Evangelicals Now
<< November 2005 >>

Monthly media and arts column

TV or not TV? - that is the question

I’ve got about an hour before my husband returns from work and we can watch the next episode in the fourth series of the hit serial ‘24’.

The first three episodes have set in place a nail-biting hostage scenario that only the mighty Jack Bauer of the Los Angeles Counter Terrorist Unit could cope with, and I’m desperate to know how it all plays out.

However, I’ve noticed that my interest in the DVD box sets of serials from the States has become a little obsessive (five series of ‘West Wing’, three of ‘Alias’, four of ‘24’, etc.) and so I thought it would be good to refresh my thinking about the whole TV-watching thing from a Christian point of view.

For and against

The question of whether or not we should watch TV usually divides people into two groups. There are those who say that TV has a harmless and vital part to play in modern life and those who think it’s the main reason for the moral decline of the modern world. The American Heart Association has just released a report saying that people who watch more than 2.5 hours of television a day and eat fast food twice a week run three times the risk of becoming obese and developing heart disease and diabetes. Another report discussed recently on the BBC website analyses the ways in which children under two are affected by television and draws the conclusion that every hour spent by developing minds in front of the box takes them one step closer to Attention Deficit Disorder.

So, are medical studies the only resources that we have to draw on when tackling this tricky issue? What does God have to say in the Bible about such a modern phenomenon?

More like Jesus

Thankfully, those good people at Damaris, Nick Pollard and Steve Couch, have recently produced a book to help us think through the whole TV thing. Their highly readable Get more like Jesus while watching TV helps to get a grip on the ways in which TV can either harm or help our relationship with God. The refreshing message is that we don’t have to be caught up and driven by fear in this debate. We can trust God’s guidance and grace as we work it out. As in every other area of life, God isn’t silent on what he wants from us as we watch TV. In the book of Romans, at the beginning of chapter 12, we find Paul putting forward God’s plan for our lives to worship God in holy lifestyles. We are urged not to conform to the pattern of this world but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, so that we will be able to test God’s will and prove it to be good, perfect and pleasing.

The four reasons

Pollard and Couch point out that when Christians pick up the remote control, there are broadly speaking four reasons why they might be watching. Reason one is to watch in appreciation of the expression of creativity shown by humans made in God’s image while recognising the corrosion of sin on that creativity. Reason two is to watch to be more effective at reaching friends with the gospel; learning the culture of the people we are trying to communicate with, just as a mission worker overseas might do. This will probably involve trying to work out the subtexts of the most popular programmes to understand the assumptions and attitudes held by one’s friends. The third reason to watch TV is simply to switch off. Frank Lloyd Wright described TV as ‘chewing gum for the eyes’â because it can be viewed in a mindless, unthinking way, simply for the purpose of amusement and entertainment. This is a dangerous reason to watch TV because rather than switching off, we are allowing ungodly ideas and values to influence us without discerning whether or not they are good for us.

The fourth reason that we might watch TV is in order to feed our fantasies. We can see scenarios played out that we might desperately want to be true in our own lives and grow addicted to storylines and images that we may not want other Christians to know about.

Brain in gear

Reasons one and two are good ways of helping us to become more like Jesus while we watch TV. They focus on the truths of God’s purity and man’s corruption to discern the best and worst programmes to watch. Reasons three and four, however, are ways in which watching TV will harm our relationship with the living God and make it harder for us to live for him.

So, as I watch ‘24’ this evening, I need to keep my brain in gear and analyse the values and ideas that the series is promoting in the light of God’s truth, although at the same time I can allow myself to appreciate the excellent skills of the cinematographer. Perhaps I should also join a Damaris study group to discuss it further!

Get More Like Jesus While Watching TV, by Nick Pollard and Steve Couch, is published by Authentic Media at £7.99 (ISBN 1 904753 08 6) and available from http://www.damaris.org and Christian bookshops.

Eleanor Margesson