Yesterday I watched the start of the film “Fight Club” and although it's not for the faint hearted surprisingly I got a couple of really profound lessons from it. I recorded it off BBC3 the other night and didn't even get to the actual fight club starting because the recording was interrupted halfway through....doh. Anyway here's what I got.
Ed Norton's character is a guy with a well paid job and totally obsessed with materialism and getting items that define him as a person (mostly IKEA furniture). Yet although he has loads of nice stuff it doesn't satisfy him, as a result he suffers from insomnia. It's amazing how easy it is for us to get caught up in the same traps, even believers. So often in western culture we get so obsessed with the vain things in life, and think that the smallest things are so important. I'm as guilty as anyone, having to take time to think about which colour paper clips I am going to use when I pass my work over to the next guy at work. The same attitude stretches to us wanting more luxury accessories to make our life better. I remember hearing about these things called eye-trek glasses, they were basically a virtual reality headset which you could play PS2 games on. As soon as I heard about them I had to get them, I was longing after them for months and then when Jenna and I sold something we split the money and I got the glasses straight off. When they arrived I was so excited and played them for ages, soon I realised that they weren't as great as I thought they would be and after a while I didn't bother to use them any more, now I'm trying to sell them to another sucker. We can often act as though these material things matter so much, that they will in some way bring a new level of satisfaction. Maybe it's a new house, a new car, a new HD 42” LCD TV with surrondsound, a new hairstyle or a holiday somewhere exotic. The truth is that it all turns to ash in our mouths, while it might be nice for the moment it always leaves us wanting something better. What happens when we live the materialistic life is we get similar to Ed Norton's character in the movie, he had insomnia which he describes as being “never really awake, but never really asleep”. When you live totally for material possessions you are “ never really alive, but never really dead”. There is only one way which we can be satisfied: by giving everything to the Lord. It seems crazy to our modern greedy way of thinking but He is the only one who can make us happy and satisfy the deepest hunger. Maybe we should try doing what we often sing in the famous hymn:
“All the vain things that charm me most, I sacrifice them to his blood”
Otherwise in the words of Tyler Durden "The things you own end up owning you"
Anyway Tabitha has woken up and needs a nappy change and some milk, more later....
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