Television and Life: My TV, My Movies, and Jesus

Here’s the scenario:

Someone rings the doorbell of your home. It’s about 7:36 in the evening. You’re sitting down. Your phone is somewhere on the couch next to you, ready to check Facebook when you get bored. The television is on, and you are watching something you really, really like. It’s so good you decide the dishes can wait.

But the doorbell rings.

You check yourself fast. You are in some lounge wear, but nothing too uncommon for anyone to wear, in their own house, after a long day. So you walk over to the door, and peek out of the window. It’s a man. Unassuming. Nice.  One hand in a pocket. The other holding a pizza. You didn’t order a pizza, so you assume this nice young delivery man has gotten the address wrong. So you open the door. As soon as it opens, you see his smile. It’s a good, healthy smile. Good dental work. He opens the box and says, “Your favorite, right?”

And it is.

“I thought you would like this. Mind if I come in?”

Yes, he really said that. But it’s not creepy. It’s somewhat familiar. Especially after he introduces himself.

“My name is Jeshua. Most people call me Jesus. And I decided to come to your house today. And I brought pizza.”

And he is telling the truth. You realize, at that moment, in some ethereal way, that the Son of God is standing on your porch, with your favorite pizza.

“I just came to watch some TV with you. Do you mind?”

And there is the question. Do we mind?

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Forgive my literary allowances. I mean no disrespect at all. It’s a similar story, really, to when Jesus visited Zacchaeus, the tax collector, to share dinner with him (Luke 19). Jesus interrupted Zacchaeus’ life.

If Jesus really, truly, came to your door, to watch TV with you, what would be your very first instinct? Be honest. Because if you’re just brushing aside that question, then you are failing to realize that Jesus is already present, in your company, as you watch television.

That makes us very uncomfortable. It made me very uncomfortable.

I rationalized every viewing moment in really crazy ways, and here they are.  You may find them familiar:

• If the storyline featured good, triumphing over evil, then it obviously had to be a spiritual program of deep searching.
• I would look for glances and nuances of Gospel in shows, and movies, in hopes that if I found just one moment of “Gospel,” then my time, and money, would be worth it.
• I always offered a disclaimer when reviewing a particular program, or movie, for some friends.  I would always be sure to mention how spiritual it was. And then be careful to say, “It’s a little violent in some areas.” Or, “If they had only cut out the sex scene, the movie would have been awesome.” Or, “I just wish they wouldn’t cuss so much.”

Those rationalities began to generate a fair amount of friction, though, when I began to radically rethink what I watch, and how I chose to be entertained. This post is the third of such posts, detailing my decision to ultimately cancel my TV, but this one veers into some other territory, including films and movies, and my decision regarding how I approach those as well.

I am not, and will not judge, your viewing preferences, though. Everyone is on their own journey. This is mine.

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The first time I ever truly thought about discretion with movies was when I was in junior high. I was in a class, at a popular student seminar, in the midst of a weekend of worship and learning. The teacher, whom I do not know, and will probably never know, made a comment in his class that made me think about what I decided to watch. I disregarded his advice for a long time, but that comment eventually made me rethink everything.

He commented on movies, and entertainment. And he said this, quoting from a passage in Psalms 11:4-7:

But the Lord is in his holy Temple;
the Lord still rules from heaven.
He watches everyone closely,
examining every person on earth.
The Lord examines both the righteous and the wicked.
He hates those who love violence.
He will rain down blazing coals and burning sulfur on the wicked,
punishing them with scorching winds.
For the righteous Lord loves justice.
The virtuous will see his face.

“The Lord hates those who love violence.” That was the statement.

I was offended.

It was an all-guys class, and the teacher was teaching about what it meant to be a man. And his statement was vastly different from what a room-full of adolescent guys wanted to hear.

Because we are taught life in violent ways. Really. We are taught to watch violence. We are taught to be entertained by violence.

