Reality Bytes

It's nearing midnight on a weeknight. You are:

a) Fast asleep in your cozy bed.
b) Watching old TV-on-DVD from your recliner
c) Frantically trying to finish the last stack of papers to be graded
d) Playing computer games that were meant for people at least twenty years younger than you are.

On the average night, I could be doing any of those, choice a) being the least likely. I'm a night owl--some of my best work is done between 7pm and 2am. Maybe that's why I like the overnight shifts at my second job so much...but that's another story for another time.

If you've ever channel surfed through what's available on cable or the satellite, without having certain channels blocked, you're likely to come across some sort of reality program at this time. MTV has a lot of them, none of them worth watching. I was forced to endure the first season of Rock of Love with Brett Michaels at work last year--that was fairly torturous. Granted, it's not the type of show I should be watching. Garbage in, garbage out, so they say. This isn't to say that all reality programming is trash. I enjoy a good episode of Deadliest Catch or Mythbusters--at least they're somewhat educational.

With so much attention focused on putting what is interpreted as "real" on the screen which is used primarily as an escape from what is real, reality television makes a lot of sense. We don't like reality. Life is hard. Reality television can't be real if it is to be popular. We absorb the lives of scripted characters, edited achievements, and sensationalized news stories to keep us from really looking at who we are, why we are the way we are, and what that means. It's about critical thinking. America doesn't do that well.

I fully admit that I am one of those who doesn't always like my reality. I don't like how America is evolving under the leadership of our new president (although I haven't given up hope). I don't like getting turned down for jobs. I don't like the struggle to find a place in a world that just will not accept that I look to a higher power for answers. And so I escape into the constructed worlds of novels, my own fiction stories, and multitudes of movies/television shows that I enjoy. Things have happy endings. I can control my destiny. There are no surprises unless the DVD skips or my cat decides that the pages smell a little too much like catnip to be avoided any longer.

This isn't the kind of life that God wants for me. He didn't put me on this earth to hide in a corner, living in my imagination until my life is over or the Rapture occurs. He wants me to make a difference, get dirty, and do some good work for Him. I tend to be slightly lazy and get frustrated fairly easily (depending on what's going on, of course). Until I harness my human faults, I can't be the child who truly honors her Father.

This is my first step. It's writing on the computer, which satisfies a lot of my humanness, but it's honest. No hiding. It's about living for God in a world which I am not of. We are reminded of this multiple times in the scriptures--we may be on Earth, living in a place of sin, but now that we are saved, we are not of this Earth anymore. We are of God. It's about time that we start reflecting that in our reality.

I challenge you and myself to start making our reality, with all the terrible influences of Satan that there are, more like God. Maybe it's about being kind when we don't want to be. Maybe it's giving more than we usually do. Maybe it's about not being afraid to tell those who have "Earthly power" over our Earthly existence (remember God is in control even though our human boss's name isn't Jehovah) the truth about who is our Father. To paraphrase an old children's church song, stop hiding our light under the bushel and let our light shine.