TV Dinner

2011-07-20T17:43:00.000-07:00

Jesus said something interesting once. He said that He knocks at the door, and whoever is willing, He and His Father will come inside and sup with us. Amazing to think that the Savior of man and the Creator of the Universe can come into our “house” and have dinner with us. Of course there are some simple symbols involved in this story. Our “house” is really our soul… our mind, if you will... our spiritual being. Having dinner is symbolic of an intimate and cordial relationship… a friendly and peaceable gathering. It is both a beautiful and revolutionary idea. Such a friendship with God is the only thing that can truly satisfy the heart of man.

I’m not here to preach, however, although I do wish this experience upon anyone reading this article. Instead, I would like to draw attention to the simple symbolism used in this story, and encourage everyone reading this to examine the state of their spiritual “home”.

If our innermost thoughts… our mind… our true soul, can be likened to a house, then who are we inviting over for dinner?

What does your mind fixate itself on? Who do you allow in to the innermost parts of your heart? I would present to you today that there are many subtle influences knocking at the door of your heart, seeking fellowship with you. To allow them in is similar to sitting down to dinner with them. If you welcome in the wrong sort of person into your “home” you may indeed find yourself wrought with problems caused by the influence of these unsavory characters.

They Enter, By Way of The TV Set

Television is the most apparent “doorway” into our hearts. Have you ever watched a small child watching cartoons? The glassy-eyed fixation on the TV screen is somehow unnerving to me. Sure, the nearly hypnotic trance is convenient for parents who want a bit of peace and quiet… the TV is America’s best babysitter, after all. If you’re like me, you’ve heard your child say something off the wall… something remarkable, and said, “He (or she) must have heard that on TV”. It’s fascinating how what goes into a child’s mind by way of the television stays in there for so long, and then pops out from time to time when you least expect it. Perhaps you’ve seen a nonsensical commercial and discovered that your child knows every single word of the dialogue. Amazing, isn’t it?

What about us? Are we really that different?

I’ve been discouraged by the amount of media coverage that Casey Anthony’s trial has received. Even more disappointing is how so many people have welcomed Casey Anthony into the dining rooms of their mind. Do we even realize that we’re doing this? Would any of us really want to sit down with Casey Anthony for dinner? Yet we allow her into our living rooms by way of the TV set and in so doing, we allow her, in all her glory, into the sacred temple of our hearts!

We allow the grizzly acts of murderers into our living rooms every night as well when we turn on our favorite police drama or psychological thriller. What about the news? Some of us enjoy listening to lying politicians and media “talking heads” for hours. Can we not see that there is something fundamentally wrong with this practice? Don’t we realize that we are just like the glassy-eyed child who is fixated on the boob tube? Do we really believe that we will not regurgitate what we see on the TV just as our children regurgitate what they see?

TV shapes the psychology of nations. Perhaps we should start seeing TV for what it really is: a babysitter for idle minds.

And beware who you allow in for supper, for you may find yourself depressed, unhappy, dissatisfied, and angry from all the bad company you keep around the dinner table of your heart.

A Commercialist Society

2009-09-09T12:17:00.000-07:00

I don’t want to watch TV anymore.

Yes, I believe I’m ready to start thinking on my own.

The media is, after all, a truly desperate and greedy enterprise. And it’s not so much the raunchy sit-com immorality that’s forced into our family’s living rooms every night; or the raucous and disrespectful behavior presented in cartoon comedies like The Simpsons or The Family Guy. It’s not the way that Biblical truth is filtered out of every single educational program on The Discovery Channel; it’s much more subtle and more pervasive, and more dangerous to our society than all of the above-mentioned airwave atrocities combined.

It’s the commercials.

I’m pretty sure that of all the useless studies that the government has spent billions of our tax dollars on, no one has ever thought to sponsor a study on what prolonged exposure to commercial advertisement can do to a person. What effect does the endless stream of companies pandering their products on us have on our minds? This constant attack is incredibly intense when you stop to think about it; all those hours under the influence of merchants who only want to make more money off of us. It would be staggering to truly understand the effects of the thousands and thousands of commercials whose aim is to make us feel unhappy with what we currently have, and to always want more.

Every man and woman in this country has spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours of their lives exposed to commercials that tell them that they need something that they currently do not have to make them content. Brainwashing is the only term I can think of to describe this intense form of psychological bombardment. And how dreadful is the thought that this single self-destructive mental message has spread to virtually every person on the planet:

I do not have what I need to be content.