Football is violent. MMA is violent. UFC is violent. Most, if not all films and movies, have violence.

And if you love any of those violent things, then, at best, you are offended. At worst, you’ve already left this site.

If you stayed, though, you probably began to dissect the meaning of this verse. I did. And your first thought in this dissection probably was what is love? Because the pronouncement in this passage is against those who love violence. And your reaction is probably somewhere along this train of thought: I don’t love violence. I have never loved violence. And I really don’t want God to hate me.

And then your reaction probably goes in this direction:  so, then, what is violence? Does that mean actually killing people? You probably don’t regularly kill people.

Or … could it mean watching people kill other people, even if it is simulated? Could it really, truly, mean that?

That kind of reaction, and dissection, kept me from making any changes in my viewing preferences.  I was fearful to further investigate, and decipher, the love for violence for which the psalmist writes.

And all the while, I spent lots of money to watch movies that were gruesome and violent. Twenty years after that class, I began to make the connection. I don’t “love” violence. But I have certainly supported it. I have bought hundreds (thousands?) of tickets for movies that were violent, and disturbing. I watched television programs where violence was prominent.

Something had to give.

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On vacation in 2009, my wife and I went to the theater while our daughters remained with my wife’s parents that evening. We were going to see an action flick of some sort. Our oldest daughter was eight, and we let her know that we were going to the movies, and that we would be back later. We were leaving, and my six-year-old daughter (at the time) asked my eight-year-old daughter what Mommy and Daddy were going to see.  My eight-year-old answered her question with this:  ”They’re going to see a bad show.”

The phrase “bad show” in our house has a wide definition, essentially meaning any show on television that we decided was not entirely good or wholesome for our daughters – programs that offer little, or no, moral lesson or educational content.

In spite of their conversation, my wife and I watched the movie anyway. We even had a brief conversation about what we could watch, and couldn’t watch, and decided that we were the adults, and we had good discernment, and different rules applied to us. Even then, I knew that decision would not last. In my heart, I couldn’t bear the thought that my daughters believed we were watching something we believed they shouldn’t watch. That sort of decision-making, as parents, would teach our kids a “do as I say, not as I do” mentality. And that wasn’t acceptable for us.

Later in the summer, two months later actually, we paid money to see Transformers 2. We believed it to be a harmless movie, but the first few minutes placed the female lead in poses that were completely exploitative. I was embarrassed that I brought my wife to this movie. And I was ashamed that my daughters would one day find out we watched this movie.

So the conversation about what we watch, even before we cancelled our cable, became intense, with incredible amounts of time given to a decision we both knew was inevitable. And here it is: If we thought a movie was inappropriate for even our four-year-old, then it was inappropriate for us.

Our ability to give our children a home, where God is king, was being compromised for a couple of hours to watch something we would never watch in the presence of Jesus.

So we simply stopped watching.

We had already stopped watching movies with an R rating. So we simply dropped the rating level, and stopped watching movies with a PG-13 rating. Which meant, obviously, that our movie-watching experience was about to drastically be reduced. Most movies of any cultural importance have that rating, and so we immediately felt this decision. Most social conversations are about movies. We were immediately left out of many of those. Our exclusion, to us, was glaringly obvious.

But we stuck to our guns, especially considering how long it took us to make that decision. Movies with either a PG or G rating are all that we would watch.

Our decision to stop watching PG-13 movies resulted into two extraordinary things. It eventually lead me to cancel my television. It also led me to rethink my relationship with visual entertainment. I discovered, quite quickly, that I could actually live without movies.

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There were really three, core things that eventually culminated in my decision to just stop:

• The culmination of knowing I watch everything in the presence of God …
• Refusing to lie to my daughters about what I watched …
• Refusing to let them watch some of the things I was watching.

Those were enough to convict me. They should have convicted me much, much earlier.

But there was another consideration.

