media

“So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free.” KJV Galatians 4:31

I am old enough to remember living through the 1960’s when revolutionary changes were rocking our cultural world. We didn’t realize it at the time, but “free speech” agitation on college campuses opened the gateway for all forms of profanity in the public forum and the right to protest, nay, denigrate all cultural norms and icons. Black Power salutes on Olympic platforms and the burning of the American flag as protected rights were some of the inevitable results. In the midst of the storm, it was hard to assess the damage or long term effects.

We are going through a wind storm of change at the present, and it is hard to see just where it will land us. One thing is for sure, we are definitely not in Kansas anymore. Our children are not just using technology at a pace undreamed of ever before, they are becoming obsessive and compulsive in their use of it. The Kaiser Family Foundation reported the results of a study in January saying that daily media use among young people had risen to 7 hours and 38 minutes per day, 7 days per week. When you separate combined use such as listening to an ipod while texting, the number rises to 10 hours 45 minutes per day. Either easily eclipses any full-time job.

That is not all bad news in the eyes of many. Our young are developing multi-tasking skills and honing them to a degree unparalleled in previous generations, a very positive outcome in an increasingly competitive world where efficiency is paramount. Young people are also totally fearless when it comes to new technology and embrace it eagerly with a thirst that is unnerving to their parents. There is also a familiarity with accessing untold numbers of sources and prodigious amounts of information that continues to amaze their teachers. Powerful graphics and visual effects are as much a part of their daily repertoire of available tricks as riding a bicycle or bobbing a yo-yo was to my teen-age peers.

The concerns are piling up as well. Tom Kersting, a student assistance coordinator as well as a psychotherapist, worries that the new media is creating “digital zombies” whose addiction to this flood of instant entertainment and communication is having a negative effect upon the way in which youth think, process information, and relate to one another.* Because they communicate in short, quick bursts of information, they are having a difficult time developing critical-thinking and problem-solving skills. Kersting is concerned that students are losing the ability to communicate in person with one another, a definite skill that is necessary to navigate complex social situations. Teen-agers now are confessing that they would rather text than actually talk on a phone. Another psychologist, Andy Yeager, questions its effect upon the development of the teen-age brain in its ability to plan ahead, foresee consequences, set long-term goals, and work through them. English teachers are horrified at the mutilation of our language and all constraints of grammar that are now passing for common, everyday, acceptable usage. Taken together, we easily share a “collective shiver” at future prospects.

My simple and unlicensed lament is the loss of basic manipulative skills I see in the rising generations. I look to them to untangle my drivers and internet options, but they look to me for help in hanging a picture. Studs? What are those? Sheet rock? You mean it’s hollow? Painting a wall is like learning a foreign language. Cooking is something the Colonel does. Sewing is an ancient art. And a dripping toilet is something only a plumber could possibly understand. Perhaps I exaggerate. Yet I feel the corrosive effects in my own life as one who was raised to “do it yourself.” My fingers spend more time at a keyboard than manipulating the strings on my acoustic guitar. I have to pry myself away from email to work in my shop. I do not want to become a one-dimensional person, bond-servant to an electronic mistress whose siren call has already enslaved so many. May we be wise enough to recognize the obsessions and compulsions of our age and keep a healthy distance.

        *Knoxville News-Sentinel, 8-10-2010, p. D2, “Hours spent plugged in change kids thinking”  

my space

I am well known to my family and friends as someone who is both glad and despondent over the new media that invests our lives at every point. The invention of word processing was truly an incredible blessing especially for all of us who remember manual typewriters, carbon copies, and white out. E-mail has also been a development that has revolutionized cross country and international communications. I still have a box of daily letters my wife and I exchanged while I was stationed in Korea. A phone call home at that time would have cost a day’s wages. Ham radio operators were the only practical means of communicating with missionaries abroad. For just these two developments alone, I count myself fortunate to have lived to see them. They rank right up there with the telephone, the airplane, and velcro. Yet, the dark side of the new media is with us as well, and we have yet to learn how to cope with it all. We cope, yes, in that life goes on. The struggle comes in determining just how much of our lives we will invest in it and in discovering to what extent it is affecting us for good or ill. These things are not readily apparent and take time to analyze.

