The Media

We live in a culture driven by media and the images it sends us.

Google, satellite-cable TV, Palm Pilots, Blackberries, Movies, DVDs, High Definition, virtual environments, cell phone screens, video games, magazines, billboards, clothing labels, images of what it means to be sexy, attractive and physically desirable, t-shirts, restaurant signs, tennis shoes, flags, newspapers, spiritual symbols, You Tube, Facebook, My Space, camcorder-captured videos, internet sites, blogs, talk radio-personalities, brochures, junk mail, business logos, sports logos, automobile logos, logos imprinted on soap, cereal, chocolate, even pasta noodles.

We are inundated with media and the images it give us. In the words of author Thomas de Zengotita, we are MEDIATED!

Now I’m not here to tell you that the media is bad. In fact there is much good in the media and in our appropriate use of it.

The point I want to make is this: The media is a force. And it shapes us. And we ought to think about what this means for us.

The media forms the basis of many conversations at work. We talk about American Idol and other reality shows. We laugh as we retell scenes from The Office. We recommend movies and video games. We banter about opening day in baseball or the NCAA basketball tournament. We chat about the latest news out of Hollywood or Washington, D.C.

The media feeds us stuff to be passionate about. Talk radio and internet sites get us fired up about political or social issues, crime rates, long commutes to work, rising gas prices, racism, taxes, and fighting violence and poverty around the world.

The media influences our experiences as children and parents. Whether you are a parent or child, you’ve likely been influenced by Dr. Spock, books about birth order and keeping kids on schedules, Baby Einstein videos, sit-com episodes centered around the delivery room, Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers and Clifford the Big Red Dog.

The media shapes our view of marriage. From the time little kids read fairy tales to those evenings when adults watch movies like “The Wedding Planner” and “Runaway Bride,” from bridal websites to bride magazines, we are saturated with media-driven advice and expectations about marriage.

The media influences our preferences in clothing and the way we spend our money.

The media tells us what things we ought to fear. A few years ago many Americans feared the invasion of killer bees from Mexico. Likewise mosquito bites took on a new meaning with the West Nile virus. The flu season, terrorism, the prevalence of child molesters—all these are things we fear (sometimes wisely) because the media has brought them to our attention.

The media has shaped our understanding and view of history by giving us images and words that define almost any decade. What would the 1980s be like without “big hair” or Bon Jovi or movies like “Secret of My Success” and “Wall Street?” What would the 1960s be without Beatle Mania and Woodstock?

The media has given us a common vocabulary. We may not have a lot in common with someone born in the 1920s or 1930s, but we can connect with them if we talk about Hoovervilles, Flappers, Babe Ruth, Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, Charlie Chaplin, Rudolph Valentino, Greta Garbo, Duke Ellington or Louis Armstrong.

The media gives us common access to all kinds of information. Television offers twenty-four hour news channels and specialty channels devoted to golf or football or movies or history or the weather. The World Wide Web provides online newspapers, Web MD, Wikipedia, MapQuest, You Tube and chat rooms.

The media also is the source of many social gatherings and parties. We gather around TV sets to watch the Super Bowl, the Academy Awards and season finales. We spend $10 on a Coke and popcorn to hook up at the movie theater. We purchase tickets to attend rock concerts with friends, and we get-together with those same friends at Starbucks to discuss a book we’ve all read.

The media makes us aware of causes at home and around the world that need our attention or charity—fighting in Afghanistan and in homes across America, poverty in Africa and in our inner-cities, child-labor in China and prostitution on our street corners.

The real question isn’t “Is the media a force that shapes us?” The real question is, “Is there anything you do that remains essentially unmediated? Anything you don’t experience through some media-altered perspective?”

And since the answer is “No” ninety-nine percent of the time, we would be wise to ponder how the media shapes us.

I will suggest, now, perhaps the biggest three ways that the media shapes us.

First, the media makes it more difficult to experience solitude. You can’t get away from its influence. In fact companies pay millions of dollars to let you know that they are always there for you. American Express encourages you: “Don’t leave home without it.” Visa spent over twenty years telling us “It’s everywhere you want to be.” Energizer will never leave you stranded ‘cause it “keeps going and going and going.” Verizon wants you to know that the answer to “Can You Hear Me Now?” will always be “yes,” no matter where you go. AT&T will make sure that you’ve got “Your World Delivered” T-Mobile’s Chief marketing officer Mike Butler sees it as his job to always be with you. “Our customers lead busy, overloaded lives,” he says. “It’s our job to do whatever we can to help make it easier for people to stay connected.”

The media is everywhere. And because it is so accessible these days, it takes a serious-minded effort to remove ourselves from it and find a place of true solitude.

Second, the media makes it more difficult to invest in community. A few years ago, Robert Putnam, a professor at Harvard University wrote a book called Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Renewal of American Community. It’s a book about the loss of community. In it, he documents the role of television in the loss of a sense of community and civic engagement in our lives. He writes:

“Dependence on television for entertainment is not merely a significant predictor of the loss of community in somebody’s life. It is the single most consistent predictor I have discovered. On the basis of quite exhaustive research—nothing, not low education, not full-time work, not long commutes, no poverty, not financial distress, nothing is more broadly or more deeply connected with the loss of community and relational disconnection than is dependence on television for entertainment.”

I read not long ago that the average child, by age six, will have invested more hours watching TV than in speaking with his or her father over an entire lifetime. SIX YEARS OLD! If I’m not mindful, by the age of six, my daughter will have heard more words coming from a TV set than from me until the day I die.

And the only thing I would add to this truth about TV robbing us of time with friends and family is that we now must pay attention to video games, I-Pods and the Internet doing the same thing.

