The problem of comfort

I finished all six seasons of The Hills in one month.

I'll wait while you judge.

Done? Great - because during those 102 (not to be confused with the current temperature) episodes carefully spread out over the course of three or four weeks and a gallon of ice cream, I've learned a couple of things.

They don't worry about paying the bills, because LC makes $1.5 million a season. They don't spend hours pouring over search engines and (heaven forbid) newspapers to find a job outside of television because MTV has internships and snazzy positions already lined up for the purpose of the plot. There are no lonely Friday nights because there's parties to crash and bars to trash. They don't worry about cowlicks and gum stuck under their shoes and dirty bathrooms and all the other mundane nonsense that some days will send us over the edge.

It's perfect. (Besides Speidi).

Then Kristen runs off to Europe to "make [herself] uncomfortable" so that she can "find [herself]".

Her words, not mine. She moved to the other side of the world because there was something missing in her perfect little life.

A purpose.
A drive.
Something that even on her darkest days will pull her out of bed and tell her "You have much to find today."

Did she find it? I don't know.

Do they not know that they were made for so much more?
Do they not know that there is another world beyond what is outside their front door?

Jesus tells us about the danger of comfort, the power in suffering. He talks so much about having everything and yet nothing at all.  Camels, rich young rulers, eyes of needles, selling souls, birthrights, beatitudes...

And Kristen understood this. She found the truth without even knowing she was searching for it.

It is in comfort that we do not find peace, but boredom. It is here that we are left with a constant lust for that which is more beautiful, and in the process find nothing at all that has beauty. It is the same as the addict seeking a harder and harder hit, or the man viewing more and more provocative pictures. The search for comfort ties us into a cycle which knows no end for it recognizes no beginning.

There's a reason ancient monks wore outfits of rough hair, whipped their own backs, and took freezing cold baths. There is something powerful in suffering. It is in our hardest moments that we find our truest self. It is in our truest self that we find the Truth. It is here that we bend our knees and plead to the Almighty for relief, and if we are lucky, it is here that we also thank Him for His breath - the breath that set life into motion and will bring all suffering to an end. On the other side we may come out scarred, but with a gauge to measure good from evil, light from dark, peace from terror.

And we endure only a glimpse of the agony of Christ.

"God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world." -- C.S. Lewis