bite sized: faithfulness

Hey loggers, welcome back to another bite sized episode of the Backlog Breakdown. Now, we talk about here on the Backlog Breakdown all the time that we're here. We want to equip and to edify the church. We want you to be able to think about the medium of video games in a God honoring way. And that is what I'm seeking to do here on this bite sized episode. Bite sized episodes are episodes where I take one thought and I talk about it for a little bit. It's not really a complete thought. It's not really thought out very much. So you only get a little bite sized version of what I'm thinking. Hopefully it makes sense. We'll see. You can determine whether or not it makes sense, but it just has to do with some of the stuff that I've been reading, some of the stuff that I've been thinking about. So I'm not here to really talk about a specific video game like we have been a lot lately, but about the idea of video gaming in general, of of recreation in general, and where that fits into our life. Because I don't know about you, but one of the things about video gaming is that it can tend to take over your life if you're not, if you're not careful, you can end up enjoying it a bit too much and playing longer than you intended to play. And this can happen a bit habitually until it starts kind of taking things over. And so I think one of the basic questions when we think about as Christians, as people who want to honor God with our life, one of the questions we have to ask is how much ought I to be video? You know, first of all, is this thing even worth doing? Is this a venture worth undertaking? Is this hobby even something that I should allow into my life? I'd say largely we're as a podcast that's part of what we do, is to provide an apologetic as to why we believe that this is something that can be worthwhile for a lot of people, something we acknowledge that a lot of people already do is playing some sort of games. And so the medium of video games is not inherently sinful. There's nothing wrong with it, but we also want to recognize the pitfalls that it has the way that it does. It provides more stimulus than a lot of other types of games and recreation. And so we want to be careful. So we want to engage wisely and responsibly, but also we want to highlight the good things that certain video games can teach us as well. So with this kind of Question in mind as to ought I even to be doing this? Okay, yeah, I'm kind of stepping past that. That was the first question. Yeah. We believe that this is something that can be good, that is not inherently bad by any means, and in fact, can be rich and edifying and just fun as well. And there's nothing wrong with some good old fun. I think it's a good gift from God, but it does depend on how we use it within our lives. So how much is too much, man? If it has a tendency to kind of take over our lives, then how do we guard against the encroachment of video games into the rest of our life? And for that, I think the basic idea comes from the book of Genesis. When God created man, he created Adam. He gave him good work to do. So we believe that work is inherently good. It's something that God has given us to go take dominion of the Earth, to subdue it as the lords of creation in the sense, in the stewardship that we have from God. Ultimately, God is lord over all, but he gives us a stewardship to have dominion over the Earth and take dominion and to reflect his glory to others and his love and his kindness and his goodness and his rule as well. And so we want to do that, and we do that primarily through our work. Okay, so work is a good thing, and so we want to take that seriously as well. But we also recognize that we need to rest. We need to recreate. We need things in our lives that will help us to find, to reach charge. We should not always be working, though. Work is a very good thing in and of itself. We are not made to constantly, always be on and always be working. We see that in the rhythm that even God gives when he creates the entire world, that there are rhythms of work and rest. This is something we've talked about as a podcast a lot lately. Well, not even lately, just from the inception of the podcast. This is something that we've kind of built our foundation on is work is good. Recreation is also good as well. So the question is, how do we hold these two things in tension? How do we prevent against only wanting to recreate and use our hobbies all the time? And how do we prevent it from kind of taking over the good things that God has us to do through work? And also, so some of the questions, I think, is how do we calibrate our conscience properly? Because sometimes our conscience is dulled if we, again, habitually partake of too much video games or too much recreation or too much of one thing or another. Or on the other side, if we're working too much, if we're running ourselves ragged, how do we recalibrate our conscience so that we can know how much is right and good and what those rhythms ought to be? And on the one hand, the answer is it depends on. Okay, well, that is a very terrible answer because that's almost a non answer. And yet at the same time, it's a good answer in it's a good starting place is to recognize that it does depend on your situation in life. It depends on your season of life and the responsibilities that you have as to what work you ought to be doing and how much time that you should be spending trying to not reset, but recharge and rest. Okay? Because those rhythms are not the same for everyone because everyone