Several years ago I noticed a trend in how network TV advertised its shows.  Every so often a certain episode was labeled, “an event!”  It’s obvious what the advertisers were doing.  They wanted to set this episode apart; if you missed it, you missed everything that was important about the show.

But this is just TV, right?  It’s been around for less than 100 years.  The other day I was thinking about the TV show Lost.  Very popular show a couple years back.  My husband and I came in late to the trend and started watching it online from season 1.  We were soon hooked and quickly caught up with the plot.  Every week ABC would tease you with clips that showed close to nothing but were very intriguing.  Finally, the show’s creators decided to end it and there was much hype about the last episodes.  What would happen?  Who would survive?  Will all our questions be answered?  My husband and I even got together with another couple and had a small party to watch the last episode.

Guess what?  It all seems so superficial to me now.  Those ‘event’ episodes have been quickly forgotten.

What happens when we assign so much meaning to something so trivial?  It’s just a TV show, just entertainment after all.  What happens is words lose their meaning and everything that should be important is shoved into a back corner with all the other ‘boring’ things.  The only thing that matters is what’s new, what’s popular.

Can you see how that affects your soul?  John Piper talks about how the trivial can dull your taste for the spiritual and the serious.  If we’re not careful, if we don’t truly think through how this culture has polluted our desires, we can come to the Word of God or prayer with the same mentality.  It’s true for me.  I seek a quick hit of spirituality out of a devotional.  Reading multiple chapters of the Bible or spending extended time in prayer can seem boring.

He tells us not to be conformed to this world.  I’m afraid this world’s sensibilities can seep into our ways of thinking more insidiously than we like to admit.