The following is an editorial I am considering submitting to the Dalton Daily Citizen. It is fairly offensive to probably all of us, including myself. It takes a swing at excessive TV-watching, but I think that category could also be widened to all media, and beyond that, to all things that take time away from God and seek to replace him in our lives (idolatry).
There are a lot of ideas and several sermons packed into quite a tiny space here - I had only 500 words. It is not an explicitly Christian editorial, but one that certainly draws deeply upon Christian truth. It was my intention to get a wide audience with this one, and then offend them into deep conversation - specifically about who they are...
Television is ruining America! That’s polemic, I know, so grant me this article to properly qualify it. Rest assured, my solution is not to abolish TV, else I would prove to be quite the hypocrite.
First, there is plenty of objectionable content on television: drugs, cussing, sex, and violence. It is often a coin toss whether we will witness a couple making out (pornography with clothes on?) or someone getting blown up. By the end of elementary school, a student will have watched, on average, 8000 murders on television. Yes, the content can be bad, but let’s delve further, lest we miss the forest for the trees.
The second, deeper issue runs straight to our hearts, presses the uncomfortable question of identity, and asks us who we are? We will reap what we sow. The average American who lives to 65 will have watched 9 years of TV in his life. What will be the harvest reaped from 9 years sown in front of the tube?
We live in noise with thousands of voices vying for our attention. My voice here is one small drop in an ocean of them, many of them coming from media. What, we should ask, are they trying to tell us (during those 9 years)? It is precisely here at this pressing question, against the naïve assumption that I can watch unaffected, that I am chiefly disturbed. My natural tendency, and I suspect yours as well, is to be (perhaps) worried about the objectionable material, and when it is absent, to be relieved. Telling our brains, “No worries here”, we remain unaware of a deeper war for our minds and hearts. Being therefore defenseless, we are slowly slain by what is “okay”.
By necessity, I have a set of most basic beliefs, not all of which are consciously formed. For every belief or action, we may ask, “Why do you believe/do that?” For a basic belief, the answer is something like, “Just because.” How can you tell a man’s basic beliefs? Look at his time, his money, and what he runs to when nothing else demands his attention. I am worried because we often run most easily to TV, and we unintentionally give TV the power to tell us where to run.
By our TV habit, America soaks up ruinous basic beliefs. In most of the unobjectionable “okay” material, we still receive this message: “Everything is about you. You should get what you want… right now.” And then the commercials: “Let me tell you what you want.” As Charlie Brown complained of Christmas, so I complain of modern life - it’s too commercial. A Charlie Brown reference to prove this point – what irony!
As an American, I argue vehemently for your freedom to watch television; as your friend, I argue just as vehemently that you should not waste your freedom mainly in that way; as a man, I argue that putting self at the center will end in ruin for self and eventually for society.
Interesting read. Even more interesting though, is that while you were writing this, I was writing a post about removing technology a little from your life (although our stated motivations vary a bit).
ReplyDelete