Analysis of American Christianity - Television

“Be ye holy therefore as I am holy.” “Be ye perfect as my Father in heaven is perfect.” “Woe unto them that call good evil and evil good.” “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.” I was dropping my cousin off at his house and I walked inside and sat down, they were watching TV. What I saw terrified me. There was a divorced couple lying on a hospital bed together stuck in the act of intercourse and unable to separate themselves. The doctors were instructing them to gyrate in a certain manner in order to separate themselves, and the man appeared to be at the point of orgasm. At this point I had seen enough and had to get up and leave. The only reason I mention this is because this occurred on what could be the most popular show on television right now, ‘Gray’s Anatomy’. This was my first encounter with this show, but I imagine that this is fairly normal, and it will hopefully be my last encounter with it. This does not make me all that angry, but it breaks my heart into a million pieces. So many of us in the Church do not live in the fullness of Christ because we are not strangers in this land, we are not pilgrims heading to a heavenly country. We have full citizenship here on earth, and we only hope to transfer that citizenship at death. Let this no longer be, let our citizenship be in heaven, and let us find no pleasure in the things of this world. The ‘church’ in America today is so blind to holiness and the righteousness of God that even shows like ‘Gray’s Anatomy’ are consumed by her without thought. Even worse than the fact the church can watch this, is the fact that I am sure that some publisher is most likely developing some sort of Sunday school curriculum that is based off of this show. Come on, the only attraction to these shows is the immorality which they contain. I have heard so many professing Christians discussing Gray’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, and every other vile show, when I think the show that most suits them might very well be ‘Lost’ (note sarcasm). Have we no concept of the righteousness of God? Do we even know Him? If the Holy Spirit actually dwelt in us would we not be grieved by these shows, would we not be convicted by the Spirit and have our consciences smitten when we watched them? We the church take a different approach, instead of saying ‘touch not the unclean thing’, we consume iniquity like it is water and then turn around and say ‘We are engaging the culture’. I think if we actually obeyed Christ we would be ‘enraging the culture’. Note the fate of all but one of the first apostles. We are so hypocritical, all of us, I certainly am not exempt. We say things like ‘We need the Ten Commandments back in government and the schools.” We do not even have them in our own house. We say keep the commandments, and then we watch ‘Gray’s Anatomy’ and take pleasure in adultery. We watch sports and participate in idol worship. We watch CSI and take pleasure in Murder. We watch MTV and take pleasure in the dishonoring of parents, we take pleasure in the NFL’s Sabbath breaking, come on! We break every commandment just with our television, let alone the rest of our lives. I hear a lot of arguments saying that TV is just recreation and diversion. Why would we want to have a diversion from Holiness, from Christ? I do not understand, diversion is what we are striving to eliminate in our lives… right? We have a God that is love; we should turn our TVs off and revel in His amazing love. We are polluting our souls with filth, and we do not even know it! Sports, TV, Radio, all these things are killing us, and putting spots on the bride. I will stop for now. We must be broken over this, let us pray for revival, our God is so ready to grant righteousness unto us, let us long for that and not bask in the iniquity the world is feeding us through our television set.