I tremble, tip toeing where angels fear to tread, in challenging some conventional thinking regarding the social websites and the place they have come to occupy especially in the lives of our children. I have caught a glimpse or two into the world of adolescent ‘face-booking’ and have not been comforted. I had a hard time discerning the difference between it and the silly notes we used to pass in class in elementary school except that these are high tech in full color with photos. So, is that so bad? I had to think on that one. Obviously, the potential for cyber-bullying is incredible for ruining a reputation with a photo, rumor, or a total lie. None of us, I would hope, would allow our children to participate in this whole social networking thing unmonitored nor permit them to participate in cyber-assassination in any shape or form. This is not where my struggle is.

I am concerned about good kids just being their silly selves and having access to such a powerful interactive tool. Why? I am worried on two counts. First of all, both myspace and facebook require that all participants be 13 years of age or older. I suspect that I would be a rich man if I had a dollar for every less-than-thirteen year old with a myspace account. We need to re-examine our commitments to honesty and forthrightness if we are aiding and abetting access to these social network sites by our children. If these sites were as free of peril that some Christians might imagine, we should ask ourselves why it is that a purely secular company has put such age restrictions in place. It is a direct contradiction of our River’s Edge priorities to enable or allow our underage students to practice deception of this kind.

Secondly, I fear the propensity of on-line socializing to widen the chasm that separates teens from adult society. We know that given enough time and opportunity, teens will create their own sub-culture apart from the real world. What we now talk of as the “teen culture” is a relatively new phenomena that came about in the 1950s as a result of greater leisure time, increased prosperity, and the growing media. The markets picked up on the disposable income in the pockets of teenagers, and they became a target focusing on their interests and fads.

I would ask myself as a parent if I want to facilitate this social isolation which only seems to serve up in spades the most banal of adolescent dialogue. Scripture says that foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child. I am still discovering pockets of it tucked away in the nooks and crannies of my life. Anytime we allow children to pull apart and set up their own community unmolested by adult values, we should not expect much. At worst, we can look to “The Lord of the Flies” to see what can happen. And marvel not at the abilities of teens to speak in code, a new language safe from adult interception. Do you really know what your kids are saying?

The Visual Part IV

“the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes,” KJV Genesis 3:6

I will attempt to close this series on the overwhelming “power of the visual” and try not to get too radical in my prescription. No promises, however. Up to now, I have attempted to convince the reader that we actually may have a problem that has real consequences for learning, for development, and for all that we know about us as our “humanness.” That is no small challenge. Many of us have drifted to where we are quite unaware or indifferent to the increasing power of the visual in our age. So what do we do about it?

As with any problem of abundance, whether it be food, wealth, time, or whatever, the answer is to find the joy and freedom of a disciplined lifestyle. Food is for the body. The body is not for food. Simple enough. Yet entering into a covenant with oneself to limit our intake to only what we need is such an ongoing problem for us all because of the smorgasbord of affordable possibilities that lie at every street corner. So, too, with the visual. It is everywhere and well within the reach of most every household. We can turn our living rooms into a totally captivating arcade at minimal cost. The question is, “Should we?” And if we do, how much of our weekly schedule should we allow it to consume? And at what age does it inhibit normal development?

The visual industry, when you reflect on it, is all about entertainment. Television, movies, games, and the internet are predominantly used to entertain. Yes, there are educational applications to all of the above, but that is not what draws teens and twenty-somethings into addiction. We need to ask ourselves just how much of our lives we will allow ourselves to be entertained. Have we set limits for ourselves and our families? To surfeit ourselves with entertainment is to stand with the ancient Romans crying out for more “bread and circus.” Creativity dies. Initiative dies. Any sense of mission dies.

