The Millennial Obsession with Entertainment

Millennials. We're the worst, aren't we?

People are always ragging on us. We're lazy. We're stupid. We're spoiled. We're the scum of the earth and everything that ever happens is our fault.

While we can laugh off many of these complaints as the bitter ravings of old people who don't know where else to aim their vitriol, it would do us well to consider their criticism and examine our hearts.

One area that is a major weakness for our generation is our obsession with entertainment. This is certainly not a universal issue, nor is it one upon which our generation has a monopoly. We are our parents' children. Generally speaking though, we live for entertainment.

We worship entertainment. Even when we worship, we want entertainment.

We have more free time than most people in the history of the world, so we exhaust it by entertaining ourselves.

We have more money than most people in the history of the world, so we finance multibillion dollar entertainment industries.

We wonder how people stood in lines before smart phones.

We have at our fingertips the sort of technology that sci-fi authors couldn't even fathom half a century ago, so we use it to develop new and more convenient ways to entertain ourselves.

We say we don't want to waste our lives like our parents did, you know, working dead-end jobs and raising bratty kids, but then we binge watch 10 seasons of random Netflix shows in two weeks or less. We eschew sleep in favor of one more episode.

We waste away unimaginable amounts of time on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, etc.

We can't imagine driving or jogging or doing the dishes without music.

We give athletes contracts that rival the GDP of many countries.

We don't read books anymore.

We don't help our neighbors anymore.

We don't go to church anymore.

I love TV. I love movies. I love music. I love sports. All those things are wonderful innovations and blessings that come with freedom and financial prosperity. But where does it end? When is enough, enough? Where does our romance with entertaining ourselves terminate? Where is the balance between enjoying God's blessings and becoming enslaved by them?

There is no easy answer. There is certainly no universal answer. This is a heart issue, and, as such, it is an issue that we must all contemplate for ourselves.

Our generation is wholesale abandoning God and the result is a generation of relativistic hedonists who don't believe anything is more important than their own happiness.

We've institutionalized selfishness.

If there is no meaning to life, why even work for the weekend? Why not party all the time and make rich people pay for it?

Those of us who claim to be Christians, however, know that there is meaning to life. There is something greater, something deeper, to life than flesh and blood and sex and fun. We must ask ourselves some tough questions: Are we redeeming the time? Are we using our time in ways that honor God? Are we serving others? Are we using God's blessings of technology and time to learn, grow, and bless, or are we consuming them with idleness?

Jesus made it clear that where our treasure is, there our hearts will be also. Where is your heart? The way that we use our resources reveals our priorities. When you look at the way we Millennials use our time and money, it's difficult to argue that our priorities are anything but severely shallow. We are dedicating our lives to entertainment.

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