As a minister who teaches teenagers, and as a minister who leads worship, I found a great amount of friction between my entertainment choices and teaching themes. It was not an easy thing to lead worship on Sunday morning, to a large church, when I spent the previous night watching movies, or programs, that just weren’t holy.

My responsibility, my ordination, and my calling, further convicted me to just stop it all.

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There are countless lists of sins in the New Testament.  It seems that Paul, as he wrote to the scattered churches, felt compelled, from time to time, to make things incredibly simple. He was quite adept with grand, theological themes, but even he realized, like every good preacher, that simplicity is often more powerful. Here is one of those lists, with a little bit of a prelude, from Galatians 5:

So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves. The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so you are not free to carry out your good intentions. But when you are directed by the Spirit, you are not under obligation to the law of Moses.

When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God.

Powerful, isn’t it? If the spirit of God, the agent of life and holy energy, really commands your life, then the desire to do evil dissipates. Reflect upon that, and think about what you watch. True, you may not be “doing evil” simply by sitting in a chair and watching any particular show or movie.  I certainly didn’t believe I was “doing evil.”

But are you being entertained by others doing evil?

So, true to the previous post, I want to offer you some questions with which I struggled.  Be warned, though. They will convict you.

• What do those shows, or movies, display for you to watch?
• What about Glee?
• House?
• The Office?
• Or any of a dozen movies?
• Do they exploit sex as “a thing to be had?”
• Do they use violence, and anger, to get your attention?
• Do they push the envelope of acceptability?
• Do they contain sexual immorality?
• Impurity?
• Lustful pleasures?
• Idolatry?
• Sorcery?
• Hostility?
• Quarreling?
• Jealousy?
• Outbursts of anger?
• Selfish ambition?
• Dissension?
• Division?
• Envy?
• Drunkenness?
• Wild parties?
• Why are we really entertained by these? What does that really say about us?
• What does our entertainment choices say about satisfying the craving of our own sinful nature?
• Why do we feed that craving, anyway?
• What does that say about the decisions we make on behalf of our spouses?
• What does that say about the decisions we make on behalf of our kids?

And, perhaps, the biggest, and most convicting question of all is this one, which ultimately led me to make some fairly radical changes.

• Why do we fill our spare time with images, and words, that could never be displayed or spoken as worship to God?

Whatever we do must bring God glory. Every decision must magnify Him in our lives. Every word we say, every image we view, every relationship we entertain, must bring God glory. Everything must speak to God’s presence in our lives. Our preferences, addictions, and options tempt us to bring glory to our wants and desires and motives, though.

The apostle Peter writes this about our decisions:

Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in this world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.

Abstinence is a strong word, which in our culture, has a fairly specific usage. But Peter broadens the word. Stay away from anything that wants to wage war against your soul.

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The next few verses in Galatians 5 are probably more famous. Here they are:

But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!

Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to his cross and crucified them there. Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives. Let us not become conceited, or provoke one another, or be jealous of one another.

A life lived by the spirit of God is led by the spirit of God.

If your life is receiving energy and power from this pneuma, this wind, this breath of God, then every part of your life should feel its influence.

Which means that the part of your life you give to watching television, or movies, should be led by the spirit of God.

It should be.

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I have one more post for you, in the coming days.  The biggest question you have, probably, is how in the world do we fill our time now? I’d love to share that with you, so be watching for it

Thanks for reading.

Fast

Of the more moving events we host in our student ministry, my favorites are our media fasts.      

(It is another discussion, altogether different, as to how a break from media can almost be the same as a fast from food, but that, my friend, is another topic.) 

Can you do without this for just one day?

The latest data, provided by The Harris Interactive poll, shows that the average online user spends about 13 hours a week on the Internet.  (Again, to show the power of the Internet, the word Internet keeps begging to be capitalized in most word processing, spell-check programs.) 

And the 350 million members of Facebook spend about 10 billion minutes there every day — that is a staggering number. 

