Every so often, I go out to a
restaurant for lunch or dinner, not an uncommon occurrence in our culture. I notice that many restaurants have an
extensive menu, offering a variety of choices in meats, seafood, pasta, salads,
soups, appetizers, and, of course, desserts (not to mention the “specials” of
the day—I often wonder why there are “specials” since the menu is already
overstocked with possibilities; maybe there’s something they want to use
up?).
I am not the most decisional
person. When the wait staff comes to
take the order, I almost always state “I’ll go last” because I haven’t yet made
up my mind. When they finally come to
me, oftentimes I still haven’t made up my mind, but I can’t make everyone else
wait, so I blurt out my order and after the wait staff leaves I think “Why did
I order that? This other dish sounds
better!” What’s done is done, however.
In truth, many things sound good and
there-in lies my problem. Too many
possibilities become information overload for my brain and I find it hard to
make any choice at all. While I know
eating healthy is a good choice, the temptation to eat otherwise sometimes gets
the best of me.
I think we live in a culture of too
many choices. I don’t remember so many
options when I was younger. And that
extends beyond restaurant menus. Think
of all the entertainment options we now have that we didn’t have before: hundreds
of available channels for our TV pleasure; our computers give us games and
movies and original programming; our phones are smarter than we are—they’ve
made us dependent upon them (and perhaps addicted to them). When I was growing up, there were 3 basic
sports: baseball, football, basketball (others existed, just not popularly so). We now have all kinds of athletic endeavors (thank
you, X-games) from which to choose, whether we actively engage or passively
watch (although not all parents are passive as they watch their kids play
sports).
Unfortunately, what seems to have
happened is that God and Church and religion have become just another choice to
occupy our time. And if there’s a
conflict, what happens? Some choose
faith practices but many do not. The
conflict is an opportunity to teach our young people that there are priorities
in life; what lesson do we want to impart?
And, of course, for those who crave constant
entertainment, God doesn’t exactly entertain us like many of the other choices
available to us. (I’m not saying that
the goal of going to Church should be entertainment, although I think the
Church experience can be enjoyable.)
Those of us who are older remember simpler,
less complicated, fewer-choices times. I
don’t think we missed anything—we had fewer distractions to tempt us away from
God. That’s not a bad thing. However, we can’t change the culture
surrounding us—we can’t go back to simpler times. We live in an environment of numerous choices
and we have to deal with that.
Unfortunately, while our possible choices have multiplied in recent
years, neither our time nor our energy has.
We can’t do everything we may want to do.
But we still can make choices that
deepen our faith and our relationship with God.
Maybe it means saying “No” to something else tempting us, but in the end
we’ll have made the better choice.
Have a blessed week . . .
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