Are You Watching Yet?

Taking a break from politics, let’s talk about something light, like the media, pop-culture their affects on society.

The Bachelor. AIM. Seventeen Magazine. Covergirl Top Model. e-mail. Survivor. Xbox 360. Bachelorette. PS2. The OC. Punk’d. TRL.

Everything starts with the question, the question that pull us to and fro, demanding attention, demanding to be answered. There’s one being posed to you at this very moment probably. It’s asking you right now.

Are you watching yet?

That is the ever looming, constant drone of a question that hangs around you, perpetually suspended in the atmosphere, waiting for you to respond. Are you watching yet? Put this article down. Put that book down. Stop talking to your friends.
“Watching? Watching what?” you might say.

But the question ignores you and becomes all the more incessant. And you’re not alone; it’s asking all of your friends, too. And each day it finds another way to ask you, another creative means to slide in front of your face and lure you in. But for others, the relentless nagging has finally permeated their minds and they have changed their answer.

“Yes, I am watching.”

However, instead of silencing the little voice, this provocative answer has actually does the opposite. A victim has been found. And instead of backing away from a new convert, the question haunts them more loudly than before and moves in for the kill. It is like a smooth-climbing spider that has caught a fly and laughs at the winged insect’s futile attempt to free itself.

So what are you talking about, Christopher?

Two weeks ago I went to Wal-Mart and bought The Transformers: Double Disc Collectors Edition of the recent box office hit. Unlike many of the teens that went to see the movie, I grew up with the original cartoon. Watching that movie was a journey to Mecca, a temporary state of nirvana. But my wife still doesn’t understand why. In her words, asking her if she wants to see Transformers is like asking me if I want to see her Barbie collection from when she was little. Not really. Point taken. I have my “Manly DVD Cabinet of Power,” she has her make-up collection.

I haven’t had cable now for about 4 years. But I watch stuff when we’re visiting friends or family. Call me a heathen bound for hell, but I liked the first few seasons of American Idol. Because I’m a former kick boxer and I like Sugar Ray, the reality series The Contender with Stalone had me visiting my aunt’s house on a semi-weekly basis. And just because I can’t stop laughing when I watch it with my wife, Everybody Loves Raymond, has to be our favorite sitcom–and we were sad to see it end.

How about video games? Since I’m airing out all my dirty media-laundry, I might as well tell you I own an X-Box and, yes, I do plan on getting the new one someday. To my wife’s dismay I actually enjoy getting on Ghost Recon II and taking out Communist North Korean’s with my state-of-the-art military assault rifle. And don’t act like you don’t either; because either you or someone you know, if honest, can completely identify with me.

Music? Sure! Anyone who’s visited my site at least once knows that I not only like music, I get paid to make it! And if you come over to my house and ask me what I listen to, I’ll show you everything from Dave Matthews and Sting to Norah Jones and Diana Krall. What about Christian music? Sure I own it, but that’s not the point I’m trying to make.

The fact is that worldly media surrounds us all. We are immersed in it. It’s quickly becoming the backbone of our culture. And whether you chose to admit it or not, 98.2% of the people you meet are media junkies at some level or another. How did I get this number? From the US Census Bureau which found that 98.2% of Americans owned at least one TV in 2001. And the average amount of hours spent watching those TVs was 1,669 hours per year, or about 70 full days in 2004.

Did you read that?

Think of it: 98.2% of Americans spent 70 days in front of the TV in 2004. And many of them, much more time, because playing video games isn’t classified as “watching TV.” That’s a whole separate category.

Another private study (Nielsen, 2003) found that 70% of males, ages 18-34 played over 30 billion hours of video games in one year. And still another study by MediaFamily.org released findings that most children’s “non-school” hours were spent playing video games or on the computer.

So what does all this mean from my perspective? Well, first off, I’m not about to go off on a rampage about what’s “good” and what’s “bad” to watch, listen to and play. Sure I may think that watching a bunch of people stuck on an island is about as stupid as watching cheese balls disintegrate in a cup of water. But other people may say American Idol is equally as dumb. Each family is different and I cannot make the rules for anyone’s family but my own.

