Thought Quotient

A clever disguise operates here among the cascading floods of media influence on our young people. The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 11:14, “And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.” In this case, he’s disguised by the cool, the popular, the trendy themes the media tells us are the cultural norms. While very young, children begin hearing exactly what they should look like, act like, be like.

What Are the Effects?

The real issue is the cumulative effect of an environment, an atmosphere that now overflows with sex and gore. Consider the power of this unending stream of perversity.

Young people take in over eighteen thousand hours of television by the time they graduate from high school—over five thousand more hours than they spend in their 12 years of classes. In fact, American children spend more time watching television than they spend on any other activity except sleeping. Young people average 16 to 17 hours per week watching television. If we add video games and video movies, we find that teenagers spend as many as 35 to 55 hours per week in front of a screen. Despite the hectic pace of the average homes daily activities, families still have time to tune into over 50 hours of television per week, which is 10 hours more than the normal work week. With this level of media consumption, is it possible that teens are left unaffected? Could they really imbibe all that sex and violence and somehow fail to be shaped by it?

Our problem is that too often, we in the church honor the same people the world does. No wonder our Christian teens look just like any other teen! We invite the world to come into our living rooms and teach our kids who is honorable. As a result, these immoral shapers of culture and media have been given the authority to shape a whole generation.

What Can We Do?

Parents have a biblical mandate to guard the hearts of their children by teaching them to:

• Set their minds on the things above rather than earthly things (Col. 3:2);
• Love what is pure; hate what is evil; cling to what is good (Rom. 12:9);
• Avoid letting the world teach them to love what is evil or to envy the evil doer (Prov. 24:1);
• Stay away from the bins shoveling “beautiful garbage” (Ps. 101:3).

We can’t stand by and do nothing amidst this deluge of sounds and images…

Let us pray first, and then take action.

More to come…