S05 Ep25 The Consequences of Distractions

This is Roy Jones with ManTalk Radio. Will, it's good to see you.

It's good to see you too, Roy. Hey, Will, we're going to be talking tonight about this article that I sent you some time back, that this guy was distracted. A young man was distracted in Texas, and the severe consequences that happened as a result of his distraction. You know, what's funny is, he was a young man who was distracted in Texas, and the severe consequences that happened as a result of his distraction. He was gaming, and before we get into the meat of the story, he was gaming, and we've talked many times about gaming, and one of the number one or number two distractions of men next to pornography, that's either one's gaming or one's pornography, and the second's vice versa. So, one of those things that I think we really have talked about in the past.

So, let's kick it off, Will. Did you get a chance to review the article, and what was your initial reaction? Well, I think, Roy, the initial reaction wasn't a surprise, given that some of the other things that I've seen and heard and encountered, you know, in my walk with Christ in reference to how people react or respond to different things that may be going on in their life.

And what happens is, if they are allowing themselves to be distracted, then of course they're opening the door for the enemy. But what makes this, I think, really, really poignant is that the young man was the only adult there, and he allowed himself to be distracted by video games. This is rather distracting in the sense and disturbing, in the sense that the young man, he admitted, but I think we never know the feeling that he had, knowing that his daughter was drowning in the bathtub.

Yeah, that's, and you've kind of given a little bit of the lead in, let's let the listeners know what specifically we're talking about. This article was written on March 5, 2024, and I think there was also a newscast about it, but a 20-year-old father in Texas was arrested after his 8-month-old daughter drowned in a bathtub while he was too engrossed in video games to save her life. So, this is the tragedy, and as Will said, who knows what this man's feeling, felt when it happened. The young man, I think he's, like I said, 20 years old, so he's probably just not even learning what adulthood was all about and what parenthood was all about. But here, he was tied up in the game, only adult in the house, his daughter's in the bathtub, I guess he put her in the bathtub for taking a bath, I don't know, or maybe she dove into some water she had run, I'm not quite sure, 8 months old, I don't think they're doing much of anything, the parents have to be placing them there.

So I'm wondering if he just walked away, forgot about her, and then all of a sudden, now she's dead. But this is one of those things, Will, that we've talked many times before about gaming, and typically it's been in the context of time away from family, time away from the children that you're not spending fathering your children or your husband to your wife in the proper sense of being the priest of your home. We've talked about this many times, right, and so it's interesting to have this up now, and here we are dealing with a tragedy such as this. You know, Roy, and I think the young man, when you look around the country and you see how people are distracted, of course, I've seen people shaving while they're driving a motor vehicle, combing their hair, putting on makeup, lipstick, all these things, which is really no different than what this guy is doing, because in the end, it could be a tragic thing that happened as a result of you being distracted from driving, being on the cell phone or things like this.

But when you're talking about life, it's really precious, because Jesus looked at the little children as being that hallowed individual who just can't fend for themselves. And so when we go back and we look at history, Roy, it reminded me in 1999 about Eric Harris and Dylan Klebo, who were responsible for the Columbine shooting. And when the FBI psychologists and psychiatrists dug into their past, what they found out, number one thing, video games. And what happened is they were acting these things out, so they had a plan. You know, they were going to set off bombs in the cafeteria and then wait for all of the hysterical people to start running out of the cafeteria and then shoot them as they were coming out. And then they had a backup plan behind that.

They were rigged cars with bombs, so as the relief workers and responsive teams were coming in to help people, that they would be blown up as well. So this individual, we can't really know what he's feeling or the heartbreak that he had, if any. But we know that as a father, you have to be responsible and pay attention to those who really can't have that ability to pay attention for themselves. Well, all of us as fathers know that we've all made mistakes, but by the grace of God, something didn't turn out really bad. A child turns in a department store and you lose sight of them for a few seconds. In my case, I had one go off on the campground playing with one of his buddies and went off and it took us 25 minutes to find him.

