Watchers - or holy ones? | Christopher Idle

By the time I moved in, the bungalow had been empty for some months. You can imagine the splendid pile of shiny leaflets and buff envelopes heaped up inside the front door.

Among the usual fare of pizzas, insurance, loans and double-glazing, four letters were addressed to the non-existent 'Occupier', in increasingly loud and offensive language, pointing out the urgent need to obtain a television licence. The penalties for not complying are too terrible to contemplate.

Since I arrived, a further four letters have come, the later ones all promising a visit from someone, at any time of day or night, to inspect the premises for unlicensed sets. Since I like to welcome strangers (see Hebrews 13.2), I have been looking forward to this caller. If he is coming anyway it seems pointless to tell him that I have no such set; he will want to see for himself. Viewing is what it's all about. At our previous home two inspectors came in a month; strangely, neither wished even to look upstairs, let alone examine the bathroom. I asked the second whether he had nothing better to do and he told me the job paid well. He had no TV himself. Maybe he used to be a nurse. I met an ex-nurse who became a hospital porter because there was more money in it. It was not always so.

But these occasional encounters make me revisit, however briefly, the big issue. 'Why don't you have a TV?' seems a more pressing question nowadays than 'Why don't you go to church?' Some of my best friends are less than happy with the straightforward reply: 'I've nowhere to put it, no time to watch it and nothing to pay for it with'. So here are the fruits of my latest rethink.

Busy?

First, on busyness. 'This year', you will have read a dozen times in friendly Christmas letters, 'we have been busier than ever. Where have the months gone?', etc. It seems even more important to say this if you are retired, in case anyone thought you were lazy. Retirement is seen less as a privilege or reward, more of a joke or an excuse for increased workaholism. We are those who justify ourselves before men.

Books and magazines, Christian ones as much as any, assume we are all busy. There are digests for busy people, headline summaries, potted news, potted sermons, potted highlights, potted everything in an age when more time-saving devices than ever are within our reach, from emails to Eurostar. We cheerfully claim we have no time to write letters, pay visits, do the garden, read books, get to the Bible study or say our prayers. We somehow find time for exotic holidays, golf, DIY, acres of weekly newsprint, and above all, for several hours of television every day. If you are a Christian you may think your monthly average is well below the average, but it will still be impressive. If you take a daily or a weekly paper, a huge slice of its ceaseless chatter is basically TV-fuelled.

How do I know this? Several ways. Mix with any group, at coffee after church or before the prayer meeting, and within five minutes, more likely, two, someone will say: 'Did you see that programme . . .?' If they are not soon buzzing with delighted appreciation, they'll be buzzing with delighted outrage. If a group is listening to a sermon, one illustration in three will come from last week's TV, prefaced not so much with 'I wonder if you saw . . .', but rather 'We have all been watching . . .' The expected nods and smiles ripple along the pew; a valued bonding experience. If they have been crammed into the hall for the church's Quiz Night, this is the real test. Without a TV, you might recognise the Queen from the photo-montage, but that's about the limit. You have no chance of winning and you'll be a drag on your team. My disillusion with busy Christians, joyfully yielding all that they are to Jesus in the Sunday song-slot, was complete when everyone knew the face and name of the midweek Lottery presenter.

Civilised?

The second issue for me is courtesy: whatever happened to it? I don't mean the way people shout, swear, swagger or interrupt on screen. It's the viewers who bother me. One evening I invited a friend to an impromptu supper with some of my family with whom I was staying. I know she wanted to meet them. But maybe not that much: 'I'm sorry, but it's the final instalment of . . . (whatever serial she was then gripped by). Afterwards she confessed that she'd seen it before anyway, and that it was just as disappointing the second time. Not long after, I waited for half an hour on a street corner in a chilly November, for friends with whom I was to spend the day. How so? They were watching the rugby. No, it wasn't the final; it wasn't even England!

