Chapter 6. Changing the Television Stations

If you are a Christian, and you talk to God occasionally, you know you talk to Him from your mind. You generally close your eyes, take a deep breath, and talk or whisper prayers to Him (or silently pray to Him). Where do your prayerful thoughts come from? They come from your mind. This is what your mind does. Your legs walk, your hands work, create or caress, your stomach digests food, and your mind takes the thoughts of your heart and coalesces them into words. This said, do you think God quits listening to your thoughts once prayer time is over? Does "Amen" act as an on/off switch for God? When you say, "Dear God or Jesus," do His ears tune in and when you say, "Amen," do His omniscient ears tune out?

Let's get real about God. No such thing happens. God is with us at all times. No matter what garbage is going through our minds (from television or anyplace for that matter), God's Holy Spirit is there, attempting to sort it out. If you are watching something that assumes a godless world, He will try to lead you to the truth (because Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit are the mediators between God and we here in the fallen world). But if we continually dump more and more untruths into our minds, we will be setting ourselves up for belief in an untruth, a godless world filled with misfortune. You can count on these appearances we believe in, coming true for two Biblical reasons:

Job 3:25 For the thing which I greatly feared has come upon me, and that which I was afraid of has come to me. (MKJV)

Mar 9:23 Jesus said to him, If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes. (MKJV)

What can television do to us, then? By its godless assumptions, by its immoral implications, it feeds untruth to us. Do these untruths just disappear into the bottomless pit of our minds? Sorry, they don't. They become embedded into our hearts, defiling them, and causing us to speak and believe untruth. Is this important enough that we should be aware of it? Is TV doing anything to us? We are not victims of TV. We are victims, however, of our willingness to allow TV to run its untruths through our minds so that the untruths become part of our belief systems, and even cause us to deny God, His Son, and His Holy Spirit. When we do this, we become subject to Satan and his deceitful ways. Make no mistake about the power of the spoken word. One well-stated comment against your faith or God, in a fictional show, can plant a seed of doubt that will cause a lifetime of spiritual warfare.

Also in 1951, I Love Lucy debuts on CBS. This was an extremely popular ½ hour situation comedy starring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. Did you see the episode where Ricky came home only to find Lucy on her knees, praying that God would order her day? That's right, nothing went wrong. In this figment of my imagination, Fred and Ethel were in their apartment, bowing before the Lord, as well. They were interceding for Lucy, asking the Lord to make her life less chaotic. This, of course, could never have been an episode of I Love Lucy because it would have been completely uninteresting. Situation comedies require chaos—but in God's world, there is no chaos. There is a lot of Roman's 8:28 (all things work together for good to those who love the Lord), but Christians who read their Bible know that God is almighty and sovereign. Nothing happens without Him knowing about it and, indeed, even ordaining it. When we pray, we are given peace in our hearts. This peace settles in throughout the day and helps calm our fears. Our day is not perfect (by our standards), things happen that are unexpected, but we are not shattered by them. In addition, we become more in tune to God's Holy Spirit who is able to nudge a little here, and whisper a little something there, that moves us more into God's will, while steering us away from our own perceptions and judgments, which do nothing but lead us further into difficulty. Lucy (and most situation comedies, like the Jackie Gleason Show mentioned earlier) thrive on self-sufficiency (not God sufficiency) and the comedy comes when things go from bad to worse.

I don't mean to be a killjoy. I have enjoyed I Love Lucy along with you. But we don't really want to have a life that is as chaotic as Lucy's was, do we? Let us be aware, then, that we are feeding untruth to our hearts when we see the incredible chaos that marks each I Love Lucy episode. Why wouldn't our lives begin to reflect the life the writers gave this popular comedienne? As we are intensely involved in any program we are watching, we are buying into the underlying assumptions—God is no help, prayer has no place in our lives (just as it has no place in the lives of the characters). At least be conscious of this. Ask God to help you become aware of all the times the world distracts you from the truth.

In 1952 the National Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters ratified a new television code, establishing guidelines for broadcasting content and addressing the concerns of social critics. Nearly half the code is devoted to advertising. The purpose of each of the shows on commercial television is to hawk products. Unfortunately, because of the nature of the media, advertisers need to take a buckshot approach…and we sit through them, not even flinching as each irrelevant ad goes through our minds. Is this the way we want to spend our precious time on earth? Watching a majority of irrelevant ads go by?

