The New Wave of Christian Families

Growing up, we had a small television hidden inside a cabinet in the living room. We would pull it out for a family movie night every so often. We could get 1 free station on that TV because my parents wouldn’t pay for cable. That free station was the news station- and even that was somewhat blurry. You’d have to bend the cord a certain way to try to get a clearer screen. We did go to the video rental store and rent movies sometimes as a special treat. Usually we’d rent old black and white movies like those of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. We enjoyed those family movie nights immensely. 

On Saturdays, sometimes my dad would take me to his office (he is a lawyer) and I would get to sit for a short time in the conference room, where I could watch cartoons on a large screen. This was great fun and the screen time in my family was extremely limited. Therefore, I learned how to spend countless hours using my imagination and I have many found memories of doing so at our house. 

Our neighborhood had many children, and our next-door neighbors had a girl my age. Her name was Ryane. She ended up becoming my best friend as I grew up. Ryane’s family was not Christian, and they had the TV on almost constantly. I loved that. I would go over there, dying to zone out in front of the TV. We’d watch cartoon after cartoon after cartoon and it was never, ever enough. Hours would go by, and I would get headaches from staring at the screen for so long. They also had video games. I was even more addicted to those. I would desperately crave being able to play them when I wasn’t around them. I’d think about them and think about them, and then when I finally got to play the games it was like blessed relief. But it would be done too soon. Hours and hours would not be enough. It was never enough. 

I found myself less content with using my imagination because I would rather be zoning out at her house. 

Thankfully our friendship grew apart as I entered middle school, and since my family had not changed in their screen usage, I was able to readjust to living a life interacting with my environment and using my imagination. I spent a lot of time roller blading, climbing trees, biking, swimming and reading. 

Fast forward to my adult years. I only had a computer when I graduated college and used it to watch DVDs, but I never got a TV. I never even wanted to get one. I knew it was a waste of time and life. Once I got married and had children, I noticed more how central the TV was to the lives of many of my friends. I realized many of my friends would just leave the TV on when we would get together for playdates…. Which would result in the kids not playing, but just sitting there watching a show while I worried about what was on the screen…. I wanted my child to play with another child, not sit there staring at a screen. I was frequently disheartened with what I saw on the cartoons: sassy kids, crass jokes, introducing sexual content in various ways, bullying portrayed off as funny, etc.  This would upset me so much—that my daughter was seeing this kind of thing— that I would come home and beat myself up for not standing up for her. 

Finally, I got sick of doing that. I found this extremely difficult to do, but I started asking my friends very nicely if they wouldn’t mind turning the TV off when we came over. They all did, which I really appreciated. I really struggled to do this, but when I did it repeatedly, it gradually became easier and easier to do. 

People are often struck by the fact we don’t “do TV”. We’ve had many friends say they wish they could do that. I’ve heard many moms express guilt over the screen time they allow their children, and I’ve heard more than one mom say she would love to take the TV out of their home….Almost as though the TV is an inescapable thing. Something you couldn’t get rid of if you wanted to. Something that HAS to be in your home. …Does it really though? 

If it makes you feel guilt, ask yourself why that is. 

Do you feel guilty when your kids are playing outside? Do you feel guilty when your child is playing with toys or reading a good book? Do you feel guilt when you spend time with your kid? No, of course not. Guilt comes for a reason. And in this case, it is the alarm bell God gives us to notify us that something is wrong. We need to be honest to ourselves about what is happening to our children’s minds and hearts by watching what is on that screen.

I googled the top commercials a few months ago, and the first commercial was for Alexia. In it they swore, and a man walked on the screen without any pants on. 

In another ad for the same company, a woman was sexualizing a man not her husband in multiple overt ways: bathing with him while her husband stands outside the door talking to her, and there was even the sickening comment that things were getting wet around here. She asks him to turn the lights off and he strips his shirt off while all the women in the room drool. 

Then came a car ad for Porche with a rap song whose lyrics are “just stop bitching”, “Killing all these fucking philistines that kill my feed, still a king, chopping off their head like a guillotine” and “I don’t need your respect, I don’t beg for acceptance, ‘cause I take what I need, I never ask for permission”. 

Another ad for Cheetos had the woman lying to her husband about eating them, done to the music “It wasn’t me”, which is well known for talking about how a woman has been caught having sex with another man in all sorts of places around the house. But they changed it to eating Cheetos around the house and lying to him about that. The list could go on and on, but I don’t need to tell you that. You’ve seen the ads. You know what sin is being portrayed as laughable, tempting, or as something for your children to strive after. 

You’ve seen the sexuality, the adultery, lust for what you don’t have, anger, homosexuality, the troding on the weak, the selfishness, lying, and deceitfulness all being portrayed every single day to your children. These things aren’t being done in secret. It is out there for everyone to see. It is normalized and regular.

Didn’t Christ say “If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”? I think many people tend to think of that verse one dimensionally, but Jesus was not a literalist like that. Do we think we do not cause them to sin by allowing their eyes to turn towards these things in our own household when we have the power to prevent it? We are told to follow the Lord at all cost. Even when that cost is truly counter-cultural.

If we refuse to take away things we know are harmful to the heart and mind of our children then we are saying that we think sin is not serious, and that the evils our children are learning do not matter. That means something else has become our God. We care more about something else then we do about following the Lord. 

Christian brothers and sisters, let us start a new wave of the future for Christian families. A wave that prioritizes teaching our children to follow the Lord and to care deeply about what they see with their eyes and do with their time. It is never too late to change course. It is never too late to say “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”