'There's always telly'? - How about sweeping TV out of your life for 30 days?

How about sweeping TV out of your life for 30 days?

During last year's US presidential election, I sat with my wife and her parents to catch what were supposed to be a few entertaining minutes of the best parodies of American politicians. Two things struck me: the parodies weren't funny; and the language was lewd and vulgar in a manner that would never have characterised conversation in our household.

We shut the TV off in mid-programme. But the thought crossed my mind: just how bad would TV have to get for Christians by the thousands to turn it off - maybe for good?

All we hold sacred

If mainstream TV regularly scoffed at all that we hold sacred; if it lifted up as wholesome that which we find shameful ; if it consistently wasted our precious time and dulled our own and our children's minds; if it inoculated us against sin; if TV did all these things, and stuck a finger in our eye while doing them, then might we at last pull the plug on the monster?

Of course not, because it's already done all that, and we haven't. OK, OK, I know. So that approach demonstrably doesn't work. Beating up on each other because of TV's diet of rot only makes us edgy and defensive. And so we wimp out. The 'I just keep it for news and sports' argument has become commonplace. Don't I have to keep up on world affairs? So the screens flicker on, not just in our living rooms and dens but in our kitchens and bedrooms as well.

Cut it out?

All of that, then, may leave you unprepared for a new book on the subject by Robert DeMoss. Television: the great escape, a Crossway (US) release, is perhaps overly light and anything but judgmental. It just calls on Christians to make a simple experiment: cut out all TV for 30 days and see how you like it.

Mr. DeMoss, who used to analyse and lecture on popular culture for Focus on the Family and still does it on his own, says: 'An overwhelming majority of families are frustrated with the role of TV in their homes. They confess to spending far too much time gazing into its colourful glare. They are dismayed at the way their values are often ridiculed. Yet in spite of the declining standards of television content, many say they are "addicted" and can do nothing about controlling the tube.'

'That's why,' he continues, 'I challenged families across America to consider clicking off their televisions for 30 days. Afterwards, they could go back to the use of TV. But for those handful of days, they were permitted to watch no TV at home, no TV at a friend's home, and no TV with a neighbour. No television anywhere. No exceptions. None.'

New time

But instead of an angry screed about TV, the DeMoss book is largely a report on the journals some of the people kept while on their TV fasts. It's the variety - and unpredictability - of responses that makes the DeMoss challenge a fascinating one to pass on here. Some people found a big new supply of time. Some found their thought life affected immediately. Some lost weight, while others gained a new sense of their relationship to Christ. Some said their marriages got better.

Which way is TV the worst - for its moral failures or its negative impact in practical terms on our lives? Hey, don't waste more time on a silly debate like that. Unplug your TV and get on to something important.

Joel Belz
Reprinted with permission from WORLD Magazine, Asheville, North Carolina, USA.