Here's the lineup inside a child's head these days: Superman, Zoro, Jesus Christ, The Force, The Wizard, The Vampire. Lazarus was raised from the dead by magic; the tempest was stilled by zapping; a fairy god-mother woke Joseph to tell him to take Mary and babe to Egypt. Junk fantasy and one's "take" on a spiritual life are all currently wrapped up into one bailiwick in the modern child's mind. The vast majority of children no longer know nor sing "Jesus Loves Me" nor "The B-I-B-L-E" but they can sing "I Can Fly" (from Peter Pan) flawlessly. They go to bed with songs from "Frozen" (a movie chock full of homosexual innuendo) and wake up to "trance" their siblings with phrases from "........". When asked to sing you a song (you have in mind something like "I'm a little teapot"), the little ones come forth rendering a rock song complete with an exact imitation of the rock star's breathy sexual voice, and words far beyond their experience base. When you ask for them to share something from their day yesterday, you get a full discourse on the latest sit-com or movie. In some homes the children have never seen anyone press the "off" button on the big screen. Our children may be standing in front of us physically, but psychologically, make no mistake, they are far from having both feet in this reality. Do we, as parents, want this? Really?
Let's take stock. Might the sheer magnitude of the imprinting be too large for their little spirits? How many clear thoughts could you think if the US Navy Band came in and surrounded you and blasted away? The media is engulfing them, overwhelming them, sinking them. They collectively are in a tsunami and don't have the wherewithal to get out, nor want to get out. They've been wined and dined into joining the ranks on the other side...victims of the Patty Hearst syndrome—"if you stay with 'em (it) long enough—you'll prefer to live with the enemy." Our modern children live on a diet of intense fake desserts all day long, unaware that the content is really gravel. Children are routinely sucked up into worlds and dilemmas that they will never face in real life, and simultaneously are not given real answers for the things they will face. They are consummately distracted from learning how to gain real succor from their Maker, or how to engage with fighting the real enemy of their soul, against temptations that will overtake them in their naïveté. They are distracted from a real chance to perform positive works of righteousness in a very needy world, from taking daily tours of duty right in their own homes, and from exerting hard, strong endeavors in progressive entrepreneurial industry in the larger world. How can this be a good state of affairs?
But the worst of it—the very worst of it—is that not knowing who Jesus Christ is to them, as distinct from fantasy, is killing the life of their little soul by degrees. Holiness is a long forgotten appetite, atonement an anathema, the final judgment a fairy tale, His comforts during life's inscrutable moments unknown to them. The blurring of who the Messiah is to the children of the 21st century is no accident. It is deliberate, a well-crafted super structure hell-bent on ignoring Him. A people with no soul are far easier to manipulate, by the way. And if our children have no soul (but have become mere parrots of Hollywood) would it not have been far better to have never been born?
Think before turning the media switch on. After this "viewing" where will their little minds run—and how frequently will they return there? Are they mentally most occupied with God and the Bible, and their real neighbor, consumed with and eager for their real work, or the other? Where does this lead? There is a velocity to life. We've already used up our capital with the years we've been duped into all of this...how goes the future? Further, where is the point of no return for our child? Could we discern it when it happened? I think not. This is dangerous, dangerous business.
For a quick read related to this topic, see this eBook: TV Watching out of Control.
