Rock Writers’ Guild

     I have been reading your cultural relevance assignments with grief and interest.  You know what makes me mad?  This is pure rant- I won’t even pretend it isn’t: I hate advertising.  I hate living in an advertising-driven culture.
     What is behind these t.v. shows?  Selling stuff.  The old quote “sex sells” is what’s behind it.  The more cutting edge the better.  It’s a monumental game of “made-you-look!” that is getting worse every year.  They do all kinds of crazy, obscene, terrible things to get people’s attention for five seconds and shove their product name into your brain.  They spend millions reasearching our brains to try and find out what will make us look and buy, and then they go home and are abused by their own technology.
     Do you know they’re beginning a program to pipe music to kids on school busses & sell ad time on the music tapes to Nike and other brands that target kids?  They are also working on “sposorship” programs where McDonald’s can sponsor the math workbooks for grade one through six & print their ad materials right in their with their target audience’s homework.  Prisons run T.V. all day long- inmates trapped on a diet of the Jerry Springer show and daytime-television.
    There are T.V.’s in the grocery store and Wal-Mart with continual advertising channels.  There are T.V.’s on public transportation, and in our cars.  We walked into Ruby Tuesdays to have a family meal and there was a T.V. over every table.  There are ad flyers in my grocery cart staring at my face.  Little machines spit “cupon” ads at me and blink lights to get my attention.  Signs shout at me from every package, from above every rack of clothes, from every label, from every tag.  There is advertising printed on the floor of the store and painted on the grass of the football field. 
     Ad slogans are written on our T-shirts and screen printed on our cars.  Billboards and signs bellow at us.  Pharmaceutical companies give doctors everything from sunglasses to toilet seat covers with their drug names on them.  Magazines are flooding the check-out aisles with hot sex tips and clevage to get your attention so you’ll pick up the book and see an ad.  Occasionally they put a model on there (at eye level with my five-year-old) that is completely nude and barely screened by the type so they can yell “Made you look!” and sell their advertising space for a little bit more because they’re reaching a larger demographic.
     You certainly can’t get away from it on the internet.  Google is driven by ads.  Its entire purpose for existing is to sell advertising space.  They have a little program now that reads your email and puts up ads for the things you’re talking about.  If you’re inviting someone to play tennis, it puts up ads for tennis rackets and sports shoes.  Internet ads pop up, leap out, dance across the screen, sing at you and seduce you. 
     I am frequently aghast at AOL’s news channels.  I sign on to check my email, and I have to wait while the news of the day in pictures cycles across my screen.  It constantly amazes me that pictures of the depths of grief and agony will be followed by a picture of a gelatine dessert or a pop-singer’s legs.  One day I was looking, grief-stricken, at a picture of a father carrying his dead child out of the rubble of the bombing in Lebanon.  He was screaming out in anguish, and it was almost too much to bear.  But in a second, the picture changed to the new Razor Flip-Phone in New Hot Colors!
     How can people endure it?  How can they stand the sheer volume of input that modern media subject you to?  I have difficulty just getting through Wal-Mart.  One day recently I literally fell to my knees in the checkout line because I got dizzy from reading all the signs.  There was no where I could rest my eyes from advertising slogans.  There was not one bit of space I could look at except for the tile floor that didn’t have writing on it saying “Buy now! 50% off! Great deal!  Hot Bargain! Price Reduction! New Flavor! New Color! Rebate!”
     There is no real purpose behind these magazines and shows.  I will admit there is a liberal slant in the media, but for the most part, they’re not deliberately pursuing it.  They’re just eagerly grabbing for the cash.  Whatever will get attention will sell ad space.  It’s that simple.  “The love of money is the root of all evil.”  Now who said that?  Let me think…
        A human being is more than the sum of their checking account!  Advertising execs are so good at their jobs now.  They have so much information on how to manipulate us it’s almost impossible not to be influenced by them.  They get their name or message in almost subconciously, between sound bites, and then stores are so crowded and overwhelming they don’t give you time to think.  Buying has become very impulse-driven, with end-caps and aisle displays and the little plastic strips of things hanging in front of stuff, because if they hassle and rush you, you will impulsively buy what they have programmed you to remember.  What you saw on CNN.  What you read by the highway.  In the Brave New World we are building you will NEVER be out of earshot of a radio or T.V.   Every waking moment you will be bombarded by ads.  And I will go stark, staring mad.
     In the meanwhile, I am fighting back.  I will not give them adspace in my brain.  I will not look at their shows.  I will not buy a flip phone, a diet pill, or a bubble skirt.  I do not want a new flavor of chicken nugget, and I do not accept calls from phone solicitors.  I am going outside to sit in the grass and teach my children how to make daisy chains.  After dinner, I might knit or watch the sunset and the bats.  It’s not that I don’t care about people or the world or the news, I’m just sick of being mentally machine-gunned by people who think I’m nothing but a target audience or a consumer focus group.
    Oh well… end of rant.  Sorry guys.  Buy Pepsodent. 

