Post 12: Shifting entertainment and friendships

Image: graphic showing various icons representing music, friendship, gaming, and social media surrounded by an icon of switching arrows in the center.

Post Summary: This post discusses some of the entertainment and friendship changes that occurred as I began setting more intentionality towards the things of God.

As I began to spend more time seeking the Lord through engaging in regular bible study, prayer, fellowship with the people of God, service in the House of God, and volunteering in the community, I began to notice my appetite for secular entertainment in my life diminishing. These categories included friendships, music, gaming, and other forms of secular entertainment that I had previously loved.

Social Media:

One of the first changes I was lead to make after getting saved in Feb 2024 was to reconsider was the content I regularly consume on Social Media, specifically YouTube. As I began to grow closer to God and focus more of my energy learning about Him through His Word, I began to notice a shift in the kinds of content I enjoyed.

Prior to my salvation, virtually all of my YouTube subscriptions were from secular-based channels that focused on various topics like popular culture, the latest celebrity gossip/scandals/beefs, gaming channels, health and working out, food and drinking channels, content creators that took viewers down social media rabbit holes, fails channels, and other brain-rot content where I easily zone out, get good laughs, distractions, or entertainment without much thought or deep engagement.

As I set more time and intentionality towards learning about God, my enjoyment in the majority of my previous secular subscriptions waned dramatically. With renewed purpose, I began swapping out most of the secular subscriptions for more christian based content to aid in learning and growing in the knoweldge of God and the bible.

Back in the day, I did previously have a Facebook channel. This was many years ago, back when it was actually called Facebook (now called Meta). I had started Facebook account back when it was for college students only and you had to have .edu email address to create an account. I kept the account for a long time, and over the years it started to become more of a political and social sounding board for venting rather than actually bring people together socially. I got rid of my Facebook account years before I got saved. I did also have a myspace page but that was so long ago, I don't remember anything else about it.

Music:

In my pre-salvation days, I had enjoyed various styles and genres of music, including hardcore rap, hip hop, R&B, pop music, dance party, and electronic music, most of which promoted secular themes such as sex, drugs, violence, and other sinful activities. While I can say that I never truly loved any artist enough to idolize them as others around me did, there were some artists I listened to on heavy rotation. Such Rap artists included T.I., Snoop Dogg, Jay Z, Lil Kim, and Missy Elliott, among others. My favorite R&B artists were Brandy, Aaliyah, Monica, Jagged Edge, 112, and Ciara, among others. Hip Hop favorites included OutKast, Lil John and the Eastside Boys, Bone Thugs & Harmony, G Unit, Kanye West and others. Pop Music favorites included Michael Jackson, TLC, Mariah Carey, Destiny's Child/Beyonce, Alicia Keys, Justin Timberlake, Usher, Maroon 5, Bruno Mars, Drake, Rihanna, John Legend, among others.

I also grew up singing in the church choir at a Southern Baptist Church and developed an affinity for gospel music such as CeCe Winans, Kirk Franklin, Mary Mary, and Yolanda Adams, among others. As a teenager in middle and high school, I played the string bass in the Orchestra, which gave me an appreciation for instrumental type music like Jazz and Classical. I also enjoyed soundtracks from my favorite video game series such as Mario Brothers, Sonic the Hedgehog, Streets of Rage, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Spyro the Dragon, Mega Man, Elder Scrolls, and others.

As God began to change my heart towards Himself, I found less enjoyment from secular music that glorified sinful behaviors and shifted to clean up my playlists and music loves. I removed all secular music from my regular rotation, instead focusing primarily on gospel music, ambient music, electronic beats, and instrumentals. Check out my spotify channel, BB's MusicScapes, for my own curated playlists of music I currently enjoy.

Gaming:

Similarly my gaming interests saw a notable change after the salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ found me. Throughout my young adult life, I frequently spent hours at a time, several days a week playing video games, sometimes well into the wee hours of the early morning. I frequently enjoyed overly violent or gory games like the Resident Evil series, Mortal Kombat, Assassins Creed, Outriders, God of War, among other genres and types of games.

Since Feb 2024, I have been actively pursuing the Lord with more of my free time and in all areas of my life. As a result, I'm finding that the overall desire for games has subsided drastically. I'm also seeing that my desire for spending so much time playing overly violent games in particular has lessened quite a bit. I do still occasionally find myself playing a game that has violence in it, but no where near the frequency or amount of time I used to spend.

Now that I am also spending more time volunteering in church, in the community, and spending time working on this very blog, I find that I only really have the time and energy to play games maybe 1-2 hours, 2-3 times a week at max. This frequency is more than enough to scratch the occasional video game itch that surfaces and still allows me to focus much more of my time seeking the things of God.

Friendships:

I noticed a marked shift in my friendships. Prior to salvation, I don't recall many (if any) friendships with Christians or any people of faith or religious background. My coworkers didn't really discuss faith at all and I certainly didn't go looking for anyone of faith to befriend since I wasn't at all interested in faith or religion. My friendships were all with secular people who did not have any expressed faith. We typically enjoyed the more secular activities like partying, drinking, smoking weed, cursing excessively, and listening to secular music.

After my salvation came in Feb 2024, I began openly declaring my faith in Christ Jesus and sharing the gospel with friends in person, through videos, and text messages. These messages were predominantly met with direct opposition and/or indifference (John 15:18, Matthew 5:11-12). As time went on, I began noticing most of them start to distance themselves from me, becoming less responsive to my texts and invites to hang out. This was a bummer because I had known some of these people for years and had grown really close to them, but I began to suspect their distancing was because of my sharing the gospel with them (John 3:19-20, 1 Corinthians 1:18).

In setting my focus on God in this area of my life, I began to pursue various church-related volunteering and service opportunites, which resulted in gaining christian friendships to replace the secular friendships that had seemingly been lost. I had also been praying that God would bring sincere believers into my life whose fellowship would help grow my faith and give God the glory. I noticed in the first several months after salvation that the Lord was indeed answering this prayer as well and I frequently give God thanks for who He has brought into my life.

Conclusion:

Over the course of the first several months since getting saved back in Feb 2024 and attending multiple churches between April and Nov 2024, my desire for secular entertainment and friendships shifted to christian entertainment and friendships. God was answering prayers and showing up in unexpected ways in the people that He was bringing into my life.

Stay tuned for the next post, where I discuss one of the first instances of christian persecution that I experienced from the same next door neighbor to whom I had previously been helpful and with whom I had previously tried to share the message of Christ.