say that watching TV is wrong is a legalistic point of view, and not how God calls me to be. It can be a bad thing, but it doesn't have to be.
And dating...well, that will have to wait for another post...Sorry. :-)
"...Until He comes, or calls me home,
Here in the power of Christ, I'll stand..."
While the TV series and the behavioral pattern may appear to have nothing in common, I pulled a lesson from each and both of them. Allow me this opportunity to share what I believe is God's heart as revealed to me.
At Fall Conference (the IVCF fall retreat, as you may recall), Jay Pathak (pastor of Arvada Vineyard Church) was speaking. Pastor Jay brought a powerful message about how Christians today focus on "being a Christian" and "doing the right things" rather than merely following Jesus as Jesus Himself commands. Time fails me now to explain all the implications that this has had in my life since. The main point that God keeps bringing is that life isn't about being good, or even about sharing your faith with others. It's about loving God first of all, then as a natural outgrowth of that, loving others.
Yeah, so Firefly. And dating. Yeah. About that...
Firefly is a science-fiction television series. It was aired on Fox for a short time, then cancelled. I had heard good things about it but hadn't seen it, mostly because I "don't watch TV." Why don't I watch TV? Because, as everybody knows, TV is bad and is a conduit for bad things. Right? Maybe.
And now onto dating. In the same way, "I don't date." (The quotation marks here are not for sarcasm, but rather because it is indeed an exact quote.) From the time I was young (not that I'm old now), I was raised on Bill Gothard, Josh Harris, and the like: Dating is a "Bad Thing", and courtship is the only "Good Thing." Is that a wrong teaching? I don't think so. It kept me on the strait path (and the straight path) for many critical years.
About 3 weeks ago, I had a chance to re-evaluate both of these paradigms at the same time. Remember the "Loving God and loving people" thing? As I thought, I attempted to assemble the pieces in different ways as you would a puzzle. Maybe this piece goes here, maybe that piece goes there. If they don't fit, you take them back out and try them somewhere else.
The Sunday evening after Fall Conference, I was over at my friend Nick's house, doing computer stuff. We were waiting for an operating system install (which can take over an hour of just waiting), and Nick asked if I wanted to watch a movie while we waited. I looked through his list of movies, and noticed that he had Serenity. One night last year, my roommates and I were going to watch Serenity (a movie based on Firefly), but ended up watching a lesser movie. I decided to seize my opportunity at Nick's house. Serenity is a good movie, and I enjoyed it. It was a good enough movie that I wanted to see the series. Nick offered to burn it onto DVD-R for me, but forgot in the ensuing time.
I was visiting with one of my classmates as we were working on a team project a couple weeks ago, and mentioned that I wanted to watch Firefly some time. She owns the series on DVD and offered to loan it to me, an offer that I quickly accepted. I started watching a couple days later, and quickly became enthralled - the series is well-written and well-executed. Then I realized that I was indeed "watching TV." Hmm...isn't this a "bad thing"? Well, does it say in the Bible that "TV is bad"? Not that I could find. The danger is the time drain and the potential to absorb corruption. In the first case, I am strongly restricting "Firefly time" to after homework and other important stuff. In the second, while containing some ideological issues (Is piracy acceptable in a nearly-lawless state?), Firefly also brings up interesting questions requring contemplation. As long as the positive outweighs the negative, I'm OK with it.
However, I had to be humble and admit to myself that I'm watching TV in a form, something that I have strongly condemned in the past. To say that watching TV is wrong is a legalistic point of view, and not how God calls me to be. It can be a bad thing, but it doesn't have to be.
And dating...well, that will have to wait for another post...Sorry. :-)
"...Until He comes, or calls me home,
Here in the power of Christ, I'll stand..."
posted by The student of life at 11:55 PM
1 Comments:
Thanks for sharing. You bring up some good points about when and what to watch on TV, and how it's important not to penalize it across the board. I think this is a message our culture really needs to hear!
Post a Comment
<< Home