Instant Gratification...all we know

We live in a society that is all about having things at an instant.  If things take seconds they are slow; if we wait in line for 10 minutes for our morning coffee we get frustrated.  Why?  Why has it gotten to this point?  Is it technology?  Can we blame all of this on the advancement of technology?

I read an article, The New Internet, in Relevant Magazine's 59th issue and was dumbfounded.  This is what part of it said:

"The most immediate of the Internet’s big changes is an evolution in speed. Recent innovations have made it possible for the Internet to run 250 times faster than its current top speeds, and the National Science Foundation is asking tech-heads to build apps with an assumption of zero load time. Zero load time. In the very near future, waiting for a website will be a thing of the very distant past." (click here for the full article)
 

Wait, the idea of waiting is soon going to be a thing of the past?  Have things gone so far to make the idea of waiting a bad thing or an inconvenience?

I just wrote a message for a service this Sunday on the idea of being satisfied and what dawned on me is that the culture we live in today, at least in North America, is one of being unsatisfied; nothing is ever enough.  Why?

I think that we are looking in all the wrong places and therefore instant gratification is the only thing we can actually grasp and see.

Thinking about instant gratification leads me to thinking about the ultimate instant gratification, porn.  I heard a stat the other day that said that porn websites dominate 80% of the World Wide Web.  Can you believe that?  80 percent of what is on the web is porn.  Take that in for a second.  Is this what we want as a society?

Instant gratification is all my generation (born in the 80s) knows.  We only know things as fast and instant.  Even more, the generation now that I am dealing with as a youth worker doesn't even know what it's like to not have the internet!

In all my studies I keep on being reminded of where true satisfaction lies.  It is not from the world we see, or the culture of the past, although He did walk in this world.

Instant gratification is like junk food because it seems good at first, but it leads to an unhealthy lifestyle that just craves more of it; the more you eat, the more you want.  We need to get back to what lasts, to what sustains.

Let me know what you think.


Till next time...

Money - Does it separate people?

Over the last 2 weeks or so I have been actually consumed with money.  Not in wanting so much of it, but I have just been stressed because it was the end of the month and budgets were so low that I am in charge of in my marriage.

Sometimes money takes over.  We live in a society that is driven by money.  Without it you can't really function.  You need it so essentially live!

I as sitting in a Starbucks about a week ago and was reading Messy Church (the book I most recently finished).  About 20 or so minutes after I sat down a brother and sister came in and sat close to me in the seating area and started talking about random things (if you don't know me very well, I am a bit nosy and love to listen in on conversations about what people are talking about.  Some may say it's being a creeper, but I just think it's cool to hear what various people across the city are talking about!).

Throughout listening I noticed a couple things.  Now, I am assuming a lot in my noticing, but just journey with me:

• The younger brother (who I guess was in grade. 10 or 11) had the new iPhone 5, the sister still sitting with the iPhone 4S
• The brother pulled out a new 15" Macbook Pro
• Their conversation was revolving around all the things that they were doing that would cost significant amounts of money
• They were both very trendy dressers
• It seemed, and I'm assuming here, that they had money and were not worried about not having it

After noticing these few things I thought about money and how it separates people; well it does because we let it.  And this leads me to my point.

The reality is that status in our world is essentially revolved around money; if you have lots you are important.  If you have none you are not important.  Seriously, think of how we treat people, talk, or think about people...things change the moment we know what they do for a living and guess how much they make.

Money separates people because we let it.

Could it be that it is not just money that does the separation, but it is our mindset?  Could it be that the people who make the money have little to do with the separation that exists because of the money?  Could it be that what we think about people leads to the separation?

I am reminded of how Jesus told us that we have to make a choice between Him and money.  All to often we think of it as just our personal finances and such, but I believe Jesus always thinks big.  Believe it or not, when our minds wonder to, I wonder how much this person makes? or Wow that person is dressing so nice, I bet she has a lot of money, or I can't relate to this person because they just have so much more money than me, we are being a slave to money; we are choosing money over our relationship with Christ.

I believe that the bigger issue of separation because of money has to do with our thinking and mindset more than it has to do with how much people make.

This has been something, and is something, that I continue to struggle with.

Why does it matter what others make?  Why does it matter what others have?  Why does it matter?

That leads to something else, but I am not going to talk about that in this post...maybe later.

Let me know your thoughts.  I love would love to hear from anyone who has one.