Commercials.

Sinister little things, really…

Commercials offering us new things that are better than our ordinary old things; commercials telling us that we need a certain product to make us look good; commercials telling us that a family dinner can be as easy to make as one-two-three; commercials telling young, impressionable teenagers that they simply must have a new cell phone with 3G technology to ever be cool; commercials telling little toddlers that their mommies need to buy them another shiny piece of plastic in order for them to be happy; commercials telling insecure men that a little purple pill will give them all the sexual prowess they need (and if this “prowess” lasts for more than four hours, please consult a doctor); commercials telling obese people that they can escape the consequences of their gluttony with a diet pill; commercials telling people that they should get another credit card so that they can - you guessed it - be able to buy the things that they need to feel content; commercials telling creative people with a world of untapped potential that they should watch a movie and escape from reality for a while instead of spending time actually chasing their dreams; commercials telling us to “Chase What Matters”… and it’s a bank trying to get us to overextend ourselves again; commercials telling us that if we’ve overextended ourselves, we can consolidate our credit card debt, and once again be deemed as worthy to make purchases; commercials telling us that if we’ve used a certain faulty product within the last two years (previously advertised for on this station) we may be qualified to take part in a law-suit that could make us rich; commercials telling us that Oprah is going to be on later interviewing fascinating people, and we will be better off if we try to somehow attach ourselves to this wonderfully successful woman; commercials telling us that we should fear a burglar and buy a Brinks security system for our home; commercials telling us that we can meet our soul mate through a computer dating service – if we pay the membership fee; commercials telling us that our current technological device (that we have not even learned to appreciate) is out-dated and should be replaced with a better, more wonderful technological device (which we will surely not appreciate); commercials telling us that virtually any form of ailment, discomfort or depression that we suffer from (or think that we suffer from) can be cured with a new pharmaceutical product, if we are willing to gamble against the rare but incredibly scary side-effects.

Commercials are constantly telling us that we do not have what we need to be happy. (More beer, more food, more sex, more cars, more credit, more clothes, more gadgets, more safety, more love, more jewelry, more products, more health, more medicine…) I’m no psychologist here, but even I can see the effects of this constant poisoning of our minds over the course of our entire lives:

1. We end up in a perpetual state of discontent.

2. We end up not appreciating the things that we do have.

3. We end up always wanting more things (and at some point our brain tells us, “You do not have enough money for all that!”)

4. We end up equating happiness with money (which we will never have enough of).

Commercials… what to do about these pesky little hope-erasers

(I did not set out to write an article detailing the solution to this problem of “commercial overexposure”, only to attempt to reveal that the problem exists. But after compiling my thoughts on the subject, the solution appears too obvious: watch your television less, and spend more of your time pursuing the real-life activities that are truly important to you.)

Problem solved.

Oh, and realize that you are being played as a dupe every time you sit down to “unwind” in front of the boob tube for a few hours. You are being a part of the great problem of materialism and moral failure that our society is constantly being eaten away by.

The media is simply a reflection of you and me. If those raunchy sit-coms didn’t get high ratings, they would all be cancelled instantly. If people didn’t crave irreverent, meaningless programming, it simply wouldn’t exist (no studio executive would ever continue to produce a show that no one was watching). If people enjoyed living their own lives instead of watching someone else’s “reality” life, the reality shows would all vanish. And when it comes to those insidious little commercials that are constantly trying to turn our morality into materialism – if we didn’t waste billions of our hard-earned dollars on meaningless things every year, only the companies with products of value would have enough money to advertise on television.

As I stated at the very beginning of this article, I do not want to be a part of this desperate media that I see reforming my once-great country into the image of a soulless, empty, and greedy people. When you watch the media, you become a part of it… you are contributing to it. And the only way to control the media is to turn it off. Turn it off until it becomes a reflection of you as person. If that takes thirty years, so be it. If it never happens, then you’ve saved yourself, at least. Don’t let your kids watch garbage, unless you want them to look, act, and feel like garbage. If everyone stopped participating in the media, our country would become what it was originally intended to be: A nation of, for, and by the most intelligent, soulful, and intuitive people on earth.

Everything Real

TV Dinner

A Commercialist Society