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Print Since I grew up watching TV, it was never an item of forbidden fruit to me. My whole family got in church when I was about 13, but we still had a TV in our home despite the fact that owning one was never encouraged in our assembly, especially the oft-quoted “I shall set no wicked thing before mine eyes” (Psalm 101:3). I always snickered, and still do, when I hear old-school preachers refer to television as “devil-vision” and “the one-eyed demon.” Give me a break! Then one day during my senior year in high school, my dad got zealous and decided to throw it out. My mom was all for it, my younger brothers had conniption fits, and I was pretty indifferent—the only time I was a TV junkie was during Saturday morning cartoons when I was younger. Not too long afterward, however, I was on my own, well, as on my own as I could be as a freshman in college. My Apostolic roommate, preacher’s daughter and all, was definitely a godsend for a naive kid like me during her first year at a huge university. Needless to say, there was no TV in that dorm room. (I didn’t want the wrath of God falling on me via my roommate!)
The Problem with
Theoretical Moderation Honestly, I didn’t feel a cloak of conviction fall over me. Like I said, it was nothing new under the sun for me, even though my family back home had gotten rid of ours a few years previous. However, I noticed a bit of a change in my habits and my behavior. Time that used to be spent studying was spent watching The Practice and Fresh Prince reruns. Instead of finishing that five-pager due the following day, I found myself watching Lifetime movies and then getting up at an ungodly hour to finish the paper instead. I’d sit down and tell myself at 7:30 p.m., “Okay, I’m just going to watch this one episode of Whose Line Is It Anyway? and then get to work,” only to later look at my watch to find it read 11:30 p.m. and wonder how the time went by so fast. Time devoted to schoolwork suffered a blow; don’t even ask what my devotion time was like! Devil-vision was siphoning my time away from things that were definitely more important. Some may say that it’s simply a matter of doing things in moderation, and I can’t argue against that. However, for me, even though after buying a TV I planned (theoretically) to watch it in moderation, it was a different story in practice. I found that television watching is not as easy to control because it requires very little cognitive action on the part of the viewer. You just sit and absorb. And in my experience, I absorbed more than a moderate amount.
Ah! Blessed Convictions I made a resolution and I followed through. The first thing I did when I got back to my dorm room was to unhook the cable and cut it so that I wouldn’t be too easily tempted to hook it back up. It was a sacrifice, but my experience has also proven that God honors obedience to the convictions that He places upon us. Still, I don’t think that TV-watching in general is a sin against God. There are merits to it—rapid access to information, educational programming, and even (though the pickings are indeed slim) decent entertainment. If I’m over at the house of a friend who owns a TV, or if I’m in a public place where a TV is on, I don’t turn my eyes away. If I go out of town and stay at a hotel, you’d probably find me channel surfing during my downtime. Yet in my regular life, God brought to my attention that I was beginning to spend more time with the tube than with Him. That was when I developed a conviction against owning one.
ninetyandnine.com © 2006, Chantell Smith ---------- Chantell Smith spends the majority of the week stamping out ignorance as an elementary and middle school Spanish teacher. You can visit her Where You Can Find Me blog to receive further enlightenment on the path to ultimate wisdom. |
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