Recently, I read a brief devotional by Henri Nouwen in which he pointed out that in Latin the word "entertainment" means to "keep someone in between." It is to hold someone in a certain frame of mind. We usually use the word to describe things that hold our attention, often so that we don’t think about things that are difficult to face.

Americans spend large amounts of time and money on things that entertain them. Think about your day. How many hours do you spend on Facebook, the Internet, watching television, going to movies or concerts or watching Netflix? How about sports? How many hours a week do you spend at sports events or watching them on television? Now combine those two categories, and you will see how much entertainment dominates our lives.

In the era of the Roman Empire, entertainment was provided for the masses to keep the people in a pacified state of mind. It plays that role for many today as well. We often seek out entertainment so we don’t have to deal with the serious issues facing our lives. Entertainment is a way to escape the harsher realities of our everyday lives.

We can all benefit from some entertainment from time to time. We all need something to occasionally distract us from what can seem like overwhelming problems or just to have fun. Entertainment only becomes a problem when we begin to live in the fantasy world and follow the values that we observe in the entertainment we watch. When we begin to spend more time escaping reality instead of living in the real life we are experiencing, then we need to do some evaluation and reallocating of our time and resources.

I wonder how many of us are caught in the holding pattern given to us by entertainment, content to just stay where we are while the world passes us by. I read one statistic this week that said that in 2015 kids spent more than 7.5 hours a day being entertained by television, computers or video games. That is more time than they spend in school being educated.

What happens when a person spends most of their time getting entertained or stuck in the middle? Time flies by, while they go nowhere and make no progress on any project. The more people watch others as a form of entertainment, the less they actually participate in doing something. We are producing a whole nation of spectators who think it is their job in life to sit on the bleachers and watch everyone else do things. Again, there is nothing wrong with enjoying a sports match or a concert from time to time. But when we while away the hours of our lives watching others do things, while we never participate in improving society or our lives, everyone is losing. We are losing, because we will one day wake up to discover that we accomplished very little in our lives. Society loses because instead of interacting with each other and bringing together our varied gifts and ideas to accomplish things that benefit all of us, we sit down and watch.

Entertainment now dominates our society, culture, schools, news broadcasts, our work time, our free time, our leisure time and some churches. But if we get stuck in the warm fuzzies of a continual torrent of entertainment that is designed to distract us from reality, then we become less in touch with reality, and eventually less able to identify reality.

Life was given to us to be responsibly lived and experienced. We have each been given giftedness, skills, opportunities and choices. Do we choose to engage life or to disengage from it? Do we choose to face our problems or live in denial that there are such things as problems? Do we get involved in taking on the difficult aspects of life or simply sit on the bleachers and watch life pass us by?

One of the most famous verses in the Bible is John 14:6 (NLT), which says: Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.” It teaches us that Jesus is the ultimate reality of life. In John 8:31–32 (NLT), Jesus said: “You are truly my disciples if you remain faithful to my teachings. And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” We are not intended to live our lives stuck in the middle of nowhere while being contented with a fantasy world box, even if it is lined with good entertainment. We are invited to be participants with God in facing the daily experiences of real life. Life becomes meaningful when we discover that life is more than entertainment.

Award-winning columnist Dr. Ed Jordan is pastor of Gwynn’s Island Baptist Church, Gwynn, Virginia. He can be reached at szent.edward@gmail.com.