November 17, 2003 - Of Televisions and Toast

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Of Televisions and Toast
By Michelle Daniuro
November 17, 2003

Someone once said that a TV set is nothing more than a toaster with pictures.

Hmm. Television little more than a small kitchen appliance? Ridiculous. The images that people ingest from television viewing are far more spiritually significant than a slice or two of white bread. But then I started to consider the analogy.

Television…toasters….

Suddenly, I could see a striking similarity between the two technologies. And that similarity is at the crust, I mean the crux, of our Apostolic debate over the do’s and don’ts of television “rules” and “convictions.”

I like my toast medium brown. On the Proctor-Silex scale of 1 to 6, I like it set between 3 and 4. Of course, this is the toaster in our staff lounge at work, and it has seen better days, but 3.5 seems to work for me. Pop in a couple slices of bread, push the lever, wait, pop the toast up to see if it’s done, push the lever back down, pop it up to flip the slices because they burn on one side, push the lever down and toast the other side, push the lever back up and pull out the toast. Yeah, 3.5 is perfect. I add a little jelly and go back to my office where co-workers are eating donuts.

And that’s it—I get toast from my toaster. Get the connection?

Okay, maybe I need to elaborate more.

From a complicated and personally adapted process of toasting bread, I get toast. If I followed the manufacturer’s instructions (which probably don’t include popping the toast up an indiscriminate number of times), I wouldn’t get the toast I wanted. I would get the manufacturer’s toast. So rather than focusing on the rules of how to use the toaster, a la the instruction manual, I focus on the product I want to get from the toaster, and I adapt accordingly.

Likewise, many Christians focus on the “rules” of television use, as prescribed by their pastors, families, and spiritual mentors. Often feeling boxed in or tied down to old-fashioned tradition, they balk at the thought of being told from the pulpit or a parent that TV is not an edifying way to spend time. It’s a rule—or the appropriate church lingo, a conviction – and rules were made to be broken. As Paul said, the law brings death.

But what if we focused on the fruit we wanted to get from TV and video rather than the rules regarding their use? How might that change our perception of the issue, and therefore our television use?

What Are You Trying to Toast?
One glance at the hundreds of plastic-covered, twist-tied loaves of bread piled on the grocery store shelf clues us into the fact that all bread is not created equal. Organic nine-grain is not white bread. Rye is not wheat. Cinnamon-raisin doesn’t make a good Reuben.

Not all bread is nutritious.

No matter how many times I push the toaster lever up and down, I will never add a drop of nutrients to a slice of refined, bleached Wonder Bread. I can’t toast nutrients into something already nutrient-depleted.

Likewise, if the television programs I’m watching are bankrupt of spiritual nutrients, I can adapt my television habits as much as I want to and I will never glean something spiritually edifying from those programs. They’re TV/video white bread—soft, squishy entertainment that tastes good going down, but adds no nutritive value to me as a Christian.

And then there’s sneaky bread. This is bread that looks nutrient-rich, but is actually white bread in disguise. It’s brown. It’s called wheat bread. But it’s made with refined flour and trans-fats. The words “natural” or “wholesome” may be on the wrapper, but there’s little natural or wholesome about the ingredients. It’s white bread with a tan.

I think the majority of television and movies fall into the category of sneaky bread. These programs look wholesome. There’s “no” violence. No nudity. No (or minimal), foul language. Nothing that would cause the average Christian to hit fast-forward. Though these programs have a modicum of decency, they are still bankrupt of storylines with genuinely Christian themes.

In fact, while most Christians are combing through commercial TV and videos for problems like physical violence, nudity, and foul language, they skim right past what are perhaps bigger issues, such as inappropriate and unrealistic portrayals of relationships— particularly romantic relationships—slights against Christianity and the Bible, gender and racial stereotypes, liberal political agendas, coarse and sarcastic humor, and the glorification of a materialistic lifestyle, to name only a few.

We ingest these programs and movies, thinking they are more edifying than other programs. But in reality, they are delivering the same lack of spiritual nutrients as the “white bread” programs, just in a different package.

Of course, banished to a distant corner of my supermarket, not even located on the same shelves as the other bread, is a small case of organic sprouted barley bread. No refined flour. No trans-fats. All organic. All natural. In other words, the good stuff. While it’s not as squishy as Wonder Bread, it has much more nutritive value. But there’s a price for goodness—the organic bread is $3.49 a loaf, while the fluffy white bread is little more than $1. But, of course, you get what you pay for.

