Holy Communion Anglican Church
East Greenwich, RI – Standing Firm on Biblical Truth and Christian Tradition
From morning to night, we are saturated with news. We look at our phones first thing in the morning to find out what went on while we were sleeping (just in case we missed something big!), and we conclude the day with scrolling through our phone just before going to bed (just in case we missed something even bigger!). We are, as a nation, massive consumers of so-called “news.”
We are physically and spiritually programmed with the need for a guiding light, an over-arching narrative, a moral point of reference - even more so than a material one. Thus, the account of the Wise Men points to a reality far deeper and truer than the story itself. What we have with the Wise Men is actually a microcosm of the Christian experience. The journey of the Magi shows us a representation of our own life’s journey before Jesus Christ, the living God.
To borrow from the late author Neil Postman, we are “amusing ourselves to death.” Like Huxley’s “Brave New World”, we are enslaved by our addiction to easy entertainment, and we eagerly give up our Christian liberty in exchange for instant gratification. Our eyes are drawn to worthless things far more easily than the true beauty of the Lord! We are far more likely to look to our phones than to the truth, beauty, and goodness of God’s Word. We are, quite literally, amusing ourselves until death.