has certain measures of responsibility within your life. You have responsibility over your own life, the way that you use your time. If you are a husband, you have responsibility for your wife as well, to make sure that you are taking care of her and nurturing her her as well and investing in that relationship. And if you're a husband for us guys, if you're a father, how much time are you spending with your kids? How much are you intentionally investing into your kids and what the responsibilities there. And of course, your work outside the home, how much time are you spending there? So it's different for each person. And so how can I both say, oh, well, it depends. But also give us some guidelines so that we can actually know what is good to partake of. How much should we be working and how much should we be resting as well. And I would like to present, and I mentioned this on a previous podcast, but this is kind of the kernel. The idea behind this bite sized is when I came across this metric for measuring how much we ought to work and how much you ought to rest, I thought that this was a breath of fresh air, is because some people will tell you to hustle, right, to work as hard as you can, Grind, rise and grind, right? Go as hard as you can so that one day you can rest, but I'll sleep when I'm dead. And that's not one that's not realistic. I think that's also denying our limitations as human beings and that is railing against the Creator who made us with inherent limitations. So I think I know for me that mindset, it is an act of rebellion against the God who created me and created me to rest as well. And I would challenge anyone who holds that type of mindset to make sure that that is not a part of your heart as well, that you're trying to fight against your natural limitations. Because I think, I know for me, that's definitely an element in there. And I lost my train of thought there about what I was. Oh, the metric for measuring how we know what, how much work, how much rest. And I think that metric is faithfulness. I talked earlier, I mentioned earlier about how we are stewarded, our lives, our very lives, by God. God has dominion over the earth. He tells us to take that dominion on his behalf. God has stewarded to us the responsibilities that we have in our lives. For me, I am a steward of my wife who's been put in my life, my kids who've been put in my life, the church that I'm helping to oversee as an associate pastor. I have some real responsibilities in my life. And the question becomes not how much work can I do for all of those different domains until I drop dead? The question is, am I being faithful to the responsibility that God has placed in my life? Can I go before the Lord with a clean conscience and say that I have worked to the best of my ability, within my limitations, and I have been faithful to the call that you have put on my life? Now, admittedly, this idea, this metric of faithfulness to God is one that I've stolen whole handedly from someone else from Redeeming Productivity. I can't think of his name off the top of my head, but he has a podcast, YouTube. He also has a book as well, Redeeming Productivity. Go check him out. He's got a bunch of really cool stuff about productivity and he's where I got this metric from. But it's also a reminder of like, I've been talking about our limitations and the way that we've been created. This also came up for me as I read through a book recently by Doug Wilson called Plot Activity that talks about this. And this is where I mentioned it on the podcast previously and where I think this really, it helps as well is to recognize because so often in kind of the hustle culture and the productivity mindset, we think if we can just figure out like the perfect routine, the perfect morning routine and daily routine and an ideal week and things like this, if we can iron all that out, man, then I can just run the program and oh, life is going to be so much better. And yes, there are plenty of ways to do better to optimize what we have. However, there is no perfect routine because you were not made to just run a program because you are Not a machine. Okay. Some days you might just wake up exhausted and what do you do then? You can't run your perfect routine when that happens. We have physical constraints in our bodies that, that, that will prevent us from treating ourselves as a machine that can just run a program day in and day out. That's not the way we were made. We were made for relationship with other people. And that's not how our relationships work either. It's not like every single date night that I have with my wife is going to be, is run the program and you'll have a great marriage. Like, no, that's not going to work. I mean, okay, I say that I don't know about your wife, but certainly not with my wife. That's. That's not the case. And that's not the case with my kids either. That's not the case with the way that I try and pastor and shepherd the flock that God has allowed me to oversee in some capacity as well. I think another highlight of the reason that this idea of am I being faithful to God in the responsibilities that he's given me, I think one of the upsides of viewing things through that lens as opposed to, am I accomplishing everything I need to, but am I being faithful in all these things is that it prevents the comparison trap. Because some people have higher capacities, some people have different responsibilities. They don't have as much on their plate. Even the intricacies of, say, what their wife needs from them in order