"Building A Better Me"

Disclaimers are usually a dead giveaway for excuses. But I’m going to use one anyways, regardless of what anyone thinks. I am not as shallow as this column could perceive me to be. I am a cultured, intelligent, smart human being, despite the fact that I watch a lot of TV. Or maybe it is because of the fact that I watch a lot of TV. Either way, I’m probably in the minority.

Television was once viewed as a “Hell-evision” by pastors and Christian ministers nationwide. Parishioners across the country were implored to throw their “Hell-evisions” away because they allowed evil into your home and spirit. That was the message being preached for years no matter how incorrect it was. To this day, some churches continue to preach that same message. (The funny thing is, these same pastors and ministers still have a TV in their homes.) But what people fail to understand is it is not what you see and hear that corrupts you; it’s what you do with what you see and hear that corrupts you. The television is no more corrupt than the person you sit next to at work who drinks on the weekend and sleeps with anyone with a job and a car. Just because you work with them doesn’t mean that you’re a sinner, too. It’s the same way with television. If you spend more time in front of the TV than you do in prayer or reading the Word, then it’s not the TVs fault. I believe that’s why we were given free will.

It always drove me crazy when I was a teenager in a Christ-centered youth group and a couple of people always said that “TV was a time-wasting, evil box ran by the devil.” And no, I’m not making that up. I felt condemned sometimes because I owned a TV and I liked to watch it. It’s amazing how Christians can make other people feel about what they do, no matter how truly insignificant. Just because I like to watch Survivor, 24, Heroes and Jericho, does not mean that I’m not a “real Christian.” That’s a ridiculous notion. I have enough willpower to know when enough is enough. I have enough discipline to turn off the tube and spend some time in prayer. But the notion that because I have a TV in my home makes me somehow less of a person is ridiculous.

Wait, I own two.

Oh, the shock and horror.

Anyways, that’s the not the reason I’m writing today. I just got sucked into a little tangent.

The last couple of weeks, I’ve been hooked on a show called 30 Days. It hasn’t been on the air in a year (although I hope a third season is in the works), so I’ve had to resort to downloading the first two seasons to my Zune. And it’s been an enlightening two weeks for me to say the least.

(And by the way, Zunes are amazing. It’s the first thing that Microsoft has copied from Apple and actually improved upon. If you’re in the market for a MP3 player, I highly recommend them.)

30 Days was created by Morgan Spurlock, who was nominated for an Oscar® for his documentary Super Size Me, an experiment on what his life would be like if he lived on McDonald’s for a 30 straight days. (I highly recommend this movie. It’s a real eye-opener.) In the same vane, 30 Days follows various people in mirrored opposite ways of life for 30 days so they can see how other people live. In one episode, a conservative Christian man from West Virginia moves to a densely populated Muslim community in Michigan and lives as they live. He had to follow their prayer schedules, eat the same food, dress the same, and participate the same traditions and duties as any given Muslim-American. It gave him the opportunity to witness first hand that, while the beliefs pertaining to God, Allah, Jesus and Mohammed are vastly different, not all Muslims believe in terrorism or destroying America.

The thing that I took from it was that, if anything, Christians could actually learn something from Muslims. Christians are very good at abusing God’s grace by using the excuse – whether consciously or otherwise – that “it’ll be ok, God will forgive me.” Muslims on the other hand are self-disciplined because they try to appease Allah as best they know how.

The Qur’an says that alcohol is off limits, in not so many words, but the Muslims portrayed in this episode did not look for a loophole. They did not let alcohol touch their lips. The Bible says that drinking is not the problem, rather getting drunk. However, I know several Christians that disregard that passage completely because “it is fun,” or “Jesus turned water into wine, so it’s ok,” or “I was too legalistic about it in the past, so I’m just loosening up now.” See what I mean? Christian loopholes.

But all in all, it’s a lack of self-control and an inexistent desire to truly please God.

So I’ve learned a lot by watching TV. Think what you will, but the fact remains that TV isn’t as bad as people have said. It’s actually quite enlightening at times.