Secondly, I believe we need to develop a keener sense of age appropriateness. A driver’s license is given into the hands of teens only upon a developed sense of maturity, an attained legal age, training and testing. I believe we need to start questioning the age at which we should entrust the powerful visual tools we have created. It wasn’t too long ago when parents debated the wisdom of allowing a telephone in the room of a teenager. We knew it was a gateway to private conversations into the nether world of the prevailing teen culture. And now we allow teens and pre-teens not only to have their own totally private cell phones but also unfettered access to the social websites. Social websites (and even email) are powerful tools. I question the maturity of teens and pre-teens to handle them responsibly without being drawn into a world of peer pressure, secret chatter, or mind numbing trivia. There is enough cruelty to be suffered at the hands of other teens without exposing them to on-line anonymity, taunts, and intimidation. If a child must be allowed to carry a cell phone, I would recommend the cheap and disposable types sold at drug and dollar stores with renewable minutes. It is all my wife has or needs. Picture phones are now being bent to the most abominable purposes in the hands of children. Time on video games needs to be carefully regulated and monitored. At any sign of flagging attention spans for the more mundane things of life (such as reading), I would recommend their removal altogether. Let’s stop using movies to babysit or pacify our children. It is the “soma”* of our age. Let them learn to entertain themselves. It is essential for creative development. Constant exposure to fast paced visual entertainment destroys attention spans in the youngest of children, much to the bane of teachers everywhere.

If you are uncertain as to how much the visual distractions of our age are affecting your home, I challenge you to go on a 30 day fast from all forms of electronic gadgets, games, and images. See and observe what happens in the life of your family. If you see little difference, all may be well and good. You are probably at a level that is appropriate and sustainable. But if you or your children experience the pains of withdrawal, not knowing what to do with yourselves, there is a problem you will need to address. A 30 day fast will, in and of itself, cause you to turn to one another for interaction, entertainment, and relationship building. Homework and chores may even take on new significance and meaning. And no telling what kind of hobbies may develop.

We may look at the Amish and laugh at their self-imposed exile from modern life, but secretly, we must all wonder if they don’t have something right. Indeed, they have had the courage to look modernity in the face and raise the question, “Just because we can, should we?”

* “soma” – a state supplied drug to pacify the general populace in Huxley's BRAVE NEW WORLD.

the visual part II

"the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes,” Genesis 3:6 KJV

It is easy, very easy, for my generation to fall asleep at the switch with regards to the dangers of digital addiction. First of all, many of us older fogeys have little interest in video gaming or social web sites as we either are content with our lives, busy as they are, or these things are past our comfort zone in this computer age (yet there is a spike among retired folk who have more time). Secondly, I see where many parents are enamored with anything involving computer skills, and the thought of their children and grandchildren learning how to navigate their way around the world of the web is a point of pride: “My child is learning the future!” Thirdly, we are only now becoming aware of the reality of digital addiction and the threat it has become.

In 1995, a New York psychiatrist, Dr. Ivan Goldberg invented the term, “Internet Addiction Disorder,” as a joke to parody an association manual just released cataloging all the known mental disorders. To his surprise, he received a rash of mail from people and colleagues confessing their “addiction.” It is no longer a joking matter. South Korea is the most wired country on earth with a 97% broadband penetration into homes versus only 67% in the U.S. The S. Korean government now estimates up to 30% of those under the age of 18 are at risk of internet addiction. Internet cafes have proliferated to the level of some 20,000 so-called “PC Bangs” where rows and rows of mainly young boys and men line up to play video games. The Korean government has now set up 200 counseling centers and has trained more that 1,000 internet addiction counselors. Two week camps are set up to treat young people in “p.c. free” zones where the aim is to restore a “lost childhood” with real time activities with real people. China has over 300 treatment centers and estimates about 10 million adolescents qualify as addicted. It has ordered online game operators to install “fatigue” systems that post warnings and diminish point rewards after three hours of play.

