Unbalanced Diets
Theme of the Week: Watch What You Watch
Monday, November 3, 2008
 1 of 1
Key Bible Verse: This world is fading away, along with everything it craves. But if you do the will of God you will live forever (1 John 2:17). Bonus Reading: 1 John 2:15-16
Most Christians, Brian Godawa observes in his book Hollywood Worldviews, are on the extremes in their consumption of popular culture. They're either "cultural anorexics," cut off from culture completely, or "cultural gluttons" who uncritically consume anything that comes along. My friend Russ Ward adds a third category, "cultural bulimics," who indiscriminately gorge themselves on the worst of pop culture and then purge themselves through vociferous condemnations of those who produce it!
Ted Baehr, author of The Media Wise Family, reports, "Extensive research indicates that most Christians have the same media diet as non-Christians. The same percentage of Christian teenagers as 'non-Christian' watch R-rated movies with the same frequency." Researcher George Barna reports that born-again adults spend "an average of seven times more hours each week watching TV than they do participating in spiritual pursuits such as Bible reading, prayer, and worship. … They spend roughly twice as much money on entertainment as they donate to their church. They spend more time surfing the net than they do conversing with God in prayer."
—Dick Staub in The Culturally Savvy Christian
My Response: Would I gauge my media consumption as anorexic, gluttonous, bulimic, or balanced?
Adapted from The Culturally Savvy Christian (Jossey-Bass, 2007) by permission.
Copyright © 2008 by the author or Christianity Today/Men of Integrity magazine.
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I need discernment, Lord, to selectively participate in my society's media, avoiding mediocre and morally objectionable content.
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