The Great Satan
TV, Media & Defining “Normal”
I have, for years now, advocated for Christians to cancel their cable
and satellite TV, to dumb down their smart phones and un-plug
their iPods. We are increasingly a nation of brainwashed people,
and the joke is on us as prices for cable and satellite TV,
broadband Internet and mobile service continue to skyrocket. You
cannot convince me it actually costs Comcast $170 per month to
beam the Steelers game into your living room. Yet most of us pay
that without blinking. We’re hooked. We’re junkies. The mere
thought of turning off your TV, of just being quiet for any
period of time at all, is daunting. It is, for many of us,
looked upon like fasting: a great sacrifice we dread doing and
need to prepare for. And the mess just drones on and on and on
day and night and day. We fall asleep to it. We pop it on first
thing when we wake up. we blast music in our cars. There is no
quiet. At any time. In any way. We leave absolutely no room to
think, zero quiet space to consider the universe and our place
in it.
I blew a fuse in my car stereo about three years ago and,
frankly, keep forgetting to fix it. I have, over time, become
accustomed to quiet in my car and now prefer it. When I ride
with friends, it amazes me how they crowd out every moment with
their blaring stereo and cell phones. How every moment in that
car crowds out contemplative thought and instead leaves only the
noise of Other People Defining Who You Are. Even “Gospel”
artists—many of whom are nether Christians nor artists: their
music being awful, derivative knock-offs of much better secular
music and their grasp of even basic Christian doctrine being
sadly remedial—are defining “Normal” with their awful music and
simplistic, damaged grasp of Christian doctrine. Christian TV is
simply awful, riddled with money-grubbing phonies pushing their
shoddy wares, seminars and cruises to gullible grannies and
their AARP Visa Gold cards.
Beloved: turn this mess off.
There is no quiet. No alone time. No reflection. No you-and-God.
No room to think, to learn, to question, to grow. There is
simply, 24/7 noise. And we have grown so accustomed to it, that
my advocating silence, un-plugging from this nonsense—seems
extreme and strange.
And, maybe it is. I leave open the possibility that I, with my
TV rabbit ears and no car stereo, am the strange one. That I
live in isolation and quiet more than most. That my iPod is
loaded with oldies because I have no idea (and no interest) in
who the current “hot” artist is. That last month’s Grammy awards
meant absolutely nothing to me because I had no clue whatsoever
who any of those people were beyond the obvious depravity of
their lifeless, expletive-ridden, morally bankrupt music. Which
makes me sound like somebody’s grandpa and, gasp like my mom.
My gosh, I sound like my mom. But I dare you—I double-dare
you—to do a Pepsi Challenge between, say, Aretha Franklin in her
prime and Lady Gaga, between Sam Cooke and Usher. This is not a
matter of social growth, of media becoming more “sophisticated.”
It’s about media becoming overwhelmingly more corrupt. There
simply is no balance. Sin sells, and everybody knows it. Even
remotely harmless media is outgunned, no kidding, a thousand to
one by this cussing and fornicating, even on relatively (and
arguably) integrative fare like the award-winning Mad Men.
Which is not to say don’t watch Mad Men or Grey’s
Anatomy or House. Art is art. Limiting ourselves to
only “Christian” fare is simply another form of brainwashing.
What I am advocating here is not censorship. I’m saying, stop
allowing this stuff to define you. Find some balance between the
noise and alone time. Inside your head time. Meditation is a
complex expression of a simple idea: just think. The more you
know about who you are, Who God is, and what the relationship
between the two is, the more effectively you can appreciate
art—including TV shows and movies—as an observer of art as
opposed to being subject to it. Unplugging from the chaos gives
you the power, returns that power to you, and allows your own
choices to set your own bar about what is Normal and to reject
concepts and philosophies which do not meet the standard you’ve
set for yourself. All that noise just ricochets off your force
field and you become more centered, more planted, more rooted in
your own sense of self and your own decisions about who you are
and Whom you serve.
How many hours per week do you spend in quiet? How often do you
turn your cell phone off. Not silence the ringer, turn it off.
Toss it in a drawer. The drive to work, to school—how often do
you make that trip in silence, giving over your mind to
peaceful, contemplative thought? To communing with God, to allow
Him to speak to you? Now, compare that to how may hours you have
media—in some form or other—blasting at you. I don’t care if it
is so-called “Gospel” shows or music—how many hours per week is
that stuff on? Versus how many hours of quiet?