There is some “organic” TV available. They are just few and far between. They’re holed away in a corner somewhere, on at odd programming hours like 5 a.m., not kept with the “prime-time” white and wheat breads. They’re not as flashy or fun as their non-nutritive counterparts, but they do deliver educational or inspirational viewing material. The only problem is that these programs are the exception, not the rule.

Methods of Toasting Your Bread
You’ve already heard my process. Pretty convoluted, but it works. What about yours? Are you a 5 on the Proctor-Silex scale? Does bread look char-grilled when you’re finished with it? Or is it barely toasted with a little bit of butter melting?

Likewise, whether we realize it or not, we all have methods of viewing television and videos. For some of us, our spirits are char-grilled at the end of an evening of watching TV or movies because we do not discriminate between appropriate and inappropriate viewing. We surf through the channels to find something entertaining to help us relax for a little while, or we pop in a video, sometimes using only the MPAA rating system as our guide for decency.

Others barely watch. If they even have a TV, they watch it sparingly, being very cautious of the content and the time being consumed.

And others have a process by which they filter programming.

According to television effects researchers, the best way to minimize the negative effects of TV programming is to minimize viewing in general (toast light). The other process researchers suggest using to minimize effects, particularly for children, is active parental involvement during viewing (the lever method). This method insists that parents stay in the room with their children while their children are viewing videos (rather than using the TV as a babysitter), and talk through the program with their children during and/or after the show is over. This includes talking about the plot; the characters and their language, actions, and interactions; the moral of the program; and how realistic the program is to real life. This shouldn’t be an interrogation so much as it should be a friendly conversation about the video, how much the child enjoyed it, as well as how the child understood it.

Yet even researchers, who are education-heads and not Christians, recommend first and foremost that television/video use be limited and other more “active” activities be placed in its stead.

Pop Goes the TV!
Ultimately, what you toast and how you toast it determines what pops up when you’re finished. You toast bread based on the vision of the toast you want to have when you’re done toasting. (Yes, at the toaster, you are a bread visionary.)

On a small scale, this follows a much larger principle—we create experiences in our lives based on the desired outcome. Therefore, in a spiritual sense, we need to know our desired outcome. The question is, what is your vision?

If your vision of yourself spiritually is that of a person who has a limited knowledge of God, a heart that is crusty, character that is questionable, and values that are more in line with society than with the Lord, then we should create experiences in our lives that will achieve this goal. We should cease praying. We should only read the Bible when the preacher tells us to turn to his opening text. We should be less concerned with others and more concerned with ourselves. We should value pleasure over pain and pad our short existence here with as many feel-good experiences as possible.

If, however, your vision of yourself spiritually is that of a person who has an intimate knowledge of God, a heart that is tender and quick to believe His Word, Christ-like character, and values based on the Word of God, then we need to cultivate experiences in our lives that achieve this goal. We should pray without ceasing, study and meditate on the Word, love one another, and hunger after righteousness rather than pleasure. Then we will be filled with the fruit of the Spirit of God.

But the question then remains—which of these visions will television help achieve? Will the images we view on the small screen enhance our character? Soften our hearts toward God? Solidify a godly worldview?

In the toaster of our lives, what will pop up after we spend time with the tube? If we are the average television viewer (clocking around four hours a day in front of the set), by the time we are 75 years old we will have spent 13 years of our lives watching television—the same amount of time it takes to get a K-12 education.

And even if we cut that time in half, we are still at 6.5 years of television viewing. That is a significant slice of life. We should want that slice of life to contribute to the greater vision of knowing God and loving others.

A Toaster Remote?
Ultimately, how we use TV is our decision. And this decision should be the result of internal motivation, not external constraint. Paul didn’t need rules to direct his path; he needed the Spirit of God within him for guidance. His decisions were not based on what he “had to do” for God. His decisions were based on what he wanted to do for God, by the power of the Spirit within him.

And so it is for us. Our lifestyles will reflect both the vision that we have for our lives and the intensity of our passion for God. If and how we choose to include television in our lives is a personal choice that needs to be made based on sound information, prayer, and a desire to be pleasing to God. Just as Colossians 1:10 says, we should “live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God.”

Anything less than that is just plain white bread.

ninetyandnine.com

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Michelle Dangiuro teaches English and communications at Central Pennsylvania College in Summerdale, PA. She has written a book on television’s spiritual effects. When she is not torturing college students with grammar and punctuation, she can be found making pasta and playing the piano, but not at the same time.