The next version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual from the Psychiatric association, due out in 2012, very well could contain some form of disorder designation for digital addiction. If so, it would mean that treatment for internet addiction could be covered by your health insurance. This is the world we are now entering. I cite all these dismal statistics just to make the point that the power of the visual has assumed enormous proportions and poses a very real threat to normal, human health and development, especially among young people. We have created a powerful machine and now must learn how to control it.

How big is this business in the U.S.? Studies say 97% of American teens aged 12-17 play video games using a variety of devices and half of them do so every day. We know that boys are especially cued to the visual and, not surprisingly, 99% of them are players versus 94% of girls. 65% of males are daily gamers versus only 35% of females. 27% of teens play games with strangers on line. About one third of parents do not or only occasionally check the ratings before they allow their children to play a game. In 2008, World of Warcraft was the most played game in the U.S. at about 11 hours per week per gamer.

Houston, do we have a problem? Sorry if this is depressing. I wanted to get your attention.

(to be continued)

the visual part I

“the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes,” Genesis 3:6 KJV

Please forgive me for getting a little controversial here. I am thinking out loud and know that’s dangerous. This all started with a quote I just read from a Ravi Zacharias speech given at Amsterdam in 2000 in which he identified five major changes that have had significant impact on cultures around the world. Number three on that list was, “The controlling impact of the visual.” Since that speech, nine years of technology has perhaps doubled or tripled that impact. I am not a cell phone video junkie, nor do I play video games, nor do I own a high def. TV. Yet, I feel it stalking me.

I confess. I cannot carry on a decent conversation with even an old fashioned TV program going in a room at the same time. TVs mounted in restaurants regularly get me in trouble when having a quiet dinner with my wife. I am absolutely agog at the sight of college football in H.D. I get stuck in front of the new video monitors or TVs at department stores. And the Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and The Passion movies were all visual overloads for me, totally transfixing in their power and intensity.

Let’s admit it. The state of perfection of the visual media today along with computerized animation is awesome. What I am wondering is if we need to slow down a bit and examine what role we as Christians allow this powerful media to have in our lives. I am not even going to begin to talk about the dark side of the internet. That is another story all in itself, and the carnage is incredible. Let’s just think about the “morally passive” stuff we have made so much a part of our lives. Here is where it gets controversial.

I guess I am thinking back to the days when I was in the thick of raising young children of my own. We had a love-hate relationship going on with television even then, as black and white as it may have been. Captain Kangaroo was a daily delight and captivating even for adults as I learned trying to walk through the room without stopping. Finding “Les Miserables,” the movie, on TV one night was a thrill, an absolute gem. But then there was the routine of it all that began to sap more and more family time, deadening us to violence, and assaulting us with subtle compromise. We tried owning just a small cheap one that didn’t work very well. No help. Finally, we just went cold turkey for 10 or more years while the kids were growing up. Family and friends didn’t understand and kept trying to give us TVs. No need to buy one in America, I learned. The whole world will feel so sorry for you that they will pile them up on your doorstep.
But we discovered reading novels around the dinner table, and our home became a haven for board games, conversation, company, crafts, a club house, and Sunday dinners for extended family. We have never looked back on that time with regret. Our girls did get to see every episode of “Little House” at Grandma’s. I got to see football with friends. But I think what happened was that we witnessed our “humanness” being amplified, that part of us that shows forth the creative image of God as it was meant to be.

The comic strip Doonesbury this week (not my favorite), showed a young 20-something character being contacted by a former employer. “Stop right there,” he protested. “No way I’m getting sucked back in! I’ve got a life now!” The other party responded, “No, you don’t. The most important thing in your life is an X-box.” A pungent moment of silence was followed by, “Okay, so you’re creeping me out.” How much of life is being “twittered” away with games and texting, the endless trivia of ‘Facebook,’ or 200 channels of digital HD? I saw what my generation did when they discovered the toy of amplification: sound taken to deafening levels. What will this generation do with their new toys of the visual, and where will it take them?

