I haven’t thought about George Orwell for a long time. Most people don’t think of Orwell at all unless they think of “Animal Farm”. Not “Animal House”, “Animal Farm”. Orwell wrote about a lot of stuff other than that. I have been thinking about my friend Klemet Preus who passed away a while back. I wrote about him on this site 7/10/2014. Klemet said many evocative things and I remembered one this morning.
We worship our work. We work at our play. We play at our worship.
There is a lot packed into those four small statements. We define ourselves by our work and we fear and trust it more than God. We may not love our work but we love the paycheck that work provides. Working at our play is well attested. I know people that come back from a weekend at the lake more tired and worn out than when they went. By the time they get their boats and jet skis and gas and fishing stuff and food and beer and clothes and shoes and stuff loaded up and packed they are exhausted. Of course playing at our worship is an old saw that most of us go to church to be entertained and most Pastors are not very entertaining guys and so we have issues.
We never slow down either. There is always somewhere to go. There is always some thing that we have to see to be entertained. There has to be some noise in our background. We don’t think deeply anymore. We don’t read deeply anymore either. We have musak in the background always. I visited a home that had the TV on in the living room and a radio on in the kitchen and the garage. We want the noise but not the information.
Klemet was deeply interested in movies and used them a lot in sermons. I think the reason was that for him it was “hook”. In a society that doesn’t read much and what it reads is shallow, a movie could be an “entrée” into a frame of reference to deliver the living voice of the Gospel. It was an attempt to answer questions that people don’t know they are asking because they don’t slow down enough to think about it. It is an attempt to bring Christ to those who don’t want to think about Him until there is some crisis. There is a reason that movies are considered “escapism”. That is precisely what we do and want to do – escape. Klemet understood that most people are trying to escape something but they don’t know what it is. It is called sin and guilt. Klemet was savvy. Use the thing that we use to help us not to think to make us think and in the thinking preach Christ.
So thinking about Klemet I starting thinking about Orwell. Orwell had an entire essay called “Pleasure Spots”. It was about what a vacation place would be like after the War (WWII). He wrote the essay in 1946. Here s a part of it. Except for the “natural stuff” he got it pretty much right.
“I have no doubt that, all over the world, hundreds of pleasure resorts similar to the one described above are now being planned, and perhaps are even being built. It is unlikely that they will be finished-world events will see to that-but they represent faithfully enough the modern civilized man’s idea of pleasure. Something of the kind is already partially attained in the more magnificent dance halls, movie palaces, hotels, restaurants and luxury liners. On a pleasure cruise or in a Lyons Corner House one already gets something more than a glimpse of this future paradise. Analysed, its main characteristics are these:
- One is never alone.
- One never does anything for oneself.
- One is never within sight of wild vegetation or natural objects of any kind.
- Light and temperature are always artificially regulated.
- One is never out of the sound of music.
The music-and if possible it should be the same music for everybody-is the most important ingredient. Its function is to prevent thought and conversation, and to shut out any natural sound, such as the song of birds or the whistling of the wind, that might otherwise intrude. The radio is already consciously used for this purpose by innumerable people. In very many English homes the radio is literally never turned off, though it is manipulated from time to time so as to make sure that only light music will come out of it. I know people who will keep the radio playing all through a meal and at the same time continue talking just loudly enough for the voices and the music to cancel out. This is done with a definite purpose. The music prevents the conversation from becoming serious or even coherent, while the chatter of voices stops one from listening attentively to the music and thus prevents the onset of that dreaded thing, thought. For
The lights must never go out.
The music must always play,
Lest we should see where we are;
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the dark
Who have never been happy or good.
The lights must never go out.
The music must always play,
Lest we should see where we are;
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the dark
Who have never been happy or good.
