Getting Ready for the Fur to Fly
Sobriety: 13 days
Last Cigarette: 6 days ago

This Sunday I am going to wrap up my series on Christians and the Media, and I am expecting (hoping for?) quite a bit of heated discussion.

My emphasis up to this point has been to challenge the class to 'renew their thinking' about their approach to and interaction with the various mass media. The teaser for this week's upcoming session is the assertion, made in an Internet article I came across last week, that the Harry Potter books are actually Christian in world view.

However, since this is going to be my last week on this subject, I am going to try and lead the discussion to Christian response to and participation in the various media.

My point here is going to be to hopefully raise peoples' consciousness that our current evangelical bent towards boycott activism and retreat into an alternate media is an exercise in futility and bad stewardship.

There are two streams of errant thinking converging to produce what I consider to be a horrendous waste of energy, money and gifts in the name of Christ. The first being the gross misunderstanding of what drives and motivates the operators of the various media, and the second being our irrational fear over the perceived damage being done to our society by the media.

To the first point, it's fairly obvious to just about everyone that what comes to us through the media, in terms of content, is driven by the perception of what will sell. For many in the business, it amounts to simply implementing the 'circus' part of the Marcus Aurelius 'give them bread and circuses' equation for controlling society. Christians rightly understand that this is an amoral (at best) approach to what service the various media could provide in an ideal society.

That's where most of us in the Church get lost. Seeing the depravity of content, and the greed of those who exploit the lowest common denominators in our culture, our response has been to rant and rave and threaten media advertisers with boycotts. Problem is, we're all to often tilting at windmills. We fail to recognize that our real power to effect change in the media offerings is woefully small. Granted, certain targeted boycotts might change some advertisers' behavior, but very little has changed from a global perspective. Take the KMart boycott of Don Wildmon's AFA as an example. The AFA boycotted KMart stores to force them to remove porn from their Waldenbooks subsidiaries. KMart relented and promised to steer KMart in a more 'family friendly' direction. The AFA has touted this as a huge success ever since.

However, a closer examination shows that what Wildmon's group did, and continues to do, is to target the weakest member of the herd for the kill. In the current marketplace, KMart is hardly a player, lingering on the brink of extinction until finally merging with Sears earlier this year. Waldenbooks is suffering a similar fate, being dwarfed by the mammoth success of mega-booksellers like Barnes & Noble and Borders. Basically, the AFA forced KMart's hand by taking a very small segment of their customer base away for a short period of time. This tactic worked, since KMart was already reeling from losing market share to the WalMart and Target expansion. So it was unable to lose even the smallest number of customers over ANY issue.

And did the AFA membership reward KMart for its 'change of heart'? Hardly. You'll find them all at WalMart, a behemoth largely impervious to such puny railings from short-sighted prophets.

Conclusion: The number of Christians committed to sacrificing bargains (or luxuries) for the sake of changing advertiser behavior with a view to removing objectionable or offensive content from TV, radio, film and print is simply not enough to make this strategy viable across our culture. This tactic might work in certain local communities where Christians represent a majority or influential minority. But as a national blueprint? Forget it.

Also, is it just me, or does it seem distinctly un-Christian to pick on the weakest links?

My second objection to the typical Christian response to the media content and execution in our society is the belief that the media is somehow responsible for worsening the moral state of our society. Hogwash! I subscribe to the view that the media more reflects the condition of our culture than influences it. I'm not saying that there isn't an exacerbation effect, but whatever gets into vogue in our media offerings has to connect to its audiences on some level in order to push the envelope. If something in the content isn't resonating, the channel gets changed. Simple as that.

A corollary to this thinking is the assumption that we as Christians have to protect both ourselves and our children from being contaminated by what's being broadcast, printed and produced by the various forms of media. I agree, but it's a bit ridiculous to expect the rest of the culture to just go along with us to make us feel better. Moreover, there's something that's just a bit troubling about this mentality to me as a Christian. First, most of what's offered is just crap and is simply a waste of time. The answer here is not to watch, listen or read that which diverts us from our true purpose. And if we're not doing it, our kids will follow suit. Unfortunately, I believe the reality of the matter is quite different. It's just too easy to put the kids in front of the TV with a video so we can 'get our stuff done' undisturbed. So we are guilty of participating in the culture of convenience, but want to 'Christianize' it so we don't feel so guilty about neglecting our kids. Second, I fail to see how we communicate an attitude of humility and servitude towards our Lord when we're so busy complaining that our craving to be entertained without being offended is not being satisfied.

Moreover, where is the confidence and faith that 'greater is He that is in You than he who is in the world'? Don't we have a better message to deliver to our culture than this? Our children are precious to us, but are we really that worried that they will be corrupted when our God is alive and powerful? So what if their friends are consumed with video games? Who cares if pre-adolescent movies are rife with sexual innuendo? Do we really think that the homosexual lobby will lure our babies away outside of their own volition?

It's time to wake up, people. We live in a fallen world, corrupt to the core. The world system will not be run by the rule of righteousness and perfect justice short of Jesus' return. We will NEVER, EVER have the power to do what only our Lord can do in ruling this world. We can stand with integrity, and reach out in the media with compassion and a message of hope, redemption and repentance.

So why don't we stop bitching about those things we can do nothing about, and get started with the work that the Lord has called us to?
- posted by The Drake @ 6:28 AM