(to be continued)

Allan Bloom

“I have more understanding than all my teachers: for thy testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the ancients, because I keep thy precepts.” Ps. 119:99-100

Before writing about the Declaration of Independence last week, I pulled down a few old works to refresh myself, among them being my well underlined copy of The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom*. It should be required reading for every college or pre-college student or for those who hope to be parents of college students someday. Before investing $80,000 or more and four years of blood, sweat, and tears into a college degree, this book will help parent and student alike distinguish between chaff and solid food. Navigating the educational channels in a way that is actually profitable has never been more challenging than it is today. Bloom described the educational system in 1987 as “a technical smorgasbord” that is characterized by a “…utter inability to distinguish between important and unimportant in any way other than by the demands of the market.” Little has changed.

While he is best remembered for his scathing indictment of the impoverished world of academia, he does not spare the family for its failure to instill “a basic element of fundamental primary learning: religion.” It is not the unhappy broken homes he takes to task. It is the failure of relatively happy ones where parents are devoted to their family but have “…nothing to give their children in the way of a vision of the world, of high models of action or profound sense of connection with others.” By religion, he speaks openly of the influence of the Bible which transmitted “the wonder of the moral law” and made it possible to “raise” children, not merely “educate” them. He laments how people “sup together, play together, travel together, but they do not think together.” In this setting, “educational TV marks the high tide for family intellectual life.”

It is the Bible that used to furnish our culture with a uniting sense of common belief for rich and poor, young and old, simple and educated. It was “the very model of model for a vision of the order of the whole of things” and a key to all of Western culture, art, and literature. Without knowledge of that book, Bloom pictures a world where the very idea or hope of truly integrated knowledge and order is lost. Without the Scripture, parents lose “the idea that the highest aspiration they might have for their children is for them to be wise – as priest, prophets or philosophers are wise. Specialized competence and success are all that they can imagine.”

He blames the invasive and overwhelming influence of media that comes to control the atmosphere of the home, wresting it away from parents who have even “lost the will” to control it. Instead, we desperately need lives based on “the Book” that will provide us with access to the real nature of things, great revelations, a sense of the epic, and the human condition. Without a firm and real moral education that imparts a “vision of the moral cosmos and of the rewards and punishments of good and evil,” education otherwise “becomes the vain attempt to give children ‘values’.” Bloom characterizes the “values-clarification” classes springing up as little more than propaganda pushing values that will inevitably change as public opinion changes. As a college professor, he seems to weep over the ensuing result that “there is less soil in which university teaching can take root….” Far less, indeed.

It is interesting reading that gives a whole world of meaning to what most of you are presently doing. It will make you feel the earth move beneath your feet the next time you do family devotions.

*Alan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, Simon & Schuster, 1987

Internet

“For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive…” 2 Timothy 3:1-7

Up until now, I was under the impression that pornography was the gravest threat that was posed by the internet. No longer. For any parent who watched “Growing up online” on PBS in late January, I now share your terror of raising children in this brave new world. This was not a battle I had to fight in raising my children. But then, we had to fight things my parents never had to face. Each generation faces new challenges unique to its age. Unfortunately, the computer revolution has happened so quickly that many parents today are only vaguely familiar with what is happening on-line and are easy victims of a techno-generation gap. Some cannot even email while their children can surf the complexities of the internet with ease. For those of you who are not aware of the dangers on-line and who did not see this PBS horror show, I offer you a glossary of terms and worries that you can add to your anxiety closet. Sorry.

Internet addiction – the internet can be highly addictive to teens. When this occurs, they will spend every spare moment of time on the net surfing and conversing with thousands of other friends and perfect strangers. Removing computer access is difficult because of access through cell phones, friends, and public libraries. Symptoms include withdrawal, sleep deprivation, 3 syllable sentences, and secrecy.

Alter identities – teens can create alternative identities for themselves on-line. New names, new personas are adopted to fulfill fantasies and compensate for perceived weaknesses. Costuming and photography can portray images totally foreign to friends and family. Beware strange clothing (feather boas, leather collars, etc.) and the family digital camera showing up at the same place and same time.

