Entertainment & Pop Culture - Culture
- May 1, 2006
“Almost every aspect of our society and our daily lives has been inundated with an entertainment mind-set. It used to be said that art imitates life, but these days it’s obvious just how much our lives are imitating the art we daily consume through all of these mediums! Many Americans plan their daily routine based on how stimulating, exciting, or fun it will be. Whether it’s work, play, exercise, a hobby, school, dining out, or even going to church, we subliminally evaluate time spent on the experience as good or bad, based on how entertaining it could and should be. In fact, unless even the simplest, most mundane of tasks or activities has an entertaining lure to it, most people will replace the activity with something else.”
Holly McClure, Death by Entertainment (Little Rock: Lion’s Head Publishing, 2001), 23.
“In the last century and a half the number of hours Americans work per week has decreased dramatically while the number of hours available for leisure activities has increased. In the mid-1800s the average work week in America was approximately seventy hours, or the equivalent of six twelve-hour days, per week. At the turn of the last century, this figure came down to sixty hours per week. Before the Great Depression of 1929, fifty hours was the expected norm, and now many people expect to work little more than forty hours per week. Writes Robert Lee: ‘It is a striking fact to note that the working man of a century ago spent some seventy hours per week on the job and lived about forty years. Today he spends about forty hours per week at work and can expect to live about seventy years. This adds something like twenty-two more years of leisure to his life, about 1,500 free hours each year, and a total of some 33,000 additional free hours that the man born today has to enjoy.’”
Richard Winter, Still Bored in a Culture of Entertainment (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2002), 32.
The December 2003 issue of Whistleblower magazine, a print publication of WorldNetDaily.com, contained an outstanding article about the culture and how the church should respond to it. The title of the article was ‘Killer Culture: A Call to the Churches” by Bob Just. Following are some excerpts from that article (reprinted with permission):
“Kids are looking for an identity, and there is a huge mass media machine eager to give them one—one that has nothing to do with reality. If you are a Christian, of course you want your child to have a Christ-centered identity, but you need to know that the culture-centered identity is the exact opposite.
“Don’t kid yourselves. This issue is a matter of life and death. And not just because of drugs, or AIDS. There is the slow death of betrayal, anger, despair, lost opportunity and broken dreams—as many 12-year-old girls are learning at the hands of 13-year-old boys. Christians have been warning America to get serious about the culture for a long time, most famously former Secretary of Education Bill Bennett, who popularized the term ‘culture war.’ And yet, we all know who’s winning that war.
“Christian researcher George Barna, who has also been warning the churches for years about the growing destructive influence of the mass media culture, despairs of our current situation. A recent national survey taken by Barna’s organization concluded that of the dominant social influences, including things like movies, television, books, popular music, parents, politicians and the like, the churches do not even make it to the top dozen ‘influencers’ in our culture. This does not bode well for the future of America since the churches are our primary wisdom source when it comes to nurturing families. Without that wisdom in society, the culture runs wild—and children are its primary victims . . .
“Not only does ‘Merchants’ [Merchants of Cool, documentary by PBS] expose the fact that teenagers (a $150 billion market) are studied like lab rats in order to sell them product, but the video (or CD) also reveals just how the hyper-sexualized culture of MTV corrupts while it sells. And remember, this is not really a voluntary experience (although child molesters always claim their victims ‘want it’). American children are trapped in this hostile culture. The corruptive influences can’t be avoided, and no one can make a credible case that they can. The toxic culture is almost everywhere!
“Parents have good reason to worry their children won’t survive the killer culture. One Columbia University report stated that whereas in the 1970s only 5 percent of 15-year-old girls had sexual intercourse, by 1997 it was 38 percent. Part of the curse of not understanding our own gender is that we then treat our sexuality as something insignificant and therefore cheap. This attitude is something we’ve been sold with devastating results.
“Think about 3 million cases of STDs among teens every year. Think about the fact that STDs affect two thirds of college students. Two thirds! This isn’t the ’60s when a trip to the doctor could usually clear things up. Many of these diseases cause long-term effects, from infertility to cancer to AIDS. Kids are learning in massive numbers to accept a self-image that excuses or even glorifies self-destructive behavior. The culture is truly a killing machine.
“Thankfully, there is an answer. We need American mothers and fathers to be faithful to their anointing, to once again take hold of our civilization and lead as men and women. We need that new Civil Rights Movement, re-creating the loving environment that blessed this country not so long ago—a child-friendly environment that comes from a gender-friendly culture. Our secular (Darwinist) government—which thinks we are freaks of nature—can’t help us with this vision, because it can’t believe we are created beings, and therefore, it can’t believe we have any spiritual authority, any gender authority. But we do! And you know we do.
“Rise up, and be the mother or father God created you to be! Do that and your children will respond—eventually—whether you are a single parent or not, especially if you are backed up by the mothers and fathers of your church. In fact, that’s the secret to the whole thing. If you don’t belong to a church, find one that understands this anointing you have, and honors it. Find one that fully supports you in your desire to be a strong and noble mother or father.”
Excerpted with permission from the December 2003 edition (“KILLER CULTURE”) of Whistleblower, the monthly print magazine of WorldNetDaily.com, the Internet’s leading independent news website. To purchase the “KILLER CULTURE” issue, or to subscribe to Whistleblower, call toll-free 1-800-496-3266.
[Editor’s note: The following excerpt, written in 1976 by a Christian theologian and philosopher, helps us understand the culture war that is raging in America today. The last six sentences are a vivid explanation of why that war is taking place. Those who would take away every symbol and every reference to God are set on reducing everything to conflicting opinions that have no basis in morality and values.]
“Alfred North Whitehead has remarked that the entire history of European philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato. That goes too far. Nevertheless, Plato did understand something crucial—not only in theoretical thought but in practical life. He saw that if there are no absolutes, then the individual things (the particulars, the details) have no meaning. By particulars we mean the individual things which are about us … Plato understood that regardless of what kind of particulars one talks about, if there are no absolutes—no universal—then particulars have no meaning. The universal or absolute is that under which all the particulars fit—that which gives unity and meaning to the whole. We can apply this in language. Apples come in many varieties, but we do not verbalize each time by running through the names of all the varieties of apples. We sum them up by the word apples … The problem, however, is not only in language but in reality: What will unify and give meaning to everything there is? Jean-Paul Sartre …, the French existential philosopher, emphasized this problem in our own generation. His concept was that a finite point is absurd if it has no infinite reference point. This concept is most easily understood in the area of morals. If there is no absolute moral standard, then one cannot say in a final sense that anything is right or wrong. By absolute we mean that which always applies, that which provides a final or ultimate standard. There must be an absolute if there are to be morals, and there must be an absolute if there are to be real values. If there is no absolute beyond man’s ideas, then there is no final appeal to judge between individuals and groups whose moral judgments conflict. We are merely left with conflicting opinions.”
Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? (Old Tappan: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1976), 144-145.
To read several articles concerning various aspects of the culture war, see the Alliance Defense Fund’s Current Actions page.
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