by Nick Page

The media are all around us. They speak to us when we are least aware of them; they replay their messages when we do not expect them. The media that we are most aware of often take more concentration to engage with. The media are part of our culture; they affect us all. We are all products of our culture. We are affected by it. So the media obviously influence the way we think and speak.

But how do we respond to the media? First we must distinguish between the public media and the specifically missionary or gospel media.

Some of us use supermarkets for most of our groceries, but occasionally we seek out delicatessens or private bakers to provide some particular food we like. Likewise Christians, although receiving most of their information, education and entertainment from the public media, turn to gospel radio and TV stations, and to Christian magazines, to fulfil the distinctive, specialist needs they have which the public media cannot provide.

The media have been likened to a see-saw; at one end they can say a lot to a few, and at the other a little to many. The Christian media are on the former end, the public media on the latter.

Many people want to break the see-saw. They want to force the media to do what they cannot do. A pastor friend of mine is not only a preacher and teacher but also a writer and broadcaster. He was saying to me that it is important for us to understand that television for instance, is a creation medium not a salvation medium. It is very difficult for it to express deep spiritual truths without them getting distorted. He is a regular speaker on a national radio news magazine. His underlying aim is to subvert the non-Christian culture, to create doubt in the minds of unbelievers. That is a wise use of the medium he is contributing to.

But this is not a new fad. William Wilberforce (famous for abolishing the slave trade in the 19th century) used what he called "launchers" in conversation with non-Christian friends. They were teasers that they could pick up and question him further about his faith and about Jesus Christ.

Jesus himself did not preach or teach in detail to the general public. That was reserved for the disciples, his followers. In public he mostly told stories and responded to questions. We must think very carefully HOW we communicate -- both through specialist channels and through the public media. Public media can have impact because they have public attention -- and that is why it is imperative that we encourage others with a Christian understanding to get involved as well.

I suggest that there are three main reactions among Christians to the public media:

1. We recoil in horror at some of the things we see and hear - the offensive, the divisive, the materialistic, the permissive, the atheistic, the violent. We say this is not honouring to God. We will no longer buy newspapers, read novels, watch television, listen to the radio. We will concentrate instead on building stronger relationships within the family, with our church fellowship; we will read the scriptures more, and books of biblical commentary, and Christian biography. At all costs we will remain unspotted by the world. We won't risk being contaminated by the evil which communicates itself through the public media. That's one approach to the issue.

2. The second and opposite approach that's widely practised is that for one reason or another we soak up everything we see and hear indiscriminately. Sometimes I think people assume that everything we see that isn't expressed in theological terms is somehow neutral. So we fall into the trap of of thinking that with the exception of excessively violent or sexually explicit scenes, most of the output of television companies, and book and magazine publishers, has nothing to do negatively or positively with our faith. So while the first reaction to the public media is one of total rejection (at least in theory) the second is unthinking acceptance.

But there is a third way...

3. Those on the receiving end of the media (that is, all of us) must develop a response to the media in which we do just that - "respond". We must encourage people not to be seduced by the idea that everything that is not explicitly making a point is therefore neutral. And not to assume that if we use apparently wholesome, creative, entertaining TV or radio or films or novels, or magazines or music to help us unwind, to relax, to give us some well-deserved entertainment, then we don't really need to apply any real standards of judgement. We may even find ourselves beginning to think that judging, testing the spirits, is for theological issues, for philosophical arguments, not for entertainment. That can be very wrong. The ideas of the permissive society have not been sold to our young people by philosophical treatises or lectures by secular humanists. They have been soaked up by being implicitly advocated in much of their light entertainment, demonstrated in the lifestyles of their heroes and of their friends. It is subconscious, and thereby that much more dangerous.

(to be continued)

(Taken from Ricefields Journal Vol III No. 1)

 

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