That was as long as 25 minutes of my life. So things do happen. But this is just outright careless and basically non-caring, if you will. It was almost like his obligation was to bathe the baby and then he was going to take care of whatever he needed to do. And that goes back, I'm sure, to the maturity level, 20 years old.

And we know that today's 20 was equivalent to our generation's 12-year-olds, maybe even 10-year-olds, because we were working by the time we were 13, doing all the stuff we were supposed to be doing, learning what it meant to be a provider and that sort of thing. But you know, when you're talking about distractions and driving, that brings up another conversation just real quickly. I looked it up as a result of this article for our show. Distracted driving results in roughly 3,000 deaths a year. That's a multitude of things, right? Could be cell phone, could be doing makeup, shaving.

In my case, I would be shaving my head if I was shaving, for those of you who don't recall, I'm hairless would be on top of my head. But you know, that's the reality. And it's sad that we as a society don't put more value on life. And I think you hit that just a little bit ago with the guy from the Columbine shooting. And one of the things we haven't spoken of this evening, which we talked about in the past, is the connectivity that takes place in the brain, the rewiring of the brain from the dopamine and the adrenaline. And these guys have been doing this video game and wargaming for so long that I think they had gotten bored. And they had no longer had the physical capability to get excited or pumped up about their gaming. Well, when the psychologists dug into their past, what they found out was that they wanted to be so explosive in what they did that they wanted to outdo the Oklahoma bombing, which happened some years before. So they were looking to basically have a one-up on all of the things that they saw occur during the Oklahoma bombing.

And so I think that there was a lot of things, of course, that went wrong. And we can say that perhaps that was divine intervention, that no more life was lost because you had 12 children and one teacher who perished as a result of that. But the Word of God says in 3 John 1-11 that we should not imitate evil, but this is exactly what they did. It says don't imitate evil, but do what is good.

So, of course, if we understand what the scripture says and we are following that, allowing the Holy Spirit to lead us by His Spirit, then we know that we are walking in the light as He is in the light. So that, I think, plays an important part in us not getting off track and not allowing ourselves to be distracted. Right. Well, one of the things that I think as believers that we sometimes allow ourselves to get into is rationalizing bad behavior. Absolutely.

And this is an example of what you're mentioning. If we're going to be Christ-like, that means truly sold out to Christ. And that means every part of your day has got God in it. The conversation with God, prayer in the morning, driving down the road, thankfulness for the things He's done for you, prevention of any potholes, if you will, figuratively speaking, in your walk that day, keeping you protected and guarded. And truly, the number one focal point and focus in your life should be that walk with Him. And then from that, the blessings will come, whatever that is, whether it's provision, whether it's promotion, all those things, right, that God will take care of it.

And it's not to say this is absolutely not a prosperity statement. It's just to say that God knows our needs. He will provide for us. And when we're honoring Him, all these other things will take backseat, second chair, if you will, to our following Him. And then the conviction, as you mentioned, from the Holy Spirit will let us know if we're in the middle of what we should be in the middle of or for outside of God's will. And I think that's the other thing we've lost, Will, is the sensitivity to the Holy Spirit in our day-to-day walks because we want to control the things we want to control, but we don't want God to control the things that He needs to control, which is everything. Absolutely. And see, we need to let the Spirit of God lead us accordingly because I think that when we are doing that, we're walking in His will and we're putting Him first.

And then, of course, He will give us direction on what the direction we need to go. But what's amazing, Roy, is I remember years ago, it's been about three years ago, my daughter said, Dad, you ought to watch this show that comes on TV. It's called Road Wars. And what it is, it's people who capture incidents that happen on dash cameras. From road rage. From road rage. And of course, my camera has caught a lot of road rage out there. But it's absolutely amazing what people will get out their car and do.

