Pastime Paradise

In 1976, Stevie Wonder released the song “Pastime Paradise”^[1]. The song is a call out to those who continually dwell in the past “of days long gone behind” and do not live in the present. Then he calls out those who live in a future paradise, one that probably will never see the light of day. I want to use the other connotation of pastime, our recreational pursuits, as a call out to those who escape life by dwelling in their pastimes, things like sports, their phones and so on. There’s nothing wrong with taking pleasure in sports, or partaking in on-line chats and the like, but it should not be used as an escape from the world, living in a world of make-believe instead of the real world.

Truth is a rare commodity

There is a danger in living in a world of distractions. In “Cries of the Heart”^[2] Ravi Zacharias quotes from Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death”. This is from the preface, as he contrasted Orwell’s “1984” to Huxley’s “Brave New World”:

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was the there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who would want to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who give so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would become a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would be a captive culture. Huxley feared that we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in “Brave New World Revisited”, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain, In Brave New World, they controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. This book is about the possibility that Huxley, nor Orwell was right.

Looking around, I am afraid that both men were right. Most places I have worked at had large screen TVs in the lunch room. Most often it would cycle around some slides with announcements and the like. However, during the World Cup, since many of the employees were European, they would stream the World Cup games and often people were missing from their desks watching the games. With on-line gambling, streaming video, endless news outlets, et al, there is a veritable smorgasbord of distractions.

On the other hand, the information we receive is severely edited to fit the current “narrative” that we are being told is the truth. In such an environment, truth is a rare commodity. If one is not paying attention, and we are being distracted not to notice, they can feed us a stream of lies which sound good, but they are still lies.

Are we filling a void in our lives that only God can fill? Are we using our pastimes to escape a world that is growing increasingly unfathomable?

This is what the Roman Emperors discovered with their “Bread and Circuses”.

• The Bread (Panem) referred to the Annona, a government program that provided a free or heavily subsidized monthly grain (and later bread) dole to poor citizens living in Rome to prevent starvation and bread riots.
• The Circuses (Circenses) referred to massive, extravagant public spectacles and games. This included chariot racing at the Circus Maximus, gladiator combats in the Colosseum, and wild animal hunts.
• Emperors and politicians used these events and food supplies for political control, boosting their popularity, keeping the masses content, and directing attention away from political corruption, loss of republican liberty, or economic struggles.

Sound familiar? While we are being distracted, our liberties are being stripped away, we are told about government corruption that there is nothing to see there, and now our very lives are at stake with false narratives such as the next pandemic, the safety of mRNA/nano-particle vaccines, climate change, the mutilation of our children, all in an effort to keep us unaware of our ultimate destination of a dystopian future.

There are two questions that apply to our pastimes. Are we filling a void in our lives that only God can fill? Are we using our pastimes to escape a world that is growing increasingly unfathomable?

Pleasure can become a trap, an endless cycle of needing to push the envelope further and further. While many activities are safe and non-threatening, there is growing body of people venturing into extreme sports, sports such as: bungee jumping, free base jumping, jet skiing, and so on. These sports offer an increasing element of danger, putting the human body to the extremes of endurance and peril. This belies a want of the heart, a hole that begs to be filled, a God sized hole that no extreme sport can fill.

Our pastimes bring pleasure, but our hearts are longing for joy. There is a world of difference between the two. Man’s pleasure is for a season; it is fleeting.
I said in mine heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure: and, behold, this also is vanity. Ecclesiastes 2:1

Joy is from God, and it is eternal.

Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore. Psalm 16:11

When we use our pastimes to escape into a world of make-believe, we risk losing touch with the real world

When we come to Christ, that hole is filled with the love of God and the need for such extreme activity is sated.

Second, when we use our pastimes to escape into a world of make-believe, where everything seems normal while all around us everything is falling apart, we risk losing touch with the real world. Why is that? Do we find the world so difficult to deal with that we withdraw completely? Here, I am talking to the church. Are we not to be salt and light? Salt preserves. We are to preserve the Christian heritage that had been passed on to us. What about light? Darkness cannot stay where there is light, and we are to shine the light of truth on all aspects of life. What happened?

