Turn Off the TV
I know this one hurts.
It's one thing to talk about religion and heaven and names and all that kind of thing, but this hurts. Now we're talking about something very near and dear to all of our hearts...The Altar of Secular Consciousness, the Television.
I do not own a television.
But first, my traditional disclaimers......No, I don't think TV is the devil, no I don't think you should destroy all of your TVs.....Of course not...You need to gather them all up and bring them to TCOY's next town meeting, coming soon to an area near you. (Another JOKE, people....Come on, it is OK to lighten-up a bit.)
But I am concerned about television's role in our lives. There are a few things I want to focus your attention on:
 | According to analysts, the average American watches over 6 hours of TV a day. That's 42 hours a week. |
| Let's see....7 days times 24 hours a day = 168 hours a week. But really 8 of those hours are going to be sleep, cleaning, etc. so let's make that 7 days times 16 hours a day = 112 hours a week we have to live. Now, assuming the statisticians are correct and 6 hours a day is right, that means 6 out of every 16 waking hours, or 42 out of every 112 hours a week, which is 37%....More than a THIRD of our waking hours are spent watching TV! |
| TV constantly, always ranks #1 in the country as the primary activity of the population....Preferred over reading, music, lovemaking, everything. |
| As pre-industrialized nations begin to enter the electronic age, people want TVs before they want toilets. |
| And forget about the content of the program you are watching. What you are physically doing is sitting in a semi-darkened room watching a stroboscope flashing at 30 times a second....There has been a lot of research done lately (most of it suppressed by the-powers-that-be) on the effects this has on the human bio-organism. And folks, the effects are not beneficial: an induced state of alpha-meditation (numbing, not elevating), reduced creativity...Especially in children, long-term exposure to TV has been scientifically proven to reduce and cripple their ability to imagine or think through problems..... |
| Hey, folks, doesn't it seem somewhat strange to you that we have a society full of so many empty lives, who pay celebrities $millions to pretend to have very exciting lives, so that we can sit in our darken rooms vicariously "enjoying" ourselves? |
| And think...just think....Can you actually tell yourself what you watched 2 nights ago? Really? |
| And psychologists are noting a new phenomenon, wherein untold thousands of young people (married and otherwise) need to compulsively videotape their lovemaking because (I am not making this up) it is "not really exciting until we see it on TV"! |
| (American Conservative talk show host) Rush Limbaugh said something amazing one day on the radio....He observed that he constantly (literally thousands of times a day) gets comments on thoughts and ideas he expresses on the radio. But in the 3 years he did a daily TV show, not once (or hardly ever) did he receive even one comment about an idea he expressed on the show. "All" (or close enough to practically be all) the TV show comments were about lighting, his weight, color of suit, ties, etc.....Heck, it even prompted him to start his own line of men's ties. The point being that the medium does change the message! (Insert yet another book here.) And the effect of TV (this has been proven far beyond any doubt) is to constantly dumb-down any and all messages. |
The sad truth is that this point of human growth has brought us to the place where billions of people spend billions of hours every day sitting and staring at the stroboscopes.....Quite disturbing, really, and I get a very sad feeling wash over me when I think about it in that global way.
Well, another place where I could insert a whole book. The one I recommend most is "Evolution's End" by Joseph Chilton Pearce, published by Harper Collins. WARNING: If even 5% of the material in that book is true, it means we are not living in the world we think we are. Reading it will change your life.
Look, friends, I'm not a fanatic....I WATCH TV!! OK? Feel better? Frankly my 2 favorite programs are.....Well, it doesn't matter. We'll leave that until we know each other a little better. And yes, there are some wonderful movies that have been made. I plan to actually comment on a few of them on another day....I mean, "Love Kittens from Mars" is amazing! (Another joke.)
But I have always known / felt / experienced that the more TV I watch the less happy, the less fulfilled, the less healthy I am. And that remains true to this day.
And yes, TV's effects go far beyond (or touch us far underneath) the content of the programming. Nevertheless, I need to make one observation here, which seems so obvious to me it literally screams out, and yet I have never once heard this mentioned by anyone, anywhere. Ready? The media, government, Hollywood, heck, even some of the churches, seem intent on telling us there is absolutely no connection between what people watch and their actions. And yet, corporations are willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, yes, even millions of dollars, for even 30 seconds of TV time. Why? Because their own research and experience proves beyond doubt that those 30 seconds will so influence the population that their $Million investment will be returned many-times-over. And yet, watching 6 hours a day, every day for decades has no effect whatsoever??!?!?!??!??!?! I just don't get it.
Look...at even 2 hours a day, putting you in the lowest 25% of the population, you are still spending 2/16 = 13% of your waking time on TV. OK, fine. YHWH does not hate you, and will not curse you. But it is possible......just possible.....That He has soooooo much more for us. Air to breathe....walks to take...the poor to help...music to hear and play.....friends to talk to......meditation (funny, at least to me, in the context of 6 hours a day of TV, the "hate-mail" I get for suggesting people might benefit from spending 5 minutes a day meditating on God's Name......oh well...silly human race)......Look, the list goes on and on........There is a life to be lived!!!!! Far beyond the bounds of your TV.
Come on......Though I have (probably) never met you, I do love and care about you. YHWH has met you, does know you, and loves you ever so much more! And we want you to have a rich, fulfilling life.
Could you find $150? Probably. For that money you could buy 1 CD player ($100), nice headphones ($30) (and many, many CD players have built-in headphone systems(!)), and the complete Symphonies of Beethoven ($20), and enjoy, in crystal-clear digital perfection, Beethoven's Immortal Masterpieces for your entire lifetime! And if you haven't had that experience, as your (I hope) trusted friend or Pastor or weird-guy-typing-on-his-webpage or whatever, I say YOU SHOULD! You owe it to yourself!
The following dialogue, in one form or another, is repeated millions of times a day in this world.
Kid gets home. Parent sits on the couch watching TV.
Kid: "Hi."
Parent: "Hi."
Kid: "How are you?"
Parent: "Fine. How are you?"
Kid: "Fine. What's new?"
Parent: "Nothing. What's new with you?"
Kid: "Nothing. What ya watchin?"
Parent: "Nothing."
John 11:35...."Jesus Wept."
Ooooooops.....Sorry.....Got to go.........Good Morning America is on............