Something that could easily be reconciled through casual conversation, exchanging information, but when you have an individual who is attempting to escalate the situation rather than de-escalate the situation, then I think that could be a means for it to either go to the right or go to the left. And this one individual, for example, was driving her car and she all of a sudden started weaving across the road. And as she was weaving across the road, she started hitting things, but she kept going in the car. And then she hit an SUV and the SUV crossed the other lane, hit another car, it rolled over. And I'm saying, once they got the individual now, the one individual had passed away. She was completely well. Got right out the car.

The one who did all the games? Exactly, got right out the car. And then they found out that there was some medical condition that was happening to her. But I look around and I see all of these things that's happening in the world.

And it's given the enemy a foothold into a lot of people's lives. Some things are simply unavoidable. They just happen. Accidents happen. It's just like when the disciples came and the tower fell on the people in Luke chapter 16. And Jesus said, well, you think that because this happened that these individuals were sinners. But he said that there are things that simply happen. But his key message was, ensure that your life is right. And I'm talking in modern terms now, that your life is right and that you're walking in the truth and living the truth out rather than saying someone else perished as a result of their sin, which you have no idea if that was the case or not. I was listening to a sermon the other day.

Forgive me, it takes me a moment once in a while since I did my stroke. Oh, my goodness. This is terrible. But the narrative was that if you're a follower of Christ or claim to be a follower of Christ, but yet you're continuing to live in the sinful world. He basically said, you're a liar. And Scripture says that. And I'll go back and find the reference that was Adrian Rogers.

I knew it would come back to me, which has since passed years back. He's an amazing man of God from all his teaching. I'm sure you've listened to him quite a bit. But when he was saying that, I was thinking that that's the kind of truth that we need to be hearing today. Absolutely.

We need to be hearing. Hey, if you're sitting here on Sunday morning and you're claiming to be a follower of Christ and then on Monday through Saturday, as we've talked about with our Monday through Saturday face, if you're out lying, you're cheating, you're drinking, getting drunk, all those sorts of things, you're a liar. You're lying to yourself. You're lying to God that, yeah, I'm a follower of Christ. It's about doing all the things that he tells us not to do.

So if you're not following the commandments and you're not following Christ, but yet you say you are, then you're a liar, which means you're worse off than if you never claimed to have faith to begin with. And that's the entire chapter, by the way, of 1 John chapter 1. There you go. I know it was locked in there somewhere, folks. It will eventually surface on me. But, Will, back to this young man. I believe he's been charged with murder.

He has. He was charged with murder, second-degree murder or something because of the complacency and the negligence on his part. And, you know, I think that's part of our problem, too, is you were sharing about the road rage. I bet if you were to go back and check statistically, two things have changed over the last ten years that has made road rage so much worse. One is the fact that we're becoming less and less a society of consequences when you do something wrong. Second is the distractions, as you mentioned, on the phones and then the ramping up that people get through the distractions of the phones, social media and all that sort of thing.

So it's really bizarre when you think about where we were 20 years ago. You would never see the kind of behavior that you see on the highways today where people literally try to run somebody off the road or they run into them or they get out of the stoplight and pull the crowbar out and start smashing the windshield. And I saw a video the other day, interesting enough that you were talking about this, was there was a guy who apparently him and his buddy got out of his car and didn't like the fact that the guy behind him had blew the horn or something. So the guy behind him is in a van. Well, they jump out of the car, come around to the driver's side, and one guy's arguing and the other guy starts reaching in and punching him. Next thing you know, the guy pulls out a gun because he fears for his life. You've got two guys in there getting ready to beat him up.

He pops off a couple rounds from what I could tell, and the guy who was driving who punched the guy who came out of his car and went to the car behind him, I think he ended up dying as a result of the road rage incident. But this is the kind of stuff that we're seeing today, and folks, as simple as it may seem and sound, if we would just first love each other, second, take a deep breath when stuff like this happens. I'm speaking to myself as much as I am anyone else because my car seems to be the magnet for some of these yahoos that are driving around up and down the road.