With the Golden Age of Television long dead, we are left to wonder what would fill the void left when many good family shows left the airwaves.  MTV, which has long been on the cutting edge of our “progressive society”, has risen to a new level.  “Next” is just one of the quality programs that I had the pleasure of viewing here in the last several weeks.  “Next” is a dating game with a modern twist.  The show is set up with five contestants riding in a RV trying to win a date with the sixth and main contestant who is in a van in front of them.  The main contestant will be introduced to the others one at a time and with each introduction the potential couple will have a “mini date”.  If the main contestant does not like the way the date is going or the looks of their date, they can simply say “next” and that person is sent back to the RV and the next contestant comes out to continue the date.  Throughout the show all of the contestants brag about their likes and dislikes with a variety of sexual suggestion, with the punch line being the more vulgar the better.  It also is quite apparent that to demean and put down others on the show is expected and encouraged.  The show concludes when and if the main contestant decides that he/she would like to go on a second date with one of the other contestants.  The main contestant must make their intentions clear and ask if they would like to go on another date.  It is at this point that the twist comes because there has been a clock running to keep time on how long the mini date lasted.  The main contestant must offer their date a choice between the second date and the money that would be equal to the amount time the date lasted.It seems clear that MTV’s unstated goal with this program is a return to the “if it feels good do it” mentality of the Sixties.  The people who are contestants on this show range in age from 18 to 25 with no real desires to find love in a lasting and stable relationship.  The idea is find the next person to “hook up” with and then move on with no strings attached.  The preoccupation with sex and the fulfillment of those desires is obvious to anyone with half a brain watching this show.  These twenty-something’s having been sold a lie that this is how they must live in order to truly enjoy life.  They live from one party or relationship to the next in search of the next high that will be better than the previous one. At its core this show is teaching our youth that marriage and family are not important because if you choose those things you are somehow missing out on all the fun.  The grass is always greener on the other side on the fence, is the dominating thought.  Or they simply feel that they can always do the marriage thing later after they have had their fun, but at what cost to them mentally and physically.  They do not realize that through all those experiences they will take that baggage with them into any relationship they hope to have.  It eventually places people into prison where they are incapable of expressing love or receiving it from another person.  Trust and honesty is something that most will say they want in a relationship but because they are truly devalued and de-emphasized, many people are unable to trust and be trusted.  This program perpetuates a flawed and failing mind set among the “MTV” generation that Godly principals and values are not for them.  Their desire is to seize the day no matter what the consequences, believing and hoping that it won’t catch up to them.  With programs like this, Hollywood has successfully erased and redrawn the lines of what is acceptable in today’s society.  There is no right or wrong anymore, it has all become relative depending solely on the individual’s own value system.  In these politically correct times the church as failed in large part to stand up to this onslaught for fear of being offensive.  We have become a people that have gone from loving truth to hiding from it, proclaiming that those who disagree with this lifestyle are being judgmental and should loosen up.  Sex is not to be enjoyed inside the safety of marriage but to be a never-ending pursuit of the next conquest or fantasy.  Not realizing that it will never bring peace and satisfaction, but emptiness and a longing for more. I do not believe that America will be conquered by some foreign military power but instead, we will crumble in on ourselves as we continue to destroy the very foundation that made this the greatest nation in the free world.  The family.

The desire to know what the future holds for a loved one or our self is a natural human tendency.  Yet without a doubt, society as a whole now seeks to gain that knowledge from sources other than the Lord.  Daytime dramas, talk shows and prime time TV series reveal multitudes desiring foreknowledge of their future.  TV scripts include witchcraft, horoscopes, ouija boards and mediums (those who supposedly hear from the dead).   Individuals travel across the country to gain access to talk shows whose main guests are world-renowned psychics. 

Christians call psychic phone lines, read their horoscopes, and tune in to programs of professing mediums.  Many are reading books written by people who claim to have intimate knowledge of the spirit realm.  Some truly believe that the Lord Himself has ‘blessed’ these people with ‘special gifts’. 

One psychic in particular repeatedly proclaims she is a Christian but does not believe in hell, satan or demons.  As a believer in reincarnation, this same woman has informed countless men and women they have lived in another time and place.  Members in the audience who live in haunted homes are instructed to salt the house and property, go through each room in their home with a crucifix and finally to send the ghost to the white light of the Holy Spirit. 

During one such talk show recently, a member of the clergy actually stood in the audience and praised God for the gift placed in this woman.  That image even now grieves my heart.  Wearing his clerical collar proudly, he stood before the cameras that day seemingly without a shred of conscience declaring her ‘gifts’ to be from the Lord.  He failed to acknowledge what the Scripture says concerning this grievous sin.   This particular psychic has repeatedly declared her beliefs as fact, yet she also seemingly has no regard that her beliefs contradict the Bible.

Many churches have failed to educate members of their flock with the truth from Scriptures.  The lack of sound teaching in this area seems to stem possibly from several major issues. First, pastors who crave peace will not speak in an attempt to prevent any controversy or conflict within the congregation.  Secondly, pastors who fear for their position in a church fail to speak truth out of self-perseverance.  Sadly, another major problem is that many clergy today do not know or take seriously the importance of teaching their sheep truth in these areas.

