Putting On Chains

First off, I have to apologize for neglecting this site.  Life sometimes requires more attention and writing has to take a backseat.  I'm hoping to post at least once a month though.

So here is my thought for this week.

I went to visit my doc the other day for my BSA physical that is required so that I can go on back-country camps with our scout troops.  (according to my doc I’m the healthiest 45-year-old he’s seen in a long time…BOOM!)

That isn’t the story I wanted to tell though…it’s another thing that came out of my doc visit.

My doc is a Varsity Coach in his area and he loves it.  We like to swap stories of our high adventures and what we are doing.  It was during this conversation though that he said a few things that got me thinking.

The first comment was how about half of the boys in his group are totally afraid of guns.  They went on a shooting activity and they would not touch the guns.  Oh they will shoot all kinds of guns in video games, but when it comes to the real thing, they wouldn’t have anything to do with them.

While I pondered on the oddity of that (boys being afraid of guns) my doc brought up a second item that really made me think.  He told me that a couple of his patients are Stake Presidents and they both separately told him that the number one reason that boys are being sent home from missions in their stake was Video Game Addictions.  Not pornography, not worthiness issues, not laziness but it was the fact that this generation of boys have learned to deal with stress by blowing away hundreds of zombies every day and when they were sent to the MTC and no longer had their video game console to help them cope with stress they freaked out.  Add to this their complete inability to converse with another human being about the problem the only thing they could do was to pack up and go back home to the basement and their beloved game console.

I’ve stated it before and I’ll say it here again.  I believe that one of the most powerful and potent tools that Satan has to bind us down with his chains and lull us into false security is the ‘screens’ in our lives.  He carefully places seemingly innocent ‘devices’ in our hands and says “it’s OK…it’s just a game…it’s just an image…it’s just a video clip…this won’t hurt you…” In fact, he can get some ‘professionals’ to try to get you to see the wisdom of allowing our kids to get wrapped up in these things.

I’m here to warn you all to not give in. 

Virtual reality is detrimental to spiritual growth.  Don’t become enslaved to it.

I see more and more men around me becoming like those boys who are so in love with virtual guns, but can’t be near a real one.  So it is with so many things.  I even had a dad tell me about how he was going to go Jet Skiing with his son, but the boy decided that he’d rather stay inside and play a jet skiing video game instead!  That one made MY HEAD SPIN!!!  But it’s happening more and more every day.  Texting and Facebook take the place of real face to face communication.

So here is the challenge for the day.  GET OUT!  Get sweaty! Get dirty!  Then go find someone that you haven’t talked to in some time, or even someone that you’ve never talked too and strike up a conversation with them.  Shoot a gun, climb a mountain, learn something new, play with your kids, DO SOMETHING REAL.

Turn off the screens (this includes phones) and get real.

NO FEAR – NO WHINING – NO REGRETS