Because I can't tell you the number of times I've had them just cross over and you blow the horn and keep coming and try to run you off the road after they were the ones that started the trouble. But what we need to do is love each other more. We need to have a right and a wrong. Our society needs to say, yes, there is a guideline, a moral yardstick we need to follow.

We don't have any of that anymore, Will. It's like the scriptures told us and we've talked about it before. Right has become wrong, wrong has become right.

Absolutely. And I think it doesn't matter, Roy, who is responsible for doing the wrong. But because as born again believers, we should call it out. And when we call out things that are against the will of God, I think that that put us walking in that standard because we understand that I don't care if you're the president or the first lady or whoever you are. You know, it doesn't matter.

Or the guy who's driving the garbage truck. It doesn't matter. An individual who displaying those characteristics which goes against the word of God, we need to call it out. Agreed. And as brothers in Christ, we should do that. We should be honest with each other. We should love on each other. Come in a loving conversation. That's so important and I think that we've lost that ability to be transparent. Because a person has to be able to understand, Roy, how to learn to love.

Yes, it's not automatic. Well, when you speak about love in society, they're thinking eros love. You see, they're thinking fleshly love. But it's other types of love in Greek. We talk about agape love. We talk about phileo love. We talk about even storge love, which is not really mentioned. But storge love is actually love within a family unit. It's the love that a father has for his children, children have for the father, the husband have for the wife, and the wife the husband. That's storge love, which we never talk about. We always talk about the eros love. We always talk about the phileo love and we always talk about the agape love, but we forget the storge love. And it's the love within the family unit that keeps us binded together and cohesive so that we can be all we can be when it comes to delivering the gospel message. Because in the end, that's what matters.

What God said and what we believe based on what he said. That's the bottom line. Amen. We know, Wills, we've come to a close here in the next couple of minutes. I think that if we could leave our listening audience with a couple of things that we've learned and that we've talked about in the past is truly put God first.

Absolutely. And if you find yourself with anything, whether it's a hobby, whether it's gaming, any of those things that fits in front of your time spent with God, then you've created an idol. You need to throw that idol away, dispose of it, even if it means quitting whatever you're doing that's tying up so much of your time. And we haven't talked much about it.

We did mention it early on, but the other thing is the pornography piece. That's an idol. That becomes men's idol.

It's a self-centered, selfish act. We know it. And the same holds true for the women that are doing it. We know there's about a 40% ratio of women that are in the middle of that. So we would just encourage you listening audience to just sit back, take a moment and ask God to speak to you.

Where is it that you need to tune up at? And for us, Roy, I also want to mention that now that we have the gaming that's allowed in North Carolina and every commercial that we turn around, we see it, and that there are going to be people playing this that's going to not, first of all, not be able to afford it. But then secondly, they're using their savings and other things as a means of trying to hit it big. Yeah, trying to get to the next level. And all of these, Roy, are things that the enemy used and put in their life as distractions and as means to bring them into a lower level of poverty.

Yes, I agree, Will. And it's interesting, at the end of all these commercials we've been experiencing here in North Carolina before FanDuel and the others that they've been promoting, and forgive me, I didn't mean to make a plug for a gambling site, but that's one of the ones here in our area. At the very end of every commercial, they give you a gambling help hotline.

And folks, that ought to tell you something. In the front side of the conversation, they're trying to get you to be a part of it, and at the end of the conversation, they're trying to give you the cure for your addiction. Don't start it.

Don't get addicted. Same for pornography, same for all the other things we talked about, and gaming as well, whether it be video games or gambling. So that's where we'll leave it with you as the listener. We thank you for your time. Will, you want to close us in prayer right quick? Lord, we thank you for this opportunity that you've given us on today. We just ask God that whoever listens to it, that they be blessed. Learn something from it. Take it to heed and to heart. Let their eyes and minds be opened as your spirit delivers to them exactly what they need to do in troubling times. We love you, and thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Will.