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Have you ever thought about what it means to “waste time”? What is, specifically, a “time-waster”? What does it mean for someone to use his or her time “wisely” or “with purpose”? Christian author Matt Perman had a book about some years ago called “What’s Best Next” where he was trying to help guide Christians on which tasks are the best tasks to do next. He helps us to think about, “How do we, as Christians, prioritize what we do?” and “How should we, as Christians, spend our time?” I think that the answer to those questions helps to determine the context of what a time-waster is.
Here are some overarching points when we think about the idea of a “time-waster”: If you don’t know who you are, if you don’t know who God is, you don’t believe that God has a purpose for your life, if you don’t understand why God put you on this planet, then you will waste your time doing all sorts of things.
Doing what is best next is always connected to what we believe about God and the universe. Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” If God has created everything (including human beings), then that changes how we view our lives (and that affects what we do or don’t do with our time!). If we don’t know the purpose for our existence, then we won’t know how to use our time wisely, and neither will we know whether we are wasting our time or not! The concept of “wasting time” presupposes a purpose in life. If there is no purpose in life, then the concept of wasting time is nonsense. Purpose presupposes a good (or best) use of our time (versus a poor use of our time) because our time and tasks are aligning with our ultimate purpose. If nothing really matters, then how we use our time doesn’t matter either! If existence has no true, objective meaning, then using our time “meaningfully” is nonsense (it’s a fairytale to think that we can “meaningfully” use our time in a meaningless universe!)! If there is no purpose in life, then there is no real purpose in the way we spend our time; we are simply existing, that is all. If there is no purpose for our lives, then each tick of the clock is the same whether we are working, sinning, playing, or sleeping. All hours are the same if there is no purpose in our lives and if there is no God. If there is no God, then the purpose of our lives is simply waiting to die.
So, when we begin thinking about the idea of “wasting time,” we must begin with defining purpose in life, and that purpose in life cannot be found apart from a Creator. The reason a Creator is needed to define one’s purpose in life is because only a Creator knows what he has created a particular item. For example, if a person invents a clock, then he has invented that clock to tell time, not to be used as a frisbee or as a plate of food. If a clock (hypothetically) believes that it is a frisbee, then it will (ironically!) waste time instead of tell time because it was created to tell time, not to be thrown in the air. The same is true for human beings. We were created to glorify God, to know God, to love God, and to serve God. Those concepts begin one on the road of discovering what true time-wasters are.