to, in order to have a good relationship is different between me and my wife and someone else and his wife. Like, we all live different lives and so we don't have to compare ourselves to one another so long as we are going before God and seeking his approval? Am I being faithful to what you've called me to and taking into mind the limitations that you've put in my life and recognizing that I am made both for work and for recreation and for rest and enjoyment of the good things that you have given me. Am I faithfully enjoying the good things that you've given me? That's another question for those of us who might tend to be workaholics is am I actually taking some time to enjoy the good gifts here that you've given me on earth, or am I just kind of throwing those to the wind so that I can get more done on my own dime? And does that mean that I'm just not relying on the Lord as much as I ought to be? I think the idea of faithfulness to God, it also helps to recognize that we have different seasons of life. Look, if you have young kids, you are in a different season of life than when you have teenagers in a different season of life, when you're an empty nester. And that directly correlates to your responsibility within your life and what faithfulness looks like for you right now, Being able to fulfill all of the roles that God has given you and to do that well and to be faithful. So that's the idea is, are you being faithful? Because there are consequences of working hard, good things. There's also consequences of being lazy. So this would be unfaithfulness in the responsibility that God has given you. So we want to be deliberately faithful. We want to think about the areas of life that God has given us, the responsibilities that we have in all of our areas of life. Think about what faithfulness looks like and then be deliberate to do those things as a stewardship of, frankly, the wealth that God has given us. He's given us so much. You know, I talked about how I'm trying to use my phone less because it can tend to be a distraction. I also recognize, hey, I have a supercomputer in my pocket. I can get a lot done with this thing. It's pretty. It's amazing that I can even right now record this podcast so other people might be edified by it in the few minutes that I have. That's an amazing gift that a thousand years ago would have been completely mind blowing that I can just pull this stuff up. I mean, think about all of the letters and the signet rings and the, and the servants that I would need to send out these letters to you in order for you to even just read the things that I'm saying, let alone be able to view this on the Internet or to do it for free. I mean, all these things are pretty amazing. We have an abundance of wealth and we, we want to be faithful to God with the wealth that he is, he has given us. So redeeming productivity has the. In the metric of faithfulness, he talks about different areas of life, different domains of life that you want to ask yourself whether or not you're being faithfulness and whether or not you're being faithful? Some of these domains, I have it written down here. It's spiritual. Spiritually, are you faithful? Are you being faithful spiritually, relationally, vocationally, physically, with your body, intellectually, the things that you allow into your brain and recreationally, which is enjoying the good gifts of God as well as economically, you know, just sticking to a budget, right? Using the things that God gives you financially as well. So that hopefully that's helpful for you because it's been very helpful for me in one way, it's been freeing because I don't feel as tied down. But it also is encouraging to me. Like, it motivates me to do well in these things because I'm being faithful to the God who has been so gracious to me. So then every area of life, the stewardship is out of a love for God. So when I enjoy the good gifts that God has given me, including a video game, I can do that in faith because whatever is not a faith is sin. I can be thankful to God that he's given me this time that I can play a video game while I'm also on the elliptical exercising my body. That's a good gift that God has given me. I don't want to squander it. I want to do it well and I want to praise him for it. And right now, that's what faithfulness looks like to me. It's not being able to play four hours every night because I got all my other responsibilities done. If that's you and your life, life, awesome, that's great. But also I don't want to be. I want to protect myself against jealousy because I'm just not there. I can't play very often, but I want to be faithful in every area. Recognizing, hey, right now I just have a lot on my plate. That's just life right now. But I want to be faithful to God in these different areas. And hopefully I'm being faithful to him even now recording this podcast so you can listen to it. So. So hopefully that's helpful for you. I'd love to hear your thoughts if this has encouraged you at all. If you have any pushback. Yeah, I'd love to hear it. Reach out to us. Check out the linktree.com thebacklogbreakdown. You can reach out to us there and we'll talk to you later. So hopefully, like I said, this bite size has been encouraging to you. It's just a little bite. I haven't really thought through it too much except that. But I want to be deliberate. I want to be faithful. And hopefully you want to be faithful too. So here's to next time loggers. We'll catch you on the flip side. Keep beating down your backlogs and we'll keep breaking down the benefits.