We live in a dissatisfied and restless world. Isaiah is proven true every day: "The wicked are like the tossing sea; it cannot be quiet." So many of our fellow men live from weekend to weekend, suffering the drudgery of work from Mon­day to Friday as merely a necessity to finance the "good life" which is had on Saturday and Sunday – and if one can go out to a nightclub or the movies or what-­have-you during the week as well, so much the better. "And what are you doing this weekend?" will be how the time of day is passed by the bank teller or the dump attendant as they serve you on a Friday afternoon.

Hopefully, these things are often in our minds as parents as we try to guide our children to live life before the face of God before whose face, whether man knows it or not, all life is lived. But modern man must have thrills and he must have more and new thrills continu­ally. So first it was white-water rafting, then bungy-jumping and then – well, I'm afraid I can’t keep up and, frankly, I find all your excitement boring and sad. I find it hard to get excited even about interna­tional cricket and rugby games these days. Alexander Schmeman calls relaxa­tion a demonic word. It's hard to disa­gree with him. The western world resem­bles far too much the Roman circus.

We are being reduced to a new slav­ery. The worst of it is that we ourselves have put our ear to the doorpost and Mr. Packer is gleefully piercing it with his golden awl; a slavery to sport and fun and laughter and frivolity and triviality. The world seems completely given over to it.

But we shall soon also be able to speak of another "Babylonish Captivity of the Church" to borrow Luther's phrase (which of course did not originate with him). For we too have forgotten that "the eye is not satis­fied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing" (Ecclesiastes 1:8).

In his Religion in the Victorian Era, L.E. Elliott-Binns compares the Victorians, for all their faults, with the Puritans of later Elizabethan times and says of them;

They possessed a secret which perhaps we have lost, they knew that the only sure way of enjoying life is to take it seriously. This saved them from the idle acceptance of the gifts which fortune had showered upon them and a hedonistic standard of living. They had a realised sense of their respon­sibility and the hardness, which at first sight seems repellent, was really a noble denial of self and the spirit in which they stooped to patient and earnest labours (p.502).

I find it an interesting comment espe­cially in the light of the fact that his book was first published in 1936. That was in the middle of the Great Depression but, being a large book of good scholarship, most of the work was likely done over several years, which makes its back­drop the "roaring twenties", an age not dissimilar to our own. I find the compari­son with the Elizabethans interesting for another reason. For it was only fifteen years after Elizabeth's death that, prompted by James I, Bishop Moreton published a book called The Book of Sports (1618) so that, after the worship services, the people "should be indulged in such recreations as dancing, archery, leaping, May-games, Whitsundales, morrice-dances, setting up of May-poles, and such like amusements", none of which may be wrong in themselves nor necessarily wrong for some innocent fam­ily recreation on a Sunday afternoon. However, Hetherington, in his History of the Assembly of the Westminster Di­vines goes on to explain;

That the people should meditate on their religious duties, and prepare to practise the instructions given them in God's Word, did not seem to his majesty at all a desirable matter, – it might have led them to favour Puritan­ism. Queen Elizabeth disapproved of preaching, lest it should teach the people to think, and perhaps to in­quire into matters of State. King James aimed at the same result by making their only leisure day, when they might possibly attempt the dangerous prac­tice of cultivating their minds, a day of mere recreation. The reason is obvi­ous. Thinking men cannot be slaves; and both these sovereigns were desir­ous of establishing a complete des­potism ... therefore, to prevent (them thinking), religion must give place to giddy mirth (p.69).

Indeed, things have so turned around in this country that when spectators threw cans of beer at Sri-Lankan (if I remember rightly) cricket players during a one-day international in Auckland last year, the President of NZ Cricket Council called it "sacrilege" – and the game was played on the Lord's Day!

We too are getting caught up in this mere frivolity, in the need to be enter­tained, to be amused, to go out. We cannot stay in our homes and spend a quiet evening reading or listening to music or doing some fruitful and productive hobby. We have forgotten that the fourth commandment covers the whole seven days and not just the seventh; "six days shalt thou labour and the seventh shall be a sabbath of rest" – and then, "unto the Lord thy God." But even that is going. Sunday, too, is a now a rush – because we can go out between the Services or be further entertained or have some fun and we race into the carpark in the nick of time to slip into Church just before the evening service begins – is that a sabbath rest? – and unto the Lord? No. It was our day after all, and we just managed to fit Him in for a couple of hours!

The essence of slavery is to be serving someone other than God; service cannot be avoided – we are priests by nature; the only question is whom will we serve? God? Or ourselves and all the various appetites of which we are made? For in the end, without God or with God shoved into the dregs of our time and affections, that is all the devil. And, indulge them as much as possible, we will not find satis­faction or joy or happiness, for which ecstasy and thrills and laughter are not synonyms. The Victorians were right on that score. They did possess a secret which we have lost; "the only sure way of enjoying life is to take it seriously." And only thus will we be saved "from the idle acceptance of the gifts" which God has showered upon us and sheer hedonism.

Parents, we especially have to go against the grain of our society here and, for that matter, against the grain of many of our fellow Christians. We have to teach our children to be quiet. We have to teach them to be content with simplic­ity. They may not like learning it and their displeasure will undoubtedly spill over onto us. But that's just par for the paren­tal course. If we are not prepared to put up with juvenile grizzling we are not wor­thy of children. What Solomon said is still true,

Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, but ... discipline will drive it far from him." And "no discipline seems to be joyful for the present, but painful (for parents too!); nevertheless, after­ward it yields the peaceable fruit of right­eousness to those who have been trained by it.

And that is what we want for our children, isn't it? Righteousness.  But also peaceableness.