call-me-dan said:
thought a guy should post here!
yeah, just make it a priority to get with God daily, then things should line up.
dont think this is just an anime thing either, you can obses over anything
dan
Agreed with "call-me-dan," and I think a liberal slime should post here, so I'll throw in my ten yen.
I do not believe that time spent at something is the measure of "worship" or "importance." Simply put, when you go to college or get a job (or both) unless it's a Christian college or church work, you will be spending a lot more time working/learning than you will *ever* be able to spend in the Bible and church. If you even try to make it equal time, you will have no room for life itself: you'll be trying to fill each day with eight to ten hours of "Christian" activities just to assuage your guilt.
In my opinion, the idea that you can't enjoy or even do anything unless you match it with an equal amount of "Christian time" is legalistic, counterproductive, and actually *can* lead to your burning out as a Christian. I know, because I used to always try to do this and always failed at it.
It's legalistic because those who promote this idea usually hold themselves or someone else up as a paragon (i.e. "look at what so-and-so does, he is so holy because he spends three hours in devotions every morning"), which few people can match. A good example of this legalism is the idea that you have to match, exactly, the amount of time you spend watching an anime or playing a game in an amount of time reading the Bible. Sounds good, right?
No, because as you'll soon find out, you have to *study* the Bible *in depth* as you read it-you can't just read/watch it lightly or even semi-seriously like you do works of fiction like anime and games. In short, imagine watching that anime or game on individual frames, picking apart every line of dialogue, every movement of the characters down to the slightest eyeblink, and having to do this with an eternal importance attached.
It is counterproductive, because rather than enjoying God's Word and Christian activities, you grow to see them as "putting your time in" so you can go on to the rest of your life.
It becomes a form of obsessive-compulsive ritual: "if I put in this much time I must be honoring God, if I don't, I'm committing idolatry and need to give up anything I like to make the time match."
It leads to your burning out as a Christian, because after a while, you get tired of trying to read ten chapters of the Bible a day and twenty if you really want to make God happy (yes, I did this for a year or two.
). You get tired of forcing yourself to pray for an hour straight and feeling like garbage if your humanity prevails and your mind drifts to other things that wouldn't even *be* sinful to think of if you were not praying/worshipping/etc.
If you're really good, you may be able to keep that kind of life up for a while, but you *will* fail. Then, you will try blaming something else (i.e. anything from work to education to friends to your favorite entertainment) and give it up as "evil" and even angrily denounce it for "leading you astray," at best, losing a part of your life that is perfectly OK, and at worst, losing things that really mean a lot to you-for no reason at all, because it is the legalistic approach to Christianity that is burning you out.
(Sadly, too many people approach Christianity, discipleship, and Christian growth as if all are a spiritual marathon where you have to keep up with, and even outrun, steroid-pumped superathletes in a matter of seconds: not a race at which you are not just allowed but
expected to set your own pace. The Christian "race" is not the two minute mile, it is the Special Olympics, where you *are* unable to do it all on your own, you have to rely on God and others, and not worry about perfection, but simply try to reach the goal unhurt.)
But I digress. My point is that I grew up as a Christian with this whole idea that I had to match times. . .and my Christian life still suffers from this idea to some extent now. I feel like slime because I'm not "perfect," because I can't keep up with the "requirements," and I still occasionally find myself approaching the Bible and prayer with a "because I have to" attitude.
Instead of worrying about more or equal time doing "Christian" things, I advise that you worry about
quality time in Christian activities (i.e. it's better to read and somewhat understand one chapter of the Bible than to manage ten a day and not understand) and be thankful for whatever you enjoy, as life itself, people, work, leisure, even entertainment and the ability to enjoy your life and even the "secular" activities in it are most often gifts from God, if they do not directly lead you to a defined sin.