TV Rots your Left and Right Brains

I love those new Hulu.com commercials.  You know, the ones with Alec Baldwin or Seth McFarlan or Dennis Leary.  “TV rots your brains.”  The first time I saw one (during the Super Bowl) I thought, “Um, excuse me, did my dad help you write that commercial, because that was pretty much his mantra when I was a kid.”

I’m not going to lie, the thought of rotten brains kinda freaked me out when I was younger.  Every time I got a headache, I blamed it on Zach Morris or A.L.F.  Fortunately, now that I’m an adult, I know that this TV does not literally rot your brains (side note: why does it rot your ‘brains?’  As far as I know, I’ve just got the one brain.  It has two sides though; maybe that’s where it comes from.  TV rots your right AND your left brain, that’s what they should say from now on, right?).

Anyway, I resented my dad's interference and especially HATED it when he would turn the television off right in the middle of a show.  However, I now understand why he would have been concerned about the state of my brain.  I watched A LOT of television as a kid.  And by A LOT, I mean, WAYYYYY too much.

It began with Sesame Street, progressed to Mr. Roger’s, then Fraggle Rock, Mr. Wizard, You Can’t Say That on Television, Clarissa Explains it All, Family Ties, Small Wonder, The Cosby Show (which I LOVED because it made my mom laugh out loud every time we watched it), Three’s Company, Mama’s Family, The Brady Bunch, The Wonder Years, Growing Pains, Full House, Night Court, Who’s the Boss?, 90210, The New Adventures of Superman, X-Files, Baywatch (not kidding), Cheers, Saturday Night Live, Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman, Seinfeld, Friends, The Simpsons, Dawson’s Creek, Felicity, General Hospital, Guiding Light, Oprah, ER, Six Feet Under, Sex and the City, The West Wing, Arrested Development, 24, Grey’s Anatomy, The Biggest Loser, Mad Men, LOST, The Office (both the British and the American versions), Gilmore Girls, Rome, American Idol and the best show ever created...30 Rock.  And these are just the ones that lasted more than one season.  I could add more, but at this point, it’s kind of embarrassing.

I can tell you right now that if you ask me to list stories from scripture or great theologians or huge moments in church history, my list wouldn’t even be half as long.  I still working out how I feel about having spent so much of my youth getting lost in someone else’s story and consequently denying my own.  My teachers always praised me for having ‘a wonderful imagination‘, and I believe that fueled my love of reading and writing from a very early age.  So, in some ways, television has taught me how to enjoy my creativity.  In other ways, it has taught me how to escape reality and lose myself in daydreams and fantasies.  There were many, many, many days when I would ignore pleas from my little sisters to ‘come outside and play‘ in favor of an episode of Swan‘s Crossing or The Young and the Restless.  Now that just seems like wasted time.

So, what does any of this have to do with Jesus, or Riverside or even Christianity as a whole?  Good question.  I want to take a hard look at how and why we (myself in particular) prefer getting caught up in a good show over allowing ourselves (myself) to be swept away by The Greatest Story Ever Told (the Bible, not the movie staring Willam Defoe).  Is it our sinful nature that draws us away from God with the promise that we will be more satisfied by make-believe than we ever could be with truth?  I can't speak for you, but I know that is the case for myself.  And it's not just television.  It's movies, music, books, blogs, magazines, advertisements, etc.  You name it, I have tried to lose myself in it.  As long as it requires nothing of me beyond playing the part of observer.  When 'they' use the term "target audience", it's pretty much always me 'they're' talking about.

Don't get me wrong, there is much good to be found there in make-believe land.  I believe we are creative people because we have a creative God.  Can you image how excited He must be as our stories play out before His eyes?  He wrote them, after all.  They call him the Great Author sometimes (although I’m still not sure who ‘they’ really are) and His own story is packed with mystery, drama, murder, adventure, revenge, forgiveness and love.  I’d venture to say that our God LOVES a good story.  He just prefers that we not give ourselves over to fiction in order to satisfy our own deep longing for adventure/love/satisfaction.  He gives us those longings in order that we might come to Him to see them fulfilled.  The ending might not be 'happy', but he promises that it will be good.

 

I’d like to jump back and address that ridiculously long list of TV shows I wrote about before.  I realize now that I have spent an extraordinary amount of my life in front of the boob tube.  Just to put your mind at ease, you should know that I am currently living without  a functioning television.  The one I have doesn’t work.  I don’t have cable or a digital convertor box, so I can’t even turn the thing on in the morning to watch the Today show while I get ready (and I lovewaking up to watch Matt Lauer talk about Twitter or Iraq or deer related bicycle accidents, let me tell you).  I pretty much only watch TV when I’m with other people.  I watch 24 and Lost with friends from my House Group (we call it ‘Back to Back Jack’ night), The Biggest Loser with my boss (they have DVR) and the Dog Whisperer with my mom (although she has learned nothing from Caesar Milan about training her own dog).  As with most things, I have found that television is best when shared with others.  

-Anne Simon

P.S. I really believe that if Jesus where walking around in the flesh today, he’s probably guest star on 30 Rock.  I bet Jesus and the Holy Spirit brag about what a good job God did when he created the mind of Tina Fey.  There are no signs of rotting there, just good old comedy leaking out of her into the television for our viewing enjoyment.  It’s not always clean humor, but I myself am a big fan of poop jokes and making light of human delusions and hypocrisies.  Sometimes, I laugh so hard I almost peed my pants.