This week's Desiring God article by John Piper is typical John Piper. The glory of God is mentioned in basically every paragraph. There is a lofty call to live radically and counterculturally. Scripture is quoted. Blah, blah, blah. Typical.* I didn't even read it until today even though it showed up in my inbox yesterday. There were other, more interesting things to do and think about, and reading an article called "Why I Don’t Have a Television and Rarely Go to Movies" seemed like a typical old-fashioned pastor topic that could wait.
Plus, I think that television and movies can be legitimate art forms. I love the thought-provoking, disturbing screenwriting that can be found. I love thinking deeply about the redemptive value of storytelling and of other pop-culture phenomena. I also believe that we need recreation and rest. I'm no fundamentalist.
But this morning, I began looking at a friend's DVD collection. It's a good collection--not huge, but decent, a nice mix of quality films and the type of "classic" that's always on TBS and USA. There were lots of films I've seen and loved as well as films I haven't seen and want to. We began making plans to watch some of them. It struck me for just half a second--practically subconsciously--that it was weird for me to be so excited, since I don't consider myself a 'movie person.'
And then the person I was with said they'd probably watch a movie when they got home from work later, and the fleeting thought I'd just had rose to the surface. It didn't sit right with me that this person has been making so much time for movies and TV these days. I heard myself say, "Or maybe you could read?"
But I was just 'projecting,' otherwise known as being a hypocrite. I remembered that lately I've been regretting the fact that Kevin and I long ago said that we wouldn't have cable when we got married. I remembered that I've been watching lots of movies lately, and the Tonight Show a few times a week. I remembered that I recently mused how I used to be much more careful--discerning? legalistic? I'm not sure--about what I approved of as entertainment.
Not just movies and TV, either. I'm a little tired of the whole internet thing right now. Someone tried to convince me a few days ago that my habit of Facebook "friend-purging" could be a stumbling block to someone, that I should use Facebook as a tool to live out my Christian life in front of as many people as possible.
Maybe. I admit that I have no patience for social-networking politics, and that I am very selective with who I keep contact with. I'm pretty sure there is sinful selfishness there on my part. But I also think that just because something is a huge cultural phenomenon does not actually mean it is significant.
That's what's getting me, I think. What am I profiting by using all these things? It's not that electronic media are evil, or that everything on them is unabashed smut or something (although there's some of that that too). Still . . .
[Leave] sex aside . . . . It’s the unremitting triviality that makes television so deadly. What we desperately need is help to enlarge our capacities to be moved by the immeasurable glories of Christ. Television takes us almost constantly in the opposite direction, lowering, shrinking, and deadening our capacities for worshiping Christ.
When I think of the sheer time I (not to mention so many people my age) waste on entertainment, it makes me feel a little sick. Not so much with disgust as regret. We don't have time for all this, not in the degree we let ourselves use it. People are dying, the world is ending (tomorrow or in a thousand years, it doesn't matter), and on the less morbid side, the God of the universe reigns over the earth and loves his children, loves ME. Why am I not spending more time enjoying that fact, hearing what he has to say to me and speaking to him (which has to be ten times more fascinating than anything in theaters)?
TV consumes more and more time for those who get used to watching it. You start to feel like it belongs. You wonder how you could get along without it.
Are electronic media bad? Not always. Am I a bad media user? Sometimes; maybe even often. At the end of my life, am I going to wish I had spent more time blogging, watching Law & Order, analyzing the Coen brothers' movies? I'm pretty sure the answer is no. But sometimes I forget.
So yes, it looks like I do need another sermon about media. In our culture, I think we all do now and then.
*Thanks, John Piper, for being your typical self. I'm thankful for you.
3 comments:
Thanks for the reminder.
I think your post was every bit as good as Piper's. Thanks for the reflections.
If you haven't read it yet, I highly suggest the book "Amusing Ourselves to Death." Written in the 80's, before many of the various forms of media today were prevalent, but still astoundingly thought-provoking and insightful.
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