ADDICTED TO NOVELTY

There’s a line in “Night at the Museum 2” where Dr. McPhee says that people like something just because it’s the new thing.

There is a very subtle temptation in the kinds of work that are called helping careers (this can include medicine, psychology, politics, even ministry). I call it the need to be needed.

But I'd like to talk about another subtle temptation that faces people who are involved with endeavors that require communication & creativity. That temptation is the need to be praised by others for coming up with something new or novel.

A couple observations about novelty. First, like the Bible says in the Book of Ecclesiastes, there really is “nothing new under the sun.” When someone comes up with something new, it’s not a creation. It’s only a discovery or re-discovery of something that was there all along. God is the only real creator. We get in trouble when we do what Tom Hanks does in “Castaway” when he says, “Look what I have made! I have made fire!”

Another observation is that not every novel thing is good, true, or worthwhile. Sometimes things take a long time to come up with simply because everybody before already knew that it wasn’t a bright idea. A good example is the many social experiments our government seems bent on forcing on people who have a lot more common sense derived from living in the real world.

One of the negatives of social media, especially in this political season, is that too many people want to come up with nuances & novelties, simply so they can think of themselves as the smartest guy in the room.

In our Christian experience & understanding, we have to be especially careful. The Holy Spirit gets the credit for a lot of ideas & experiences that people claim originated with Him. But maybe they didn't.

Rather than getting pulled into this kind of addiction to novelty, it’s better to see ourselves as King David saw himself according to Psalm 131:

O Lord, my heart is not proud, nor my eyes haughty; nor do I involve myself in great matters, or in things too difficult for me.

Surely I have composed and quieted my soul;

Like a weaned child rests against his mother, my soul is like a weaned child within me.

O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forever.

GET IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME

When I was a teenager who had not yet come to know Christ, I was content to think that it would be sufficient to live to the age of 25. What more was there than to become a professional musician, spend my time partying, & just burn out after a few years? After all, a good number of my idols had done exactly that.

Fortunately, when I came to my senses & gave my life to Christ just after my 18^th birthday, I began to understand that my life was not my own, to do with it what I wished. Since that time the Lord has blessed me with several additional decades of life. By His grace, I have tried to invest them in following His will for me.

Although this life is short, it is immeasurably important. Whether your life ends at 25 years, or at 50, 60, or 75 or beyond, it is still brief. The primary reason for the importance of this brief life is that it is to be spent preparing for eternity.

Imagine a pile of sand 6 feet high. Imagine that every 100 years a bird comes & removes one grain of sand from the pile. Now imagine that when the last grain of sand has been removed how long it will have taken to accomplish the task. That incredibly long period of time is not even the smallest measure of a fraction of eternity.

It’s true – the God of the Bible is “the God of the Second Chance.” But the second chance is given only during our brief time here on earth. We need to get it right the first time.