Cyber bullying – internet communication can be an incredibly easy avenue to receiving threats and demeaning trash talk both from known and unknown sources. Boy-girl relationships offer great potential for humiliation and total destruction when treated with malevolence and maliciousness on-line. Anonymous messaging can be totally brutal and untraceable. Symptoms include ‘spontaneous’ fights at school, loss of self-esteem, ruined reputation, depression, and suicide.

Cyber assassination – a terrific and easy way to attack or destroy others. Similar to cyber bullying but done with greater creativity and designed for a wider audience. Most commonly done by posting photos and text in target-person’s name. Most effective ones are usually quite viciously humorous. Results can be total defamation and humiliation with occasional lawsuits or prosecution.

Virtual friends – through sites like Facebook.com and Myspace.com, teens can collect “friends” who may be known or unknown. Some try to make a contest out of it to see who can collect the most friends which, at times, can number in the thousands. This is often a fantasy world where teens have little or no assurance as to the validity of a “friend’s” age or id, their character, or their trustworthiness. This world of friends can be sealed against parental knowledge through a password known only to your teen. Symptoms include following bad counsel, intensified peer pressure, loss of desire to make real flesh-and-blood friends, rebellion, and knowledge of new and creepy websites.

Parental denial – a willful and intransigent belief that all is well in cyberspace. Even when receiving warnings about their teen, some parents continue to allow full, unsupervised internet access without questioning. This is usually accompanied by an unwavering faith in the internet as a good thing which promotes learning and technological prowess that could lead to a good job someday. Usually results in surprise and shock at later manifestations of deviant behavior.

Britannica.com – an innocuous website which techno-savvy teens can pull up and display when they see that a parent is monitoring their computer from another source. They can then continue to surf or chat while the proud and self-satisfied parent thinks junior is researching penguins for school.

Sparknotes.com – website which allows students to “read” most any work of classic literature in 5-10 minutes. Invaluable source for time-pressed teens in satisfying homework assignments or passing tests.

Secret lives – teens can live and explore a secret life on-line. Bulimics and anorexics can network with others of their ilk and surf websites dedicated to their compulsions. They can rapidly become an experienced pro with group support all without parents having a clue. Similar networks exist for those preoccupied with death and suicide, the occult, or simple terrorism. Symptoms for parents vary from blissful ignorance to head-line grabbing scandals.

Termpapersites.com – quick resource for plagiarizing material to satisfy all sorts of homework assignments. Symptoms include high proficiency with ‘copy’ and ‘paste’ options on their computers and generally good grades with some occasional, glaring exceptions.

Cyber predator – largely a bogey-man invented by adults to scare kids. Teens seem quite able to identify and delete those making inappropriate approaches. Any who actually agree to meet someone are considered ‘stupid’ or ‘extremely needy’ by their peers. Still, the existence of predators is real, and they regularly troll the net looking for the weak and unsuspecting. Most troubling aspect is that teens seem to value their anonymity above all. This is a world where intimacy is combined with anonymity.

On-line voyeurism - an added blessing of digital photography. Teens can trade revealing photos of themselves in a largely anonymous fashion. Photos are password protected but can turn up in various places and times in embarrassing fashion. YouTube.com allows for transmission of videos of all sorts. Cell phone footage of school fights is especially popular. Symptoms and results too diverse to mention. Biggest danger is that once a photo is “out there,” it becomes property of the whole world.

Opportunity Loss – the hidden cost of spending countless hours in on-line games, texting, and recreational gabbing. Symptoms include dullness of mind, fear of eye-to-eye contact with real people, and the possible realization that one’s teen years have been spent in shallow flirtation with empty amusements at a high cost of skills not acquired, books not read, and real friendships not made.

The teen culture has always been a very real and powerful voice in the lives of our young. Through the internet, however, that voice can be powerfully amplified and transmitted in unlimited quantity directly into homes around the world, all without parental knowledge of any kind. The danger is real, but except for the means of delivery, should not come as a surprise. Paul warned that “…in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” ( 2 Tim. 3:1-7) We just marvel at the manner in which these voices are now able to creep into houses and lead the shallow and the silly away. On-line access should be treated like a license to drive a 2000 lb. automobile down a public street. The potential for damage is incredible. Instructions should abound, safeguards built in, and responsibility rewarded accordingly. May God equip you to do so with all discernment and wisdom.

