TV Time

According to answers.com, John Logie Baird was the first to demonstrate a television system. He did so in London in 1925. The BBC began the world's first regular television broadcasts in January 1929. In 1939 RCA began the first commercial public television broadcasts in the United States. The growth from there has been tremendous. The Grolier Encyclopedia says that the number of U.S. homes with TVs was 6,000 in 1946, then rose to about 12 million by 1951. By 1955 half of all U.S. homes had a TV, and by the late 1990s, 98% of homes in the U.S. had at least one television. In 2010, Nielsen reported that the average American home had 2.93 TV sets. The number of people in homes with TVs averages 2.5, meaning the average home has more TVs than people. According to surveys reported by Grolier, Americans spend from 2-1/2 to 5 hours per day watching television. That's not that hard to do. Sit down at 8 p.m., watch a couple shows and then the 10 o'clock news, and you've got your 2-1/2 hours right there. In 2012, Nielsen reported that “The average American watches nearly five hours of video each day, 98 percent of which they watch on a traditional TV set.” This report does not include “consumption on computers, phones or tablets like the iPad.”

I'm not of the persuasion and owning a television or watching it is a sin. But I am persuaded that the overall effect of television is a detriment to our society, and generally at enmity with/to Christian principles. The combined mind-numbing drivel and graphic portrayals that bombard us with ?? eventually effects how we think.

The “idolatry of the star.” Famous & not-so-famous actors and actresses are exalted to heroes, idols, and “role-models.” Why does the internet follow every move the Kardashians make? Why do we care what some star’s political views are? What qualifications do they have to guide us down philosophical paths? Why do Christians ask for prayer for figments who are only characters in a TV show? (Yes, this has happened and is not just an urban myth.) Just because someone has fortune and fame does not mean they know anything about anything else, or are positioned to be a role model to our youth.

The rejection of moral principles. I would say that many of the producers of television fare are probably faithful to their own principles, whatever they are. But a steady diet of television will sometimes lead the viewer to compromise or reject his or her moral principles. Take a Christian who is convinced that personal revenge is wrong, and just retribution belongs to God. Sit him or her down in front of a well-written, well-directed and well-acted western in which the family of the protagonist meets an ill fate – say desperadoes rape his wife and kill his children. Nearing the end of the movie, the Christian is cheering the hero on to get his revenge! Take a Christian who is convinced that sex outside of marriage is wrong. Sit him or her down in front of a well-written, well-directed and well-acted “love story” in which against all odds the hero and heroine come together in the end – and before they are married! At the point, the Christian is has tears of joy because all has turned out all right. What is happening? A dramatic presentation – not necessarily conspiratorial, but reflective of the Hollywood culture – is slowly changing how we think and feel. Enough of that, and how long is it before we begin to act on it?

Watch what you choose wisely, and choose wisely what you watch.

Anything but reality

Just when you couldn't stand another (un)reality show, Oxygen bombards the public with Preachers of LA.

First of all, reality shows are not really "reality" shows. They are the edited reality that the producers think will "sell". Perhaps they should call them "surreality" shows!

Second of all, even the "unedited" lives of 6 high profile mega-churches pastors in Los Angeles would tell us little about the lives of the real diversity of preachers that labor to preach the gospel and lead the sheep throughout the congregations of the world. 

Beyond making money, who knows whether there may be an agenda of further stereotyping an already over-stereotyped mass of unique individuals.

Criminal Minds Season 8 Episode 15

On Wednesday Feb 20, NBC aired the Criminal Minds* episode "Broken". It featured a homosexual serial killer suffering from an identity crisis. He loves men and cannot love women the way he feels he should. So he kills his sexual partners. Parallel to the plot is the condemnation of the horror of conversion therapy -- an effort to convert or change sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual. "Broken" may not refer to the homosexual character, but to the fact that misguided therapy has ruined his psyche. There is an effort to blame the therapy rather than the serial killer, and in the end viewers may even be drawn into sympathetic association with the killer. FBI agents are mortified by the conversion camp and know it must be even more horrendous than they can even imagine. Finally they discover the ostensibly Christian camp uses physical abuse, drugs and forced heterosexual sex therapy as part of their conversion methods. One fan praised the episode for "shedding light on the darkness of so-called fix 'em camps." I expect such a camp is mostly Hollywood fantasy that produces more heat than light.

I am not a proponent of "conversion therapy". It sounds like just one more of the many shady psychiatric treatments that has been foisted on a gullible American people. On the other hand, the American Psychiatric Association promotes many vague and unnecessary psychiatric treatments, while condemning conversion therapy. Why? Because it is "based upon the a priori assumption that the patient should change his/her sexual homosexual orientation." There's the catch. It's not really the "conversion" they object to, but that they believe there is nothing wrong with homosexuality. It's still alright to analyze, therapize and convert alcoholics or fat people -- maybe even hoarders -- even if they were born that way, since society says these things are bad. (Pity the poor fat people; it's always OK to skewer them for any reason or no reason.)

Criminal Minds’ episode "Broken" is one example of the continual Hollywood bombardment against Christian moral beliefs. A belief is caricatured and the caricature then demolished. One down; another to go. Intellectually stimulating shows such as Criminal Minds probably do more damage than the mindless fodder of such offal as The Simpsons or Family Guy.

In keeping with the Bible and centuries of Christian moral teaching, I believe that homosexuality is a sin -- regardless of what Hollywood or the APA says. It is a sin of extra-marital sex and defilement of God's natural creation order (man & woman). Homosexuality is one of many sins perpetuated by depraved sinners. It is not the only sin. Conversion therapy is not the answer to that or any other sin. An experience with God and conversion by the Lord Jesus Christ is necessary for us all.

*Criminal Minds is a "procedural thriller about the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, which profiles criminals to solve crimes."