In 1952, the number of households that had a television grew to 20 million. Advertisers spent $288 million to get their products TV exposure. We become more and more interested in this invention of ours. The mammon machine is able to capture well those who can make us laugh by their comedy, or make us cry, by their dramatics. There is a symbiotic relationship established between the advertisers and the producers. They each feed off the other and we, the people, are happy to lend our minds, our hearts, and our souls to perpetuate their co-dependency with each other. It is not too late to ask this next question. As the Lord prepares to return, we must spend time with Him in prayer and have our oil filled for our lamps. Time is short. Do we want to continue allowing our souls to participate in the symbiotic relationship between the television producers and advertisers?

In 1952, the first political advertisement appears on US television. Democrats buy a 30 minute slot for their candidate, Adlai Stevenson. Unfortunately, they chose one of the most popular shows of the day to pre-empt: I Love Lucy. Stevenson is bombarded with hate mail for this thoughtless act. Dwight Eisenhower buys 20 second commercial spots and wins the election. There is a gift of focus in us. I believe this gift was given to us by God's Holy Spirit and it can be of tremendous value in keeping our eye on the prize, and helping God bring people into His kingdom. This ability to focus in on one thing only can, however, be a detriment to all that Christianity stands for, if it is tainted with attributes of the fallen world. This, I believe, is what happened with this political incident in our history. Good, upstanding Christians were probably involved in the sending of hate mail to Adlai Stevenson's office, though I don't know that for certain. There is a behavior that Christ asks for in God's word. He asks us to love our neighbor as ourselves, do good to those who do evil to us, and do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

These are basic rules, commands, if you will, given to us by the One we call Lord and Savior. What Christian would deliberately set about to write a hate letter because a TV show was pre-empted? Were they taught lack of respect for God's rules by TV itself? Was the godlessness of the very show they were seemingly addicted to, somehow developing in its viewers, a sort of rudeness and selfish behavior that would cause some people to drop their civil attitude and instead display a raw and emotionally hateful one—because their show was taken from them? I don't have the answers to these questions, but kindness and love and charity is a trait Christians ought to have without even thinking about it. I feel that these traits ought to be at the top of the practicing Christian's "To Do" list.

Could anything like this still happen today? I believe, since we all live in a kind of moral fog, that it could. The behaviors Jesus taught us need to be practiced. He said, "If you love me, follow my commands." Do we love Him enough to do this? Personally, I want to put more emphasis on relying on Jesus and His teachings as I live my life. But first I must remember…

Joh 3:16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. (MKJV)

We must adapt the behaviors Jesus taught us or we might as well look God straight in the eye and tell Him we have better things to do than to "pick up our crosses" and follow Him. In general, does television (and for that matter, books, movies, and videos) promote the teachings of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ? Are the assumptions that each show makes, helpful, or do they hinder our ability to adapt Jesus' teachings into our lives? Is it worthwhile to carefully pick and choose only those things that promote Jesus' teachings and lead us into a greater awareness of God? Can this be our entertainment instead of focusing on the ungodliness underlying most of TV programming today? As I've stated before, let us, at least, become aware of what we are doing and what we are teaching, both to ourselves and to our children, as we live out our meager lives on this ball of shame. Otherwise, one needs to ask, why did God send us a Savior? It must have been that we needed to be saved from something. We need to be saved from the carnality, the sin, the pride, the self-sufficiency and the selfishness that are the hallmarks of this fallen world.

If we don't watch the current programming with its underlying godlessness, then the combination advertising/TV production machine will dismantle the current programming as they diligently search for what we ARE interested in. In their search, could they find a people who eagerly embrace God's teachings? What a good idea!

"Do you mean," you may ask, "that Christianity is meant to be actually practiced and not just laid out as theoretical concepts?" Yes, I mean just that. And, listen to this, if our churches could help carry the banner of this book and teach classes on what to do now that your TV is gone, as well as teach helpful prayer techniques that exalt God's sovereignty, that would be exciting. How about churches instructing us on how to pray, asking God's help in loving those who don't love us, praying for those who persecute us, and basically helping us toward having an undefiled heart? Wouldn't that be great? THIS should be what we strive for.

As practicing Christians, praying on a regular basis is imperative. We must have a working relationship with God. We must desire to pray effectively and, with our desire, will come an answer from the Holy Spirit within. We aren't praying when we are watching television, are we? Is it possible that TV producers might want to have all programming go silent for an hour (the hour of prayer) and people would be encouraged to spend this time in devotion and supplication to our Lord and Savior? If this is what WE wanted, this is what we'd get. Why? Because they want our interest in them for a purpose, so they can sell advertising. We have allowed this creative symbiotic godless relationship of producers and advertisers to tell us what we want to see. Isn't it time we told them what our interest is by letting our remotes do the voting? Also, it is possible we may not be interested in ANYTHING they want us to be interested in? Indeed, we might not want TV at all.

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