Looking Beneath The Surface: The Unseen Dangers of Modern Media

Churches throughout America have experienced an epidemic of rebellion and immorality: lust, drug abuse, ambivalence toward the poor, hatred and dissention, greed, even vocal rejection of the faith. Christians have long recognized that much of this impurity results from or is greatly enhanced by modern media. Television constantly presents erotic or outright pornographic images, which ensnare the minds of young men. News specials attack the historical reliability of the Gospels and portray Christianity as little more than a therapeutic diversion. Movies present excessive drinking and drug use as glamorous and exhilarating, which helps lead to alcoholism and drug addiction. However, few Christians recognize the less obvious dangers media and media technologies pose against society, Christians, and the Church at large. The danger does not solely come from the explicitly anti-Christian content. Of equally great danger is media’s power to transform Christians’ ultimate view of reality (or worldview) and media technologies’ tendency to dumb down people’s minds and to destroy authentic community.

Media’s Impact on Christians’ Worldview

Few Christians ever think about the idea of worldviews, but the concept lies at the very heart of the Christian faith. People’s worldviews represent their deepest beliefs and assumptions about reality, and they direct how people interpret and respond to their experiences and the very world around them.1 Such worldview assumptions include their beliefs about God, about their purpose in life, and about human nature. A worldview acts like a script that contextualizes and directs the very drama of a person’s life. The Christian faith invites initiates into an adventure of cosmic proportions. Its adherents can take part in bringing God’s Kingdom into the world, transforming the lives and communities around them.

However, the media, from sitcoms to the nightly news, portray a view of the world where God and the Christian faith are completely irrelevant or compartmentalized into personal morality and religious activities. Christians who are immersed in such messages have a false view of reality projected into their minds. This perception of reality conforms to that of secular society, so the Christian faith seems completely irrelevant to their everyday lives. They then perceive that the purpose of their lives is simply to make money, often in jobs in which they find little satisfaction or meaning, to buy material goods.2

Since people were created to live lives of eternal purpose, such a mundane existence naturally creates a sense of angst and purposelessness. However, the media overrides such feeling through entertainment. Since people’s longing for adventure and purpose is not satisfied in their regular lives, they become addicted to TV shows, movies, or video games to vicariously live out an artificially created adventure, tightening the circle of control. People become enslaved , in a prison for their minds which they can not even discern, much like in the movie The Matrix.

The resulting addiction also absorbs extraordinary amounts of time, so Christians no longer have time to study to grow in their faith or to equip themselves with skills that would enable them to more greatly impact society. In addition, they also no longer have time to develop their relationships, which would enable them to grow socially and spiritually. The media addiction and related influence of excess consumerism also causes Christians to spend large amounts of money on entertainment and unneeded products, so they have little to help others in need or to invest in other ways in God’s Kingdom. As a result, most Christians’ lives bear little fruit for God’s Kingdom, which seems to them too distant and abstract to grasp.

Media Technologies’ Impact on the Life of the Mind

Most Christians focus their attention primarily on the impact of media content on individuals and society. However, few recognize that even if the content were completely benign, the very nature of the media technologies would still make a devastating impact, for the nature of the medium that one uses to present ideas has a dramatic affect on the very nature of the message delivered.3 For instance, the medium of writing most naturally results in ideas being presented sequentially and logically, so the written text typically engages the mind. In contrast, image-based media most naturally engage the emotions. For instance, television presents a series of images, which do not necessarily appear in a logical order and which immediately disappear. After viewing a television segment, the main experience that remains is feelings. As a result, any material presented on television will not most effectively be presented as a form of intellectual discourse but as entertainment.

As Americans have become increasingly addicted to image-based media and entertainment in general, their natural means of engaging the world has shifted to the emotions, and their capacity for critical thinking has increasingly diminished. In addition, every other sphere of society followed suit by transforming into a form of entertainment. For instance, the nightly news does not present useful information in a thoughtful manner, but it presents a montage of images from around the world hosted by attractive people intermixed with catchy music. Children now expect education to be fun and entertaining (e.g. Sesame Street). Even church has become a form of entertainment with engaging music and entertaining, story-laden sermons, often with little theological or intellectual content. As a result, many Christians in America have little capacity to truly even understand their faith or the world around them, leaving them impotent to serve God’s purposes, even if they had the desire.

Media Technologies’ Impact on Community

Modern media technologies have also greatly diminished the quality of community. With the internet, people can now create artificial relationships and community through email, chat rooms, and blogs. However, such media-driven interactions allow people to hide their true natures and only interact superficially. Some people even create and artificial persona of themselves, through which they interact with others. Over time, people can even lose the capacity to create genuine and intimate relationships, and some even lose touch with their true selves. In contrast, true relationships require vulnerability, honesty, and genuine intimacy.

Technologies such as cell phones and I Pods enhance the problem by allowing people to become even further isolated in the real world. Instead of interacting with people in person, they can instead mediate relationships over cell phones. The convenience of communicating so easily with others can create the illusion of increased intimacy, but only face-to-face interactions allow true intimacy to develop. (You might want to add a sentence or two backing up your claim about face-to-face interaction. Why only face-to-face interaction. Because even before cell phones and I Pods, people interacted with each other through intimate letters, which wouldn’t require face-to-face contact.) In addition, cell phones and I Pods allow people to isolate themselves in public spaces. Instead of interacting with others, they can instead feed themselves more entertainment, increasing their addiction.

A Proper Christian Response

To respond to these challenges, Christians must not universally condemn media or media technologies, which can make very positive impacts, but they need to engage them wisely. For most Christians, who are addicted to media to some extent, they need to simply disconnect completely from modern media. By turning off the outside signals, which often block the voice of the Holy Spirit, they can reconnect with God and the true storyline for their lives and for all of reality.

Once they firmly establish their relationship with God and deeply understand the truths of the faith, they can then reengage media. However, they must be sure to control their exposure and not allow it to control them. They also need to continuously filter the messages they hear through the grid of the Christian worldview to identify which messages reflect the truth of God, which reveals itself in every sphere of society, and to identify which messages are false and harmful.

In addition, Christians need to guard true community and recognize the limiting aspects of communication mediated through modern technology. They need to also allocate time for personal interactions. Through these efforts, Christians can accept their role from God to act as a prophetic voice in the culture in regards to the content of media and to the unintended impact of the technologies themselves.

1 For a discussion on worldview, so The Universe Next Door by Sire, How Now Shall We Live by Chuck Colson, or Total Truth by Nancy Pearcey. 2 The bombardment of commercials and advertisements in society dramatically reinforces this value system. See Sex, Economy, Freedom, & Community by Wendell Berry. 3 The following discussion is largely drawn from Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman.