Saturday, January 16, 2010

Half a Poison Pill

It's hard to blog when I can barely peel my face off my pillow and roll my fatigued preggo body off the couch. In fact, it's hard to do much of anything practical or functional. Little mountains have begun to pop up all over the house. Mountains of laundry, toys, dishes, and tumbleweeds of golden dog hair. Thankfully, I have a husband who has done a great job of playing Mr. Dad and Mr. Mom while I've been slightly out of commission so things aren't nearly as bad as they could be.

I haven't been desperate for a nap for three days now and I'm hoping it's a lasting trend. I am still pretty zonked by 8pm though and I'm perfecting the art of being an evening couch potato. I hate every minute of it.

I've been too tired to read the mountain of books I'd like to read, so I've been defaulting to watching TV the past two nights. This is a pretty unusual thing in our home because we never turn it on in the evenings. I mean really, seriously never. (Ok, except for the seasons when LOST is on. Then it's on one hour per week! By the way, are you so psyched about the upcoming last season!? Are they going to answer all of my questions???? What is the smoke monster? And what else are we going to find out about Locke? Ahh!)

But anyway. To make my new couch potato status totally and completely worse, the cable company decided to bless curse us with free cable even though we don't want cable. It's all part of their evil scheme to get you sucked in to watching shows you don't normally watch. Then they take them all away with the hope that you will then upgrade your package. I keep telling Rachel, "Now hunny, the nice evil TV company is just letting us borrow Dora for a little while. You know what borrowing means right hunny?"

But truthfully, I don't think Mr. Dad is going to let this continue for much longer and I have to agree. Have you ever not eaten sweet foods for a period of time? And then when you taste something sweet again for the first time after a long time, it tastes insanely, sickeningly sweet? Well, our eyes and ears have been away from cable TV for a long time, and the reintroduction has left a bad taste in our mouths. And I'm just talking about the commercials on supposed "family" channels.

A few years ago I went to a conference and heard Joshua Harris speak on the topic of media and its influence. I remember being floored by what he had to say. It was so off my radar screen at the time. Confession: I was the girl who didn't go to the Christian Fellowship because Dawson's Creek was on at the same time. (I'm totally serious.)

Harris says, "The obvious problem for Christians is that much of modern media’s content ignores or even demeans Biblical truth. The less obvious problem for Christians is that our relationship to the media is not all that different than that of the unbelieving world. The mind set of many believers is “trying to figure out how much sinful content from media they can handle and still be okay.” He likens that attitude to taking half a poison pill. “When it comes to what we watch or read or listen to, we shouldn’t ask how many halves of poison pills we can take without dying. We need to examine the cumulative effect of our media habits on our attitude toward God and sin and the world.”

Harris then gives 3 questions based on 1 John 2:16 for examining the effects of media in our lives:

1. Cravings of man – Are my media habits encouraging me to want my own way?

2. Lust of the eyes – Are my media habits stirring up covetousness in me?

3. Pride of life – Are my media habits encouraging me to exalt myself and value such worldly things as social status, athletic achievement, fame or wealth?

This is so worth thinking about if you're a Christian. Even though what I watched last night falls into the innocent category (a National Geographic show on wild dogs - ha!), I could so easily slip right back into bad media habits and making a poor use of my time.

So hun, you were right. I resisted for two days, but I think it's time to call the cable company. :)

2 comments:

  1. Ha, you knew I would respond if you mentioned anything about Lost (fyi- the smoke monster is the man in black-- the one who pretended to be John Locke and had Ben kill Jacob!) If you would like to cure your desires for cable, take a North Jersey trip in my place and visit with my family and Will's family, and you'll go running back home and never turn your TV on again. We are constantly reminded of the evils of tv when we spend extended time with our family whose main passion is television. But, it is a tempting thing. We only turn it on for Lost and the kids get to watch some shows, too. However, when you own all 5 seasons of Lost on DVD, well... And I must confess it was Party of Five that kept me away from Christian groups in college=). It all goes back to the cross. If I see myself as a sinner in desperate need of forgiveness, forgiveness I can only find at the cross, then things on TV definitely pale in comparison, and their status goes back to being just what it is: a moving picture on a screen.

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  2. We watch mostly VHS and DVDs. We do not have cable, and with the switch to digital, we do not get much in. TV has changed a lot in the past 25 years, and not for the better.

    I get my favorite cable show send to my Amazon account. Then I download it to our laptop and watch it. When I am too busy for TV watching, it just sits and waits for me.

    Audio books are good to listen to when you feel sick. The our library has a lot, even some Christian authors.

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