As I said in “What Are We Doing to Our Children?”, the aftermath of the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic was that trust in our institutions was destroyed. I named teaching, medicine and government. One other is the institutional church. The odd church defied the government’s desire to cripple the church, but the voice of the church hierarchy was silent. To me, that silence destroyed what little confidence I had in the institutions of the church. I look around and there are pockets where the church is alive and well, but the great church institutions have proven themselves to be truly impotent.

Is the answer revival? In “Judgment, Not Revival: How God’s Divine Justice Will Save America”^[3], Travis A. Karnes argues that revival will not save America, at least not the antiseptic kind of revival that most of the church is expecting. They expect a divine wind that will somehow fix all of America’s problems. All it will take is a little prayer to bring it about.

These people lived through the Charismatic Renewal of the late ‘60s and think that was revival. It was not revival. True revival is not clean and antiseptic. It is messy. Born out of desperation, it is the church crying out to God for deliverance. It comes out of deep repentance before God with heart wrenching self-examination, crying out and prayer. I remember seeing videos from Egypt during the “Arab Spring”, circa 2010, of Coptic priests, waving their Shoria (censor), emitting the smoke of incense and repeating over and over “Only You Jesus. Only You Jesus.” They were stripped of everything. The only thing left to them was Jesus. Remember the people of Nineveh.

So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them. Jonah 3:5

I think that the time of the Second Coming of Jesus is at hand. Even if it is not, the storm clouds of a full-blown spiritual war are building and God will need all His people engaged. In “A Shining Light on the Hill”, I gave an interpretation of Matthew 14:22-33 of Jesus walking on the water and Peter getting out of the boat to meet Him. I followed with a warning.

“Are our eyes on Jesus? Do we get out of the boat and walk toward him in the midst of the storm? Or do we remain in the relative safety of the boat until the storm blows over? There is a problem with that. Before the storm blows over, there is a good chance the boat will capsize.”

The storm is coming, a time of great darkness, and, as a result, a time when our light shines brightest. If it is the time of His Second coming, the church is ill prepared for what will come. Much of the church is under the delusion that we will be raptured before all the bad stuff in Revelation will occur. This is because they interpret what happens in Revelation as God’s wrath poured out on unrepentant man and that we are not appointed to wrath. They point to

For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, 1 Thessalonians 5:9

The verse is actually talking about us not being appointed to the second death through faith in Christ, and not free from earthly persecution. One only need look at the persecuted church world-wide to see the horrific things they endure for the name of Christ to see that this interpretation is folly.

We need to look at ourselves and decide if we will step out of the boat and into the storm and join them or remain, re-arranging deck chairs aboard the Titanic

I see the end times as the time of the end-time harvest, and Revelation is a warning to the church of Satan’s war on the church, a war like the church has never seen. I think, right now, he is bound and in the Pit, put there at the cross and that he will be released soon. For the last 2000 years, the evil around us has been muted, but when he is released, evil will abound; evil signs and wonders will abound. We think evil abounds today. Put your seat belts on because you ain’t seen nuttin’ yet.

God is on the move. Every morning, I check a Christian news website to see what is happening in the Christian world. More and more I see articles of God moving on the hearts of young people. I liken the Charismatic Renewal to God delivering the Israelites out of the hands of Egypt. There is a saying, “You can take the people out of Egypt, but you can’t take Egypt out of the people”. The Israelites spent forty years wandering the desert, during which God raised up an army to go and take the land. Perhaps God is now raising up an army to go and take back our land. We need to look at ourselves and decide if we will step out of the boat and into the storm and join them as “Soldiers in the Army of the Lord”^[4], or remain, re-arranging deck chairs aboard the Titanic.

References

1. Stevie Wonder, “Pastime Paradise”, Motown, 1975.
2. Ravi Zacharias, “Cries Of the Heart”. Word Publishing, 1998.
3. Travis A. Karnes, “Judgment, Not Revival: How God’s Divine Justice Will Save America”, new.americanprophet.org, Oct 17, 2026.
4. “I’m a Soldier In the Army of the Lord”, Traditional, (as sung by Lyle Lovett from the movie “The Apostle”, 1997).