Indeed this is a grievous sin in the eyes of the Lord.  The Israelites were forbidden to even allow individuals who were spiritists or mediums to be found among them.

Deuteronomy 18:10-12 “There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or one who practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For all who do these things are an abomination to the Lord, and because of these abominations the Lord your God drives them out from before you.” 

The Lord used the word abomination.  The Strong’s Concordance reveals the word abomination as the word:  to‛e’bah meaning something disgusting morally, abhorrence; especially idolatry or an idol:—abominable (custom, thing), abomination.  This word comes from the root ta‛ab which is a primitive root that means to loathe, that is, morally detest:— abhor, be, commit more, do abominable (-y).   

Without a doubt, the Lord hates and loathes this activity and never intended His people to tolerate anyone who practiced any form of this evil.  The punishment for anyone practicing such crafts was death as revealed in Leviticus 20:27  

“A man or a woman who is a medium, or who has familiar spirits, shall surely be put to death; they shall stone them with stones. Their blood shall be upon them.” 

Hebrews 9:27 totally refutes the possibility of reincarnation as a lie.    “And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment,”   

Yet followers listen as psychics and mediums loudly proclaim individuals have lived repeatedly through out history.  One young woman who frequently woke up experiencing a choking sensation received the revelation that in a previous life; she was a man who had been hung.  At that point, instruction was given to pray asking God to let the effects of her past to no longer have any affect on her before she slept each night. 

Many pastors have failed to address these issues from the pulpit.  They do not minister what the Lord thinks about these actions or their consequences.  Leadership has failed to teach what the different terms in the Bible mean or how they operate in today’s society.  They do not realize these are forms of the occult and practicing them is a sin before the Lord.  

How many of the God’s people have fallen into this trap simply out of ignorance?  Even sin committed out of ignorance does not free us from the responsibility before the Lord for our actions.  By seeking wisdom and insight outside the realm of His kingdom we place a wedge, or wall between us and the very One we desire to serve.   

Only one answer exists for this problem.  Pastor must responsibly speak truth to their congregation, exposing the tricks of our enemy to divert God’s chosen from His ways.  Scriptures must be studied to discover what the Lord expects of His people.  As the truth of His word is uncovered, those who have willingly walked into the sin of seeking wisdom and insight outside of the Lord and His divine way must recognize their mistakes. As they acknowledge their shortcomings, He will keep His promise in I John 1:9  

 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

I spent ten and a half years working in TV and can attest to the fact that there are little redeeming qualities there. Even the news is mostly sensationalism and very few in-depth reports are done to uncover truth but rather to get the ratings. My insider view of how things worked started to unravel in the late 80’s. I and a group of Christians at WTVD grew more and more alarmed at how blatant local programming was becoming. We spoke up often and vocally, and interfered with programming of the news when we could catch videos that were obviously shot for their graphic nature, and would take them back down to the editor protesting. Two of my friends were even bolder than I, and although I prayed for them, and didn’t tell the management what they planned to do, I didn’t actively participate in one of their bold moves. The young lady at master control knew that our station was going to air a program on breast cancer and early detection. She felt strongly that it was unnecessary to actually show a woman’s breast but that they were doing it to be provocative. So when the segment aired she left the volume up, but put up a slide stating technical difficulties. This was 1986. She was fired the next day. Another young man a month later while running master control late at night was watching porn on the satellite dish. He inadvertently pressed the wrong button during a commercial break and put some rather graphic video on the air. He too was let go the following morning. FCC rules and regulations could have easily shut us down for both incidents.Two years later I left the business and stayed home with my son and rarely watched TV. The one thing I did learn during those years is money moves the industry, and NEWS is just as much an industry as soap operas or game shows. When you watch TV, or read Time magazine you are being given a liberal non Christian point of view. I personally think it is important to know the issues of the day, and to read magazines like Time. But I also read Christian literature, and pray for eyes to see the truth. One frustration I find with Christian media is that they do not report the news nearly enough, nor do they seek to find hard hitting answers to today’s questions. Stem Cell research, poverty, education and imbalance of power between the rich and the poor. This is real stuff, and should be brought into the open and discussed. I admire Focus on the Family for their approach to politics and the issues of our day, and I am grateful for the few who do stand up to be counted. The majority of Christians are looking to be entertained, and pacified. Hoping the TV shows will numb the quiet voice calling them to deep intercessory prayer, fasting and seeking God’s face. I’m certain we all need to unwind and let go of the days concerns, I just wonder if we know we are being taken in. Our senses are so blunted we barely notice what we are seeing and hearing. We cry out “Lord set us on Fire, purify us.” Then we watch programs that allow us to simmer into carnal Christianity without us noticing the difference.

The first thing I saw when I started working in TV in 1978 was the carnage of the deaths at the Bob Jones suicide. All of those people spread out on the ground with tiny Dixie cups in their hands. I wept. The entire video feed never reached the airwaves in those days; today it would be completely acceptable. I still weep.