Reading

“…whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” -Philippians 4:8

Liz Brabson, a Tennessee middle school teacher, recently lamented the decline of the literary aspect of our modern American culture in an editorial in the News-Sentinel (1-12-08). Quoting a study by the National Endowment for the Arts, she mourned the fact that less than one-third of American 13-year-olds are daily readers. While this is admittedly sad, I suspect that the daily reading habits of adults in this country sag even below that. The decline of the printed word is well documented as we watch the number of daily newspapers steadily shrink with some questioning their future existence all together. While some are simply switching to on-line sources of news and stimulation, ours is becoming an increasingly oral and visual culture. Attention spans have shrunk drastically (watch an old movie and try not get impatient with the pace) and our vocabularies have withered to Reader’s Digest standards (6th grade?).

As an indicator of where we are today compared to over 100 years ago, try picking up and giving “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” a quick read. Here was a penny novelette, written by Robert Louis Stevenson in 1886, designed and destined for the pop-fiction rack at the local train station and newsstand. It quickly was selling out edition after edition at a shilling a copy in the everyday marketplace. I daresay most of us with college educations would struggle with Stevenson’s wide-ranging language (‘amities’-‘distained’- ‘troglodytic’) let alone be patient enough to follow his in-depth ponderings of human nature that comes close to the book of Romans in profundity. No publisher would touch it in today’s action-saturated and word-challenged culture.

For those of you who have read the letters of even the simple and uneducated persons of the 1800’s, one can scarce escape notice of the grace and eloquence that so often typifies their language. There was a simple beauty there which echoed the stylish long-hand script with which they wrote. Contrast that to the newly evolving language of text messaging and its butchered spelling, and one can easily work up a case of despair and despondency.

Yet Ms. Brabson’s complaint also lashed out against Christians who would keep books such as the newly controversial “The Golden Compass” from their children’s hands. She claimed that it would be irresponsible for anyone to discourage reading of any kind (‘within reason,’ she adds, but whose?). How easily does reading become an end in itself which is demonstrated again and again by the garish and provocative offerings of our school and public libraries. Our literary elite have come to justify most any fare if it will “get them to read.” Following this mantra, we find horror novels and the occult promoted in our public school libraries along with such uplifting periodicals such as Rolling Stone, GQ, and Cosmopolitan dealing every sex secret known to man into the hands of curious teens.

We forget so easily that our forefathers came to this land and quickly started schools and colleges teaching their children to read for one over-arching, Protestant obsession: that each person would be able to read the Bible for themselves and direct their lives accordingly. There lies the rub of cultural slippage. It is so easy to divorce good Christian values from their Christian base, and then the mischief begins. C.S. Lewis writes repeatedly of motherly compassion as a very damaging force when taken to extreme and not constrained by other equally important truths and values. Communism is essentially a Christian heresy where concern for the poor and downtrodden morphed into the most bloody and destructive movement of the 20th century.

The object and end view which Ms. Brabson and others so easily overlook is that reading is a skill that enables us to more efficiently and easily search for wisdom. Reading is a means to an end and not an end in itself. The Bible says it quite simply, “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom.” Yes, searching and questioning are good tools in the toolbox which periodically involves examining even opposing points of view. Yet, we are the adults. If we have any sense at all as to what constitutes true wisdom, any notion whatsoever of truth as distinguished from error, of good being distanced from evil, we would be most foolish and most horribly negligent not to pass that skill along as well as the skills of reading and questioning. We are the keepers of our children’s souls and minds. From us they will get their first inclinations as to what is the true and the beautiful.

