Evening Thought: Noise
It seems like I’ve become so sensitive to noise lately. We had dinner tonight with friends in a restaurant that I had remembered as quiet and elegant, yet it was so noisy we could hardly hear each other. Terry and I had dinner a couple of weeks ago at a local restaurant and between the head banger music and the lady in the booth behind us, we could hardly wait to get out.
Every where we go there are TVs playing or music blaring. Have we become addicted to noise? I truly believe noise is the enemy’s way to keep our minds off of God. Isaiah 26:3 tells us that we will be kept in “perfect peace” because our mind (thoughts and imaginations) are stayed on God. Noise affects our thoughts and thoughts affect our emotions and emotions control our behaviors. When we are constantly listening to someone else, whether song or narrative, we have submitted our thoughts to the one we are hearing. How much is this noise in agreement with the Word of God? How does it affect our lives?
Is it any wonder that we are seeing increased reports of depression, anxiety and other mental health disorders? Prov 4:23 says “Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.” The things we see and hear affect our heart. Our eyes and ears are the doorways to our heart and our heart sets the course our life takes. This is the reason media has proven to be so powerful as we have seen media shift elections and influence generations in one direction or another, just by its message. The information does not have to be true, it just has to be heard.
What has been heard in high school and college classrooms has turned the hearts of young people away from their once firmly held faith and values. How? When we ascribe authority to what is heard, the veracity does not matter. It just matters that we hear it.
Why are we so afraid of silence? Can we be quietly alone with ourselves and be ok? Can we dare trust our own thoughts or must we rely on another’s? Can we understand the importance of being still before the Lord and hearing His voice rather than the media news host? Have our hearts become so saturated with the noise of the world that we can no longer discern its error?
Is this same noise now filling our churches with its message? I fear it has done just that.
