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How do most of us spend our day? According to your life situation, a good portion of most days is spent at work, school, sleeping, and perhaps even in some sort of leisure activity (hobby, sports, family events). However, by and far, the single greatest portion of each day for the average American is spent in the consumption of media. On average, adults will spend more than 12 hours in a day consuming media of some sort (social media, television, internet, video games, reading). Children and teenagers will spend about half that time on average consuming media of some sort. Aware of these facts, it should be of no surprise that we have become a people heavily dependent upon and overwhelmingly influenced by media. In many ways, it has become the first voice speaking to us when we awake in the morning and the last counsel to us as we lay down to rest.
While we may debate the level of influence which media has upon any one of us in the major decisions of our lives, none can deny that our thinking, speaking, and decision-making is somehow impacted by media. The ideas which are thrown before us in pop culture conform our minds toward a particular worldview. John Stonestreet, President of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, comments to media’s influence in this way.
Popular culture is so powerful because it makes things thinkable. And when something moves from unthinkable to thinkable, then it’s a shorter step from thinkable to normal.
C.S. Lewis said that the most dangerous ideas are not the ones argued but the ones assumed. And nothing assumes ideas like pop culture does. Who are the good guys? Who are the bad guys? What’s the noble cause? What’s success? What’s a family? How do things connect and relate? All that stuff is pictured in the moral of a story, of a movie, or in the images of a meme or a website or a game. That’s its power—it never has to argue ideas. It can just embody them and assume them and smuggle them past you.
Understanding media’s powerful influence over us makes the plea of God’s Word to us even more urgent: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2).
While it may be somewhat outdated in its examples, I came across a short story entitled “The Stranger” several years ago which still provides a pause for the reader in terms of our media consumption.
A few months before I was born, my dad met a stranger who was new to our small town. From the beginning, Dad was fascinated with this enchanting newcomer, and soon invited him to live with our family. The stranger was quickly accepted and was around to welcome me into the world a few months later. As I grew up, I never questioned his place in our family. Mom taught me to love the Word of God, and Dad taught me to obey it. But the stranger was our storyteller. He could weave the most fascinating tales, adventures, mysteries, and comedies; they were our daily conversations. He could hold our whole family spellbound for hours each evening. He was like a friend to the whole family. He took Dad, my brother, and me to our first major league baseball game. He was always encouraging us to see the movies, and he even made arrangements to introduce us to several movie stars.
The stranger was an incessant talker. Dad didn’t seem to mind, but sometimes Mom would quietly get up—while the rest of us were enthralled with one of his stories of faraway places—go to her room, read the Bible, and pray. I wonder now if she ever prayed that the stranger would leave. You see, my Dad ruled our household with certain moral convictions. But this stranger never felt any obligation to honor them. Profanity, for example, was not allowed in our house—not from us, our friends, or from adults. Our long-time visitor, however, used occasional four-letter words that burned my ears and made Dad squirm.
To my knowledge, neither of my parents ever confronted the stranger. My Dad was a teetotaler who didn’t permit alcohol in his home—not even for cooking! But the stranger felt like we needed exposure and enlightened us to other ways of life. He offered us beer and other alcoholic beverages often. He made cigarettes look tasty, cigars manly, and pipes distinguished. He talked freely about sex. His comments were sometimes blatant, sometimes suggestive, and generally embarrassing. I know now that the stranger influenced my early concepts of the man/woman relationship. As I look back, I believe it was the grace of God that the stranger did not influence us more. Time after time, he opposed the values of our parents, yet my father seldom rebuked him and never asked him to leave.
More than thirty years have passed since the stranger moved in with us. But if I were to walk into my parent’s home today, I would still see him sitting there waiting for someone to listen to his stories and watch him draw his pictures. His name?
We always just called him………TV.
In our media consumption, may we not be consumed. This will only be as we look to Christ alone as our everything and as we delight ourselves in His Word (Psalm 19:7-11).
Jason