My company may not be compelling. But note the way the apologies (or explanations) were framed. They were watching the serial, or the rugby; what they meant was, 'We'd rather watch TV than see you'. If my friend had another visitor, if the children were sick or the car broke down, there's no problem. Well, not for me. But to put watching the programme as a sound reason for postponing everything else - this is generally accepted as perfectly valid. More civilised? I doubt it.

Money

The third aspect is money. We join in the deserved criticism of the vast sums paid to entertainers and the really big names in sport. The predictable media comments on any great contest are (before) How are you coping with the pressure? and (after) How much money is it worth? But the money, like the pressure, is all media-generated. Cut out TV football, golf, snooker, car racing, boxing (please), and see the earnings come down to something on a human scale. So long as we are happy to gawp, they are happy to spend. The same is true of intrusion into privacy after great grief. Glue yourself to the screen, and they will go on glueing the camera to someone's tears, and ask the usual: 'How did it feel to see your family killed?'

The power and prestige of television, incidentally, is one problem I have with Christians in Sport. I'm all for Christians being in everything, making and nourishing disciples everywhere; but I do wonder about the cost in terms of personality-cults and the religion of success. People who come second or 17th don't count for much. But the losers are in a large majority. Like religion and news, sport corrupts easily on the screen.

We have no heroes any more; just 'personalities', who keep awarding one another meaningless prizes and presentations. For everything from parliament to Songs of Praise, from child murders to desert bombs, is it always entertainment, always the 'show'? 'I was watching the show last night', said someone on a radio phone-in; which show was that? The Conservative Party was electing a new leader and (it hopes) a potential prime minister. So watch your tongue if you watch your screen; you have signed up for show business, and they have you hooked.

And the biggest show of all is disaster. Martin Bell, who should know, says in his recent book Through Gates of Fire that TV makes us think we know what's happening in (say) Iraq; a tragically laughable illusion - let alone the 1,000 places where no cameras go. He calls television our modern Colosseum, hungrily craving its constant diet of spectacular violence, tragedy and death; except what they saw in Rome was real, not studio-spun illusion. He adds that just when we think that TV's acceptable standards can sink no lower, they do.

For a more sophisticated Christian analysis try the winter issue of In Writing, the brightly-revamped magazine of The Evangelical Library. Denver's Professor Douglas Groothuis shows here 'How the bombarding images of TV culture undermine the power of words', and, among other things, reveal the effect of a week-long 'TV fast' on his own students. I recommend this - if you have time to read ten serious pages and the stomach to cope with withdrawal pains.

On a simpler level, even we non-viewers visit homes where the set is switched on, and don't always feel obliged to spend the evening in the kitchen or tool-shed instead. Around Christmas there are countless replays of the year's viewing highlights. I checked with my hosts and the programme notes: 'These are the highlights?' I asked. What the rest was like, the less good bits, I prefer not even to wonder.

The half-converted

But it's not all guesswork. I was a watcher once; been there, viewed that, gave it up, never looked back. I know all the positives, and if I didn't I would hear them frequently from my friends. One I have yet to hear would come in an obituary or tribute to a Christian who has died. 'How come this quiet little lady achieved so much for Christ?' 'What was the secret of this man's sheer godliness?' No one has yet offered the explanation that they made sure they watched four hours of TV every day. Or justified such devotion in the face of 1 John 2.15-17.

No, these words will not convince the totally addicted, any more than a tirade against alcohol, tobacco or cars will persuade their enslaved victims to kick the habit tomorrow. They need something more radical and shocking. I write rather for the half-converted; those who would like to make the break, know they should, but somehow lack the nerve or the faith. It can be done!

I cannot claim that much of this is original. You may have heard something like it before. But so what? You enjoy repeats, don't you? So come on, Mr. Man with the TV van; where are you? The bathroom awaits.

P.S. Visited a different church one Sunday last month, where I knew nobody. The vicar was greeting everyone by the door afterwards. 'I know you', he cried joyfully. 'You're . . . you're Eric Idle!' Who?