I have this pastor friend
who likes to sit across from you, jab
his finger and tell you, “Your problem is this, your problem is
that, you need to do this, you need to do that.” Which is
terrible pastoring. Pastors aren’t here to tell us what to do or
how to behave. Pastors are here to reveal God to us. My approach
is very different. Instead of pointing fingers, I ask questions,
promote discussion. “Well, how do you feel about that choice?
What might you have done differently? Was that then most
effective way to accomplish that goal?” My pastor buddy
practices pastoring o the cheap: Tell People What To Do. When I
believe a pastor’s job is to make people think for themselves.
Telling people what to do is the laziest form of ministry. It’s
much easier to get a guy a haircut than to encourage his
thinking to discover things about himself and his motives.
Independent thought is not valued or encouraged. We are told,
from birth to the graveyard, what to think, what to value, how
to behave. Pastors will tell you This Is Normal, and proceed to
tell you how to live. Which is not a pastor’s job. A pastor’s
job is to introduce you to God. To, in fact, encourage you to
un-plug from the noise, discover God for yourself. That
discovery will be life-changing, and God will do the rest. Many
of our pastors hit us over the head with the Levitical Code—do’s
and don’ts and condemnations thereof the Christian church
selectively enforces—and with the Apostle Paul’s
teaching—omitting the many places where Paul encourages us to
make our own choices; where he says “I wish everyone were like
me,” [I Cor. 7] which underscores the fact Paul recognized
worship found many different expressions. We hammer people with
Paul’s admonitions, homophobia and oppression of women while
missing the most important ones, that transformation begins with
the space between our ears [Romans 12:2], with changing our
thinking. And that, even equipped with his pastoral teaching and
guidelines, we each have an individual right and responsibility
to discover God for ourselves and to determine our own path, our
own thinking [Philippians 2:12-13]. In that
context, church can be and often is just as bad as TV. From the
moment we walk in to the moment we leave there is no quiet. No
place for independent or individual thought. Music going
non-stop. Preachers telling us what to think and how to be.
Ministry should not be about brainwashing. Should not be about
the church or this ministry or anyone else telling you who God
is or how to think about Him. Knowing God should be about
discovery, about forming a relationship, about investment.
There’s just no way to do that without pulling the plug on all
the noise in your life. Without confronting your fear of quiet,
of being alone. Alone is good for you. Alone, quiet, clears out
the cobwebs. Allows us to do what many if not most of us rarely
do: think. Think and, finally, listen. It is only in this
context that we can clearly hear God, that w can truly find Him.
And, perhaps, that’s why the world works as hard as it does to
fill up our lives with noise.
Our entire value system has been co-opted
and corrupted, our focus
on acquiring ever more useless junk to pile in a corner, fashion
trends to discard soon as the next one comes out. We eagerly
digest the bankrupt values of these moronic “reality” TV shows,
sporting games flooded with beer commercials and pickup trucks.
Would we be so materialistic, so petty, so jealous of one
another if we didn’t see these things on TV? Would we even know
about the latest gadget, the newest car, the latest trend? Would
we even desire these things, place value in these things, if we
weren’t bombarded with ads day and night? Would we toss and turn
at night, would our self-esteem be tied up in how much junk we
own, which credit cards we have, how much cash we have in the
bank, if those values weren’t constantly fed to us?
Children’s programming is especially evil, with advertisers
bombarding kids and teens day and night with all manner of
useless junk they don’t need, with fast food and sugary cereals
and drinks, violent games and over-priced, ridiculous-looking
clothes? Would your kid think so little of himself because he
doesn’t have the latest shoe or cell phone if you weren’t
brainwashing him with TV and other media every hour he’s awake?
I cancelled my cable two years ago. It was tough at first,
but now I'm so used to not having TV I don’t even miss it. And
I've noticed that, increasingly, I have absolutely no idea who
these so-called "Stars" are, and don’t care.
TV is bondage. It is, by definition, witchcraft: that which
denies the holiness of God. Too many of us— especially the poor
and underserved— are slaves to it, the thing is on day and
night, so hot you could cook on it. It influences our values and
routinely out-guns the church— which most of us pay attention
to for maybe one hour a week if that much. While the TV is on
nearly 24/7.
I don’t know who Justin Beaver is. I don’t care who Justin
Beaver is. And I can scarcely imagine how much better this
planet would be if we wouldn't routinely allow television to
corrupt and distort our values. Prince (of all people) once
said, "Don’t let your children watch television until they know
how to read." It's amazing how utterly profound that statement
is, and how wise.
Christopher J. Priest
10 April 2011
editor@praisenet.org
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