Many people seem to think that Christianity, and religion in general, is boring. They even think that God is there simply to take our fun away. If your catholic then you spend time in confession to get forgiveness for all the 'fun' that you had. In truth it is the exact opposite. God is the creator of fun, He is the one that originally celebrated and has continually directed His people to celebrate. Read Leviticus, once you get past the dry details you will realize that those details are outlining feasts that the Israelites were supposed to have every year. God was planning parties for His people! The problem is that everything God creates, the devil tries to counterfeit, and in this case the devil has been quite successful. He has propagated his version of fun so well that millions of people throughout the world feel that it is the only way to celebrate. But as the Bible says sin is only pleasurable "for a season". (Hebrews 11:25) God knows how to have lasting fun, fun that won't make you sick, or get you thrown in jail.
Partying God's Way
So how do we party God's way? We can start with the obvious, don't get drunk and don't do drugs. The Bible shows what is already clear in society, getting drunk leads to 'debauchery'. Debauchery basically just mean immoral behavior. We lose control of ourselves and do things that are stupid, harmful, and wrong. You don't need alcohol to have a good time, and you definitely don't need to get wasted to have a good time.
Another principle that leads us to partying God's way is don't have fun at the expense of others. Proverbs tells us that 'death and life are in the power of the tongue'. In other words, what you say can either kill someone or bring life to them. Often we think we are 'just joking' or 'just having a little fun', but what we are really doing is emotionally killing the person we are talking about. This is not the way to have fun.
Celebration in Society
So how is celebration an entire sphere of society? First of all, the way our holidays are celebrated is often directed by our society. In the United States our holidays are often directed by commercialism. Rather than remembering and focusing on the reason for a particular holiday we are directed by the stores and advertisements to buy whatever the new item is that the stores want us to buy. Think about what is often the first thing to come to mind when we think of holidays:
You can always know what holiday is coming up by looking in our stores. As Christians we need to make it a point to remember what the point of the holiday is. It's okay to buy things but let's not have that drive our celebration. Holidays are meant to remind us of something much more important than what we can buy.
Other Forms of Celebration
Other forms of celebration in society include sports, movies, t.v., music, plays, etc. In other words, entertainment. We need to demand Godly principles in our entertainment. Over and over we are seeing morality in movies and t.v. decrease and decay. This directs our society. We need to demand morality in what we watch and listen to and we need to stop watching and listening if it's not edifying or building up. Be careful what you let in to your spirit because without realizing it you will follow it.
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