Last spring, after some prayer, and some research, I decided to ask our students to fast from their media usage.  It was a simple challenge — for a time of 24 hours, we asked our teenagers to put down all media devices that used a screen.  It was met with a great deal of enthusiasm, but this first fast was really just a challenge.  Put down the device.  Just for awhile.  One of our students told me later that that 24-hour time period really changed his life, and gave him a great moment to think and reflect.  

We’ve hosted the fast again, at the beginning of our fall semester, asking our students to again fast from their media devices for 24 hours, and this time we included a list of prayer ideas to fill the time.  And as this semester dawns, we will be again be challenging our students to fast again for 24 hours, asking for divine intervention into their lives, their relationships, and their time. 

I am encouraged, then, to find that this sort of idea is becoming more popular.  I read this post, just last week, of a college who asked their students to attend vespers, asking them to put down their cell phones for just a small amount of time.  The service was only attended by a few, but it was a start. 

College Asks Students to Power Down, Contemplate
by Alan Scher Zagier
for The Washington Post 

COLUMBIA, Mo. — Dianne Lynch wanted to give the students of Stephens College a break from the constant digital communication that pervades their generation. So she asked them to put their phones and computers away and revive the 176-year-old school’s dormant tradition of vespers services. 

On a bitterly cold December night, with the start of final exams just hours away, about 75 of Stephens’ 766 undergraduates grudgingly piled their cell phones into collection baskets and filed into the school’s candlelit chapel, where they did little but sit, silently. For an hour, not an iPod ear bud could be seen. There were no fingers flying on tiny computer keyboards, no chats with unseen intimates. 

Alexis Dornseif, a senior from suburban St. Louis majoring in fashion marketing and management, said she needed time away from her busy life. 

“Sometimes it’s really overwhelming,” she said. “It’s good to have time to think, to not worry about what’s going on tomorrow.” 

Lynch, the president of the women’s college, is no technophobe. Her doctorate research focused on “digital natives,” teenagers who grew up with “the Internet as a part of their operating assumption in the world.” She knows most of her students consider their cell phones a social necessity. The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project has found that 82 percent of 16- and 17-year-olds own cell phones. Ninety-four percent of teens spend time online. 

But Lynch fears all that time spent in the 21st century’s town square leaves few opportunities for clutter-free thought. She wants the students to also pursue the more elusive state of mind that comes with silence. 

Several other schools are encouraging technology-free introspection. Amherst College in Massachusetts hosted a “Day of Mindfulness” this year, featuring yoga and meditation and a lecture on information technology and the contemplative mind entitled “No Time to Think.” 

“Students welcome it,” said Amherst physics professor Arthur Zajonc, director of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. “It’s a complement to the very hurried world of gadgets they normally live in.” 

At Stephens, Lynch hit on the idea for reviving vespers after an alumnae group regaled her with fond memories of Sunday nights in the school chapel. Once a Baptist school but now secular, Stephens required vespers services as often as four times each week starting in 1920. 

“Just a wonderful opportunity to calm down,” said Neel Stallings, a career-development consultant in Charlotte, N.C., who graduated from Stephens in 1967. “To have a place to go to just tune out all of the extra noise, and to tune into yourself, was the most valuable thing.” 

By the late 1960s, vespers had become more spiritual than religious, no longer mandatory and held only once a week. By the 1980s the program was gone. 

The new vespers program is voluntary, at least for now. Lynch hopes to have the services twice a month, to reinforce the school’s mission of teaching young women to be self-reliant. 

“You will need to be able to sit, to be quiet, to be alone with yourself, to have those moments of self-reflection,” she said. 

Those moments are infrequent on the modern college campus. Seconds after the end of the first revived vespers service, students got their cell phones back, and the flickering assortment of screens replaced the need for mood-setting candlelight. 

As the new year begins, I challenge you to the same.  Unplug from the matrix.  Fill that time with prayer, with readings, and with clarity.  God longs to fill the vacuum in your life.  

But you’ll need to make room for Him first.