The Fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge. . . The fear of the LORD is to hate evil (Prov 1:7, 8:13).
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The pictures that can be seen on late night, regular, cable television might as well be porn. A naked woman with blurs that cover tiny spots on her body is like the bleepy radio version of a vulgar hip hop song: they both still manage to get the message across. Just as bleeps don’t keep the message from getting across in the music, nor do the small blurs on naked women keep my mind from filling in the blurs, nor my heart from lusting. Music still produces the desired effect the producer had in mind, even if they exchange the more vulgar word for a more euphemistic word, or a bleep. Whether the songs tell the listener, “kiss my @#$” or “Kiss my BLEEP,” makes no difference. Also, the naked woman still produces the desired effect the TV producer has in mind. If anyone thinks they are not listening to sinful music just because the curse words are cut out, they are easily and willfully deceived. Likewise, if I—or anyone else—think it’s O.K. for my eyes to lay hold of naked women just because of the tiny blurs that keep me from seeing a slightly more detailed picture, my heart has deceived me and my flesh is King of the Hill. My chest skips beats when I see images like this on television. My adrenaline pumps when I hear a hip hop song that’s designed to communicate a spirit of violence and I am immediately hooked until a commercial break slaps me back into reality. My flesh recalls the lust for power and violence I once indulged in. The world is unabashed in its sin. All one has to do is give a quick perusal after 12:00am through all the channels for this to be clear. Three of the specific major dangers include 1) lust, and 2) the spiral of desensitization, which leads to a lack of hatred for sin, which is lack of the fear of God, which weakens and destroys the foundation for the wisdom of God (Prov 1:7, 8:13). The more sin I behold, the less shocking it is to me. The more acquainted I become with the characters on television, the more I begin to have a certain fondness of them which breeds a susceptibility. I end up laughing at their sinful attitudes and sinful jokes. If this is not a devastating effect on my spirituality, I don’t know what is. The more comprehensive and ultimate danger is the weakening of my love for and joy in God. God help me and the thousands of other Christians who are either too afraid to admit how powerful TV is in sucking away our desires for God, or too weak to fight the impulse.
T h e o • p h i l o g u e 
Dude, I was wondering why I had a picture of my tv on my camera memory stick! HA! So that’s what it was for! OKay…. thanks for the comment BCo
I can see where you’re coming from, but if TV is such a problem for you, why don’t you just block the channels that you deem sinful? Or just not have a TV in the first place?
Mark 9:47: And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell.
Instead of plucking out an eye (or both of them), why not pluck the TV from your home?
Actually scooter, I’m a step ahead of you on that one. I own no television, and as a general principle, watch no television (with a few, planned, filtrated exceptions). The content of this blog was written a little over a year ago when I was visiting my parents back home. They have four TV’s. I stayed up late one night flipping channels. Then next morning I wrote this. I still appreciate your biblical advice. The passage you quote was the one which has led me to resolve in my heart that I will never have cable television in my home, nor will have internet access to my computer in my home. I know my flesh too well. I live by some pretty radical principles in order to preserve and cultivate the joy and intense pleasure of being close to Christ (nothing more radical than the verse you quote, however). This pleasure is ten thousand times greater than the pleasure of my old days before I knew Christ: sex with whoever, drinking liqour and beer, club hoppin, snorting pills, tripping shrooms, smokin erb, endulging in violence, pride, and all the rest that the world loves to do). My flesh still remembers the pleasure’s of those days, but my spirit remembers just as well the pain which came a consequence of those pleasures. Anyway, that’s why I’m a Christian Hedonist. When comparing a life of endulging in sin to a life devoted to radical righteousness, it’s as clear as glass which one the soul was created to enjoy. Ahhhh…I recommend it to you good sir.
I would continue to confirm that is absolutely true