“…not to think more highly of yourself than you ought to think, but to think with sober discernment….” Romans 12:3
Over the last two decades there has been a quantum leap from choosing more active styles of entertainment to the passive, unsocial, self gratifying, where technology has swamped us with accessible self absorbing entertainment like never before!
This self absorption has a tendency to (1) rob us of our time of more valuable pursuits like reading the Scriptures, praying, spending time with family and the Lord’s people. (2) It will also wean the believers mind from thinking (meditating) on Christ, redemption and the ‘one anothers’ will certainly not be regarded “as more important than yourselves.” (Phil. 2:3)
Our own gratification, ease and leisure become paramount. All else is merely secondary. In other words - we begin “thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought…” This is nothing other than a form of pride. Our ability to “think” and rightly assess our selves according to God’s estimate can be robbed through our minds being saturated with futile pursuits. We can even begin to think we are someone of value when weighed up against other believers - when all the time we are nothing! (Gal. 6:3)
As we have learned recently - Be not conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your minds … (Rom. 12:2). This will never happen if we pursue futile mind numbing entertainment at the expense of our minds being saturated with truth from Scripture. Let us discipline ourselves to ‘think right.’ John Flavel the puritan pastor once said, “They that know God will be humble, and they that know themselves, cannot be proud.”