the 23rd channel

The 23rd Channel


The TV is my shepherd, I shall not want.
It makes me lie down on the sofa.
It leads me away from the faith.
It destroys my soul.
It leads me in the path of sex and violence for the sponsor's sake.
Yea, though I walk in the shadow of Christian responsibilities,
There will be no interruption, for the TV is with me.
Its cable and remote control, they comfort me.
It prepares a commercial for me in the presence of my worldliness.
It anoints my head with humanism and consumerism.
My coveting runneth over.
Surely, laziness and ignorance shall follow me all the days of my life,
And I shall dwell in the house watching TV forever.

Author Unknown

Just what is in that electronic box so many of us devote many hours of our lives to?

I have gone to visit friends and had them leave the TV on the whole time of our visit. I have also see them almost beside themselves because they didn’t have the TV on to watch the latest this or that. Ouch! How not to make a friend feel important or welcome!

I have more and more become convinced that the TV in the living room of America has become an idol to most folks.

Idolatry is usually defined as worship of any cult image, idea, or object, as opposed to the worship of a monotheistic God.

Worship is etymologically derived from Old English words meaning "worth-ship". Giving worth to something.[1] In its older sense in English of worthiness or respect (Anglo-Saxon,worthscripe), worship may on occasion refer to an attitude towards someone of immensely elevated social status, such as a lord or a monarch, or, more loosely, towards an individual, such as a hero or one's lover.

How many Americans would rush home to watch American Idol and leave their Bible on the shelf to gather dust?

How many Christians have hours of time to spend watching TV, but never seem to find the time for Bible study or prayer time?

TV can do some of the following:

It can keep families from spending quality time together. Separate husbands and wives, leaving the other feeling left out or unimportant.

TV can corrupt our minds with an endless flow of immorality, vanity, greed, violence and dissatisfaction with how we look, what we are and what we own.

TV can corrupt young minds with things that they are in no way mature enough to handle.

TV presents people as idols and promotes immoral people as people to look up to. True heroes have largely lost their relevance in our artificial reality world of TV.
TV gobbles up huge parts of our lives which could be used for so many more important endeavors. Many worthwhile organizations, devoted to helping others, are now begging for help. Could this be overcome by less TV?

And yes, TV does make us lazy and even fat. Once settled into an evening on the couch, we are content to stay there until bedtime.

It is hard to break the TV habit and it surely is a habit. We at first feel restless and bored. We may even feel a bit lost or edgy. But this will pass. As we gradually take back our lives from the remote control. We learn that it is much easier to leave the TV off, than it is to turn the TV off. As time goes by, our own creativity returns. We begin to crave the company of other people and not the artificial relationship we had with the TV.

We are each given an amount of time on this earth. How can we discover how we were intended to spend that time if we are always distracted by a TV? We will all one day stand before the Lord and give an account of how we spent our lives. I don’t think He meant us to waste our lives in hedonistic pursuits. Is it “remotely” possible that you too need to turn TV off and turn your own life back on?