I do know that in my household I would never desire my daughter to watch something that demeans her feminine characteristics and shows her that she is to be an “object” for the whole world to indulge in (like the Top Model Covergirl reality show). I know that I would not my son to watch some Bachelor series that paints a “try it out” lifestyle of love, heartbreak and infidelity. When I saw that show I had to laugh at how stupid I thought it was, although very entertaining; but then I remember being so grieved knowing that millions or girls and guys are being sold a lie. And even with American Idol, we have to be clear that these people aren’t our idols and that not everything that show portrays is correct and Godly. Family’s need to make their own rules and guidelines. I’m all for it! Go to it!

I want to make a strong point about is a very simple word: TIME. To illustrate, I’ll use a simple story.

My first youth pastor once told me an amazing fact about himself. “Christopher,” Pastor Tim said during a youth retreat we were on together, “when I was in high school and college, all I did was play Dungeons and Dragons. Hour after hour, day after day, I spent consumed in that game, learning every detail and getting better and better at it. Me and a few friends would get together every day after school and all during the weekends, on through summer break and between classes in college.” But what he said next I never forgot. “And then, a few weeks after I was saved in college, I became very sad with a profound revelation: had I spent all those thousands of hours studying scripture and lost in prayer, I could be the Pope by now.”

Well, not really. Both of us were protestant evangelicals. But I got his point.

A wise man once told me, “If you show me your calendar and your check book, I can tell you what you love and who you serve.” Boy is that true.

See, I don’t have a problem with the idea of video games or music or TV or movies. Yes, the content of them is highly debatable and needs to be governed in your individual life, but they are merely “things,” just as are food, possessions and clothes. But what I do have a problem with is how much time our culture, and specifically our young people, spend immersed in those “things.” Granted, I’m saying this as a published author and recording artist! Seems like bad business.

But I sincerely challenge you to examine your own life. Look at how much time you spend watching TV, or instant messaging your friends or playing video games. A study done by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that high school students spend an average 40 minutes a day instant messaging friends, 31.4 minutes downloading music and 22 minutes sending and reading e-mail. Ask yourself this question; what if all those teenagers spent those 93.4 minutes a day in prayer and reading their Bibles? What kind of a culture would we have today?

And do you know what the Kaiser Family Foundation sited as the number one reason for this behavior?

“Because I’m bored.”

Bored? No wonder our nation is changing so rapidly; we serve the Maker of the Universe and we are bored? A friend of mine once asked a teen girl at church if she thought God was boring. She shrugged her shoulders and eventually said, “Yes, I do.” He looked right at her and said, “The truth is, He’s not boring. You are.”

Now about my TV. Someone else gave me the same challenge I just gave you. And after examining my life, I realized I was a TV addict. Maybe not as bad as some, but enough to where I noticed I would “zone out” when other people were in the room, and eventually to such a place that it began to dictate my life. When I still lived at home, my mom would have trouble getting me to do dishes and help clean the house and pick up after myself (not only a sign of disrespect but of addiction). It was then I realized I needed a change.

I ended up moving to work for a ministry later that year and when I got a new place I didn’t bother to get a new TV. It wasn’t until after I was married that my wife and I decided to get a TV–but it’s not plugged in. We decided that we didn’t want cable in our home. We use it to watch DVDs now and then and to play a little Xbox with the youth group guys. I even broke down and found a deal on a projector last year (a life long dream); we have set up in our family room. It makes Storm Troopers 7′ tall! But still no cable. I finally realized how much more time I had for my family, my friends, to build relationships and to enjoy life, and not worry so much about a whole bunch of fake people’s lives.

Not mention how much more productive of a person I became.

People ask me all the time, “How do you have so much time to do everything you do, Christopher? You travel, record CDs, write books, pastor, speak, lead worship, organize conferences, open restaurants; how do you do it?”

I just smile and say, “I don’t have cable.”

Oh yeah, when I got rid of TV, I also had more time for Jesus. Imagine that.