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Late Night TV: A Deathtrap for a Christian Hedonist
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.
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