http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/3428640/posts?page=94#94
Where does the idea of "comfort zones" come from, and how do they matter to the church?I spoke of how the church has bought into the thinking of the world, that there's work and there's leisure - and leisure means being unproductive and idle, pursuing some pleasure that accomplishes nothing but bringing pleasure. The very point is that leisure isn't work, and it must serve ourselves and indulge us, and be about us.
To say, then, that a Christian's leisure should be productive for God's Kingdom sounds like it isn't leisure at all anymore, once the specter of work and being productive is brought back into it, but is that really the case? Is it God's will for us to set aside large parts of the time and resources He has entrusted to us to being unfruitful and unproductive by design and intent? Is it His will for us to spend our lives in escapism in the free time we have when we're not providing for our worldly needs through work? Is it His will that in the time we have outside of worldly work, we reject working for Him because it's work, and we want leisure - that is, not to do any sort of work? What if we make our leisure about working for Him and serving His Kingdom and seeking to produce fruit for it? Is that no longer leisure then, because it is work, even though it is work for Him?
And there is another aspect to the world's ideas about work and leisure that applies to Christians. If we accept that leisure is not to be work, and so no work is to be done, even work for Him, then not only is the unproductive accepted, but the counter-productive - that which actually works against God and His Kingdom. Accepting the idea that we need a break from everything, including from God, and we must not be productive and fruitful, even for Him, then ungodliness in leisure can be overlooked because the counter-productive is certainly unproductive.
When the world's ideas of work and leisure, including that leisure must be unproductive, are applied to and accepted by Christians, the result is that Christians are saying in effect that in their leisure time, they will not work for God or be productive for Him. They reject anything that will be work for Him, on the principle that it's work. The embrace of the world's concept of leisure ultimately means not reaping for God's Kingdom and not being spiritual fruitful.
So again, counterproductiveness, that which works against God's Kingdom, is accepted because it is certainly not producing work for the Master, God. And that's the story of today's secular entertainment. It gets a lot of acceptance in the church no matter the content because it's leisure, and so exempt from the outset from producing fruit for God. The point is leisure - a break - and not doing work, the thinking goes. As long as it's humanly unproductive for God and pleasurable, then it can also go further and get away with rebelling against and attacking God's Word. I mentioned Desperate Housewives. Years ago I looked up its storylines on Wikipedia. I would say it rebels against and attacks God's Word. But it still got acceptance in the church because people can say it was leisure, and never was meant to be fruitful or productive for God and His Kingdom.
But idleness and destructiveness also go hand-in-hand. Is it possible not to be working against God somehow if we've decided not to work for Him?
The church is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.