Third, the media makes it more difficult to put others first. I read, recently, a fascinating book called Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live In It (referenced above). The author explores a now famous question that emerged in November of 1963 and the early part of 1964. The question is: “Where were you when JFK was shot.”

And he spends some time writing about the resulting “Where were you when…” phenomenon.

Ask people where they were when JFK was shot or when the OJ Verdict was read or on the morning of 9/11 and people know. They’ve even crafted a little narrative—starring them self.

But go back to Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. Ask people where they were and how they felt when they first heard the news from Pearl Harbor. Their answer? They remember the moment and maybe a story or two. But mostly they don’t talk about themselves—where they were, how they heard, what they felt. Mostly they just talk about Pearl Harbor and its consequences for America. After all, that’s what mattered.

But why don’t they tell “where I was when” stories?

Because they weren’t there. That’s why.

“People who just heard about Pearl Harbor on the radio and read about it in the papers didn’t feel inclined to tell those stories because it didn’t feel as if it had happened to them, personally, at all” de Zengotita writes.

And that’s the difference.

JFK’s assassination happened to us. 9/11 happened to us. The OJ verdict happened to us. Princess Di’s death and funeral happened to us. That’s why people in America, by the thousands were mourning and sending flowers and buying that Elton John single “Candle in the Wind.”

De Zongotita concludes, “In some ways, the media has given each of us a God’s eye view of the world. We can see what’s going on everywhere….This is a form of flattery so pervasive, so fundamental, that it has escaped notice, though it ultimately accounts for the much-remarked narcissism of our age. The flattered self is a mediated self.”

Everything the media does is for you—to win your love, approval, and ultimately your dollars. It has turned us into consumers. It has caused us to think of ourselves first and others second.

The media is a force, a force that makes it more difficult to experience solitude, more difficult to invest in community with family and friends, more difficult to put others first.

Now check out Luke 6, in the Bible.

“One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles….He went down with them and stood on a level place. A large crowd of his disciples was there and a great number of people from all over Judea, from Jerusalem, and from the coastal region around Tyre and Sidon, who had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. (Luke 6: 12-19)”

Henry Nouwen writes about a rhythm to Jesus’ day that’s reflected here. And he points out a pattern. The pattern to Jesus’ rhythm is first solitude, then community, then ministry. Solitude, Community, Ministry. Solitude, Community, Ministry.

In the morning Jesus goes to be alone with God, to be filled up with God’s love and grace. Then he connects with his community. He laughs with them, eats with them, prays with them and mobilizes them. Then together they go out and serve and love others. In solitude Jesus learns to love God. In community he spends time loving those who are part of this circle of friends and family. In ministry he loves and serves and prioritizes those outside his immediate circle of friends.

That’s the rhythm of Jesus’ life.

This rhythm was a pattern for Jesus. You can find this pattern over and over in the Gospels.

So why? Why this rhythm of solitude, then community, then ministry to others.

The answer, I believe, is because this rhythm resulted in a life of love towards God and others.

In Mark 12:29, the Bible records that people come up to Jesus and ask: “What should my life center around? What’s the greatest commandment for life?” Jesus’ answers them “love God and love others.” It was Jesus’ life creed. And so he engaged in solitude, then community, then ministry so that he could live out this central purpose.

Love God. Love Others. That’s our creed too.

So let’s review. The media makes it harder to be in solitude, harder to be in community, and harder to put others first. Jesus prioritized solitude, prioritized community, prioritized others.

See, the biggest danger of the media isn’t the sex, violence or bad language it sometimes offers. The biggest danger of the media is that it has the potential to keep us from those things which result in loving God and others.

The real danger doesn’t lie in what takes place on the TV or computer screen or in that magazine or book. The real danger comes from what doesn’t happen because of media. Unchecked, it will keep me from solitude, keep me from loving those in my community and keep me from loving those outside my community.

That’s why Paul writes,

“Be very careful how you live, not as unwise but as wise, redeeming the time, for the days are evil.” (Ephesians 5:15-16)

And now I want to get a little personal. ‘Cause there is this thing about Jesus. He’s not really into information for information’s sake. He’s always calling us to decisions…actions…steps of faith.

We often say, “I don’t have time!” “I’d love to take the time for solitude, community and serving others. But I just don’t have the time.”

And the reality is that you never have enough time.

If you said, “I’m going to get everything done that my job demands. I’m going to own our company goals, attend every meeting, network with every co-worker, complete every project, take advantage of every opportunity,” when would you leave the office?

Never. There’s not enough time.

The same is true at home. There’s more to do at home than you’ll ever have time to accomplish. Never once have I gone home and had my kids say to me, “Dad, we’ve really played enough. Why don’t you go upstairs and get some solitude.”

My wife has never said to me, “You’re coming home too early, getting too many things done around the house. Why don’t you just slow down, take some time off, and experience a little solitude?” (And, by the way, I’ve never said that to her.)

There is never enough time. There isn’t enough time to exercise like we’d like, to prepare and eat well-balanced meals, to invest in important days and evenings with your spouse and kids and friends, to work all we’d like to work, read all we’d like to read and sleep all we’d like to sleep.

Therefore we must “be very careful how we live, not as unwise but as wise, redeeming the time.”

In life we have real-time, lunch-time, part-time, full-time, crunch-time, over-time, down-time and free-time.

And the media has something for you to do during each of these times.

But there’s a more important time. One that sports coaches use a lot. It’s the TIME OUT!!

And it’s what we need. The question is, will you, will I, take a time out, find a place of solitude and meet with a God who longs to meet with us.