“The Golden Compass” is a no-brainer. While I will not forbid it, I choose to believe its author’s open intent and declare it not worth the reading. There are too many other good books out there that it would be a foolish waste of time to purposely steer my children down that detour. And that is what the Catholic League and other groups are simply doing: alerting us to the dead-end destination of Philip Pullman. Wisdom is essentially a matter of discernment. I want my children to be discerning, discriminating consumers in the welter of the public square: a place where the coarse, the false, and the evil are offered up in quantities far surpassing the good, the true, and the beautiful. Discernment is an ability to be taught and demonstrated by parents first of all, followed by librarians, teachers, schools, and all the gate-keepers of society. It is a shame that so many have abandoned their posts or stand so compromised by moral ambiguity and intellectual relativism that they can no longer tell the difference between the sheep and the wolves. Or they are silenced by a paralyzing fear of disrupting our cultural ease with a simple cry of alarm.

All said and done, if I have to use the Sport’s Illustrated swimsuit edition in order to interest my son, or yours, in reading, something is already dreadfully wrong. I have my limits, and surely Ms. Brabson has hers as well. She would be well served by being less churlish with those who draw the line further back than she.

Blacksburg II

“Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” -Gen. 3:1

With all the horror about us these days, someone is bound to ask the question as to how much do we share of this with our children and how much of the news do we block out? In the last week, even the leading media outlets have had to face this issue with how much of the news was actually fit to print or disgorge in video form. I venture out onto the thin ice of this question with fear and trepidation because there are so many variables involved. Each of us has a right and responsibility to decide the limits of propriety for our own family. Please allow me to stir up your pure minds for the purpose of reflection.

No doubt exists now that last week brought us face to face with pure evil. A better picture has emerged, and the most disturbing questions that I have seen raised deal with the now past decision of society to abolish taboos and definitions of “normal” which have effectively disarmed the self-defense mechanisms of good judgment that could have derailed the obvious and the apparent (Diana West, Wash. Times, 4-24-07). Regardless, do we let our children read and study the face and behavior of such a killer? Do we talk about it in their presence? Do we let them know it even happened? I have not seen the video footage mailed in by the killer and am not sure I want to. I think I have enough information already without imprinting his voice and video image in my mind. There is a point at which news worthiness turns into a fascination with the macabre. I avoid it for the same reason I do not stop to peer into wrecks on the road where the victim still lies trapped within. Those who must deal with it do so out of professional duty. Even these steeled professionals must carefully exercise themselves to purge their minds of the horror lest they become ineffective either as professionals or as fathers, mothers, husbands or wives.

On the other hand, I do not think we need fear exposure to the fallen-ness of this world for we can gain a truer picture of what sin is than anything the enemy throws up to us with his constant deceptions. Let me share with you the following quote which so concisely captures this point. “Imaginary evil is romantic and varied, full of charm; imaginary good is tiresome and flat. Real evil, however, is dreary, monotonous, barren. Real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.” (Simone Weil, 20th century French mystic) The evil we need to fear and protect ourselves from is that which flows so profusely from Hollywood, TV comedies, romance novels, and, yes, our own imaginations. Sinful acts springing from fantasies of the mind are incredibly alluring. The evil one graciously assists us in painting wonderfully exciting pictures of what delicious fun a little sin might be. It started in the garden and continues today. And yet, when we do see actual sin for what it is and what it does, we see nothing but barren-ness, destruction, and wreckage. Imaginary good, however, is easily mocked either in our minds or in the media as being trite and tiresome. But when we participate in actual deeds of kindness and mercy, we experience incredible joy. This helps explain why Christian fiction is so hard to write without becoming formulaic and flat while tales of sinfulness easily pull at our curiosity and quickly become best sellers.

I do not think we need fear the effect of the news from W.Virginia or the daily body count stories from our own Knoxville backyard. They simply tally up and highlight the cost of sin that eventually comes due. The wages of sin is death. Satan would much rather feed us titillating stories of desperate housewives, tales of cavorting doctors, and chronicles of clever and romantic criminals. I say, fear those who can dress up folly as creative frolic rather than the drumbeat of brutal headlines and coarse crimes. The one is real. The other is not.