How Amusing!
Theme for the Week: Mind Food
Monday, October 29, 2001
 1 of 1
Key Bible Verse: In the last days.
people will be.
lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God (2 Timothy 3:1, 4).
Bonus Reading: Ecclesiastes 2:1-11
A 30-foot-high cardboard picture of a slot machine and a chorus girl is a fitting symbol for Las Vegas, writes Neil Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death. Because it's "entirely devoted to entertainment," he adds, Vegas mirrors "a culture in which all public discourse increasingly takes the form of entertainment. Our politics, religion, news, athletics, education, and commerce have been transformed into adjuncts of show business."
Postman is primarily concerned about television, because "all subject matter is presented as entertaining." He observes that in the middle of a serious news storythe war in Bosnia, for examplethe account is interrupted with "a series of commercials that will, in an instant, defuse the import of the news, in fact, render it largely banal."
And the rating system for television programming has provided a cover for even raunchier programming. Sex, profanity, violence, and assorted kinds of immorality have soared. The so-called "family hour" has been invaded by offensive programs. Add the degrading talk shows and you have a river of impurity flowing into our homes.
Erwin Lutzer in Seven Snares of the Enemy
My Response:
How have I been tempted to "disconnect" my personal standards from what I'm willing to watch as entertainment?
Thought to Apply:
Worldliness is simply the weakness of fiber which makes us take our standards from the society around us.
Ronald Knox (Oxford chaplain, 20th century)
Adapted from: Seven Snares of the Enemy (Moody Press, Moody Bible Institute, 2001) with permission.
For your convenience, Seven Snares of the Enemy is available in the ChristianityToday.com bookstore.
Copyright © 2001 by the author or Christianity Today, Inc./Men of Integrity magazine.
Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity. 1 of 1
Forgive me, Lord, for loving the world too much. Set my affections on You and help me to recognize and resist the temptations of television.
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