Tonight I want to discuss something that I feel strongly about. Something I feel the Lord has laid on my heart to discuss. The Lord says in 1 Timothy 4:1 that even the Holy Spirit in the last times will say people will give up their faith and turn or lay up for themselves decieving spirits and the doctrines of demons. This is not that I am saying the world is coming to an end.Nor that I claim to know the time is short, because no matter how many preachers, teachers, and speakers tell your they know the end of times, based always on Matthew 24 and the books of Daniel and Ezekiel chapter 37, but what I am claiming is the world itself with all its good intentions has fallen way off the path. Our children come home with Migraines complaining how stressed out their day was, our parents come home tired, overworked, mentally drained of their emotions. What does the media and television have to offer but non realistic programing meant to drive and coax the human mind to do and say what they want it to. We have gone from a generation of faithful trusting family oriented people to a generation void of reason, understanding, values, morals, or a path leading to God. When was the last time you heard someone say God bless you, or may the Lord keep you and restore your day? Did you know that those were customary greetings during the revolutionary period? Our own founding fathers who allowed us to even have a nation to begin with. Everyone goes about now with a scowl on their faces, rude, obnoxious, selfish, too busy to even open a door for someone, much less day have a good morning. It spreads to the home where teen violence, divorce, separations and domestic disputes have increased threefold whether the news stats say otherwise. I've seen it for myself, I don't need some corporate driven media to tell me I'm wrong. Folks we're lost, not just spiritually, but emotionally, and mentally. Driven by the belief spurned by our media and corporate funded institutions that brilliance comes only in the form of a doctorate degree. Student debt tripled this past year due to the rising cost of books, tuition and demands for longer class loads. When I was in elementary school, we learned that our imaginations took us far, that drawing, being read to, coloring, and using the parts of our brain that allowed for fun and excitement meant more for our futures than programing us like metal machines as most of our children are today. I spoke to a group of children the other day about what made them like school, or what the most fun thing they had done at school that day. Do you know what they told me? That they liked school because it gave them a chance for a college education? Elemetary students now mind you. Others said that they didn't like it, and that recess was the most fun part. Kids want to play, they want to imagine, they want to feel creative. Too much learning is like the word of the Apostle Paul, they are always learning, and yet never finding the knowledge of the truth. This was in 2nd Timothy chapter 3. Always learning, never finding knowledge. Where has our learning taken us now in the present generational plotline? We are on the verge of a recession, higher in debt that we ever have been, unemployed, under paid, over worked, out governement filled with highly educated people who are filled with deception and greed. A president with a law degree who has no clue how to solve the legal and moral ramifications of what his congress has done to the american people. Yes please allow our children to become robots. Then there is the programing on out televisions. I was watching the tube the other night with my wife and searched over 467 channels until I found a program that actually I could find as morally and mindfully worth something. 467 channels??? What is wrong with us? When I was a child we had 4 stations, until the summer then due to station interference maybe 2. But I will tell you that out of the occasional trash that appeared most of the shows offered clean, wholesome lessons to be learned by the end of the show. I remember the first satellite dish we bought, large as something out of NASA, but man we had the Disney channel. Now I was about 11 and man I thought we were in some other world. I watched this channel all day and all night until my studies began to fail and my parents began to realize that maybe this new technology wasn't such a good thing after all, and turned it off. We would then watch movies which they felt was clean and family oriented. But you know what, I realize now, the addictive nature of those programs on the satellite. How it took over my mind and my family time became less important. Before the satellite came we played darts, or cards or I would play outside until dark. Then came the computer in late 1989 which though it was a simple Tandy, mingled with the emergence of the ATARI I began spending less and less time with my family.
I know I am getting off on a tangent here, but the focus of tonights blog post is to tell people just how much technology has taken over our lives, and at the same time, destroyed our moral and value based culture. I guess on the death of Steve Jobs, a brilliant creator and thinker of his age, I have to think on how much publicity his passing has raised. How many men who have shaped people's lives, turned them to Christ, saved their very souls, have also passed this week? How many people who taught our children in the 80's and brought their families up on good wholesome programming and moral standing past this week. How much publicity have they recieved? Any headlines for their death? Any focus on their contribution to other people's lives. I guess I become rather angry and ask the Lord to please forgive me, when I look at television and radio and how they continually focus on the lives and events of famous people who have probably done more to separate the lives of families, homes, husband and wives, and for the fact that they made our lives faster, more complex, more clouded with confusion and chaos, not to mention the billions of dollars they have made companies world wide, thus contributing to the medias bottom line, Heaven forbid a pastor be placed on local news for anything other than a sex crime, or during a tornado or storm that ripped apart their church. Lord forgive us if a person who stood up for what was decent and right against the machine of Corporate dominance, get any publicity my mainstream media. Just once I would like to turn on my T.V and watch 4 consecutive channels that had actual family oriented moralistic programming, instead of killing, sex, violence, indencency, slander, vulgar language or hatred. I dare any of you tonight to turn on your TV and find 3 in a row without them. Even Hallmark has slowly began to realize that without some sense of immoral shows they can't compete for the funding against others like TBS, Fox, or TNT. Is is so wrong to want my family to grow up in a place where they can imagine themselves surrounded by people who care about them? Is it so bad to want to watch programming where when it is over I feel a sense of hope or peace, or that I actualy am a better person from watching it? Thank God for Alex Kendrick the director of the new movie Courageous, and Fireproof, who isn't afraid to stand up against mainstream Hollywood and say "Yeah!" There is what life is all about, there is what your movie theatres should be showing to the world!"
It's funny when I think of his name because my Great Uncle, God rest his sould, Kendrick Mullins, was a man who would have loved this movie. He died with Lou Gerigs disease. Durign his life he lived by the words of the new testament, and after he died people still talked about his generosity, his kindess and his love for others. Going back to the beginning of this post, I have to conclude with this idea. Let't agree to bring back the "Good old days" everyone always talks about. Why not? We are after all, the "We the people" Found in the Gettysburg address. Or have you all like pigs accustomed to lying in the muck and filth, grown accustomed to the feel of the imoral life? Have we become filled with a mental block that doesn't allow us to want what is best for our kids? Tune in tomorrow for my audio blog, I think you'll get a blessing out of it. For now,
God Bless
