Evangelical Reformation

What is reality? For Americans, reality is what the media presents it to be. Not only does the media determine what is important, but the media shapes the scope and nature of our world. If the media conveys that it exists, it does. And if they media ignores it, then it has no place in the real world.

Case in point. The media ignores the plight of persecuted Christians, even though it is the biggest human rights story of the day. In numerous countries around the world, significant numbers of believers are harassed, beaten, imprisoned, tortured, and murdered for their faith. For example, currently there are in excess of 1000 believers imprisoned in Eritrea for their commitment Christ. Some are being systematically beaten.

This story has all sorts of human interest angles that would make it interesting copy if the media was interested in running it. For example, one of these prisoners is a young girl who is a well-known singer among the Christian community. What could fit better the news profile than imprisonments, beatings, an incarcerated young female singer, and breach of human rights? The reason the plight of persecuted Christians is not news is because they are Christians. Of course, if these people represented any other minority this would be a lead story. From a media perspective, Christian blood is cheap.

My point, however, is not that the media ignores the plight of persecuted Christians, but that the fact that the media ignores the plight of persecuted Christians prevents this issue from being a part of our reality.

It escapes our reality at two levels. One is cognitive. There is a large segment of our society, probably a majority, that would answer the test question: “Are Christians persecuted in many countries around the world,” in the negative. For the most part, all that they know is what the media tells them, and it does not tell them about persecuted Christians.

A second way in which it escapes our reality is in our awareness. Even those who may get the test question right are left with a sense that this must not be a real problem, it must not be a major issue, or the media would tell us so. Consequently, even though intellectually these people might get the right answer, in terms of their practical worldview, persecuted Christians are not really an issue.

Evangelicals are no different than the general population at this point. I have been fairly aggressive in seeking to promote the cause of persecuted Christians among believers, with very little result. I have come to realize that this lack of response stems from the lack of media coverage and the consequent sense of non-reality reflected in people’s eyes when confronted with stories of persecution.

However, persecution of believers is just an example of the larger issue of the media shaping our reality. A more comprehensive illustration is found in the scant international news coverage by the American media. The result is that in the mind of the typical American, our country occupies 97% of the world, with the other 3% including Iraq and Afghanistan where American troops are fighting. Americans for the most part are totally ignorant of major events in other countries. For example, there would be absolutely no awareness of the issues and outcome of an election in India, certainly a major player in today’s world. This national self-absorption in today’s global community is deeply problematic.

Compounding the problem is what the media does cover—its increasing tendency toward tabloid content. I turned on Fox news last night only to find that the latest development in the Natalie Holloway story was the feature. In the hopes of finding a more substantive topic, I switched to my default alternative, MSNBC, only to find them featuring—you guessed it—the Natalie Holloway story. And why were they featuring Natalie Holloway? Because Michael Jackson has been found innocent, Scott Peterson is in jail, and OJ has dropped out of sight.

In the past several postings we have been discussing various factors that shape the worldview of our secular and evangelical societies without our awareness. Here is yet another one. All these forces ultimately are controlled by people maintaining a secular mindset. This makes us vulnerable to infiltration by unbiblical concepts. The media issue discussed today particularly makes us vulnerable to having our worldview shaped by unbiblical forces. There is a need for an evangelical reformation that will reshape our worldview from a biblical perspective.

Over the weekend, a major news story was the removal of Jewish settlers from Gaza. A sub-plot related to this event was the public reaction to it here in the United States. The Fox News panel discussing this issue concluded that the pictures of settlers being dragged from their homes drowned out any rational discussion on the issue.

As pointed out in our previous post, this is Neil Postman’s point exactly. We tend not to process visual communication rationally the way we do verbal communication. Therefore, the visual communication on television and in movies can lead us to conclusions without rationally processing them. This means that we can adopt positions without realizing it, and that consequently those positions may be irrational.

The pictures of Jewish settlers being forcibly removed from their homes leads the viewers to the conclusion that the Sharon government and the Knesset advocating such a move are cowardly monsters, unwilling to stand up to Palestinian terrorists. However, Michael Medved presents a different perspective on the issue. If Gaza continues to be included as part of the State of Israel, the more than 3 million Palestinians living in Gaza will outnumber the Jewish population at the polls, in effect making all of Israel a Palestinian state. Therefore, in terms of the national destiny of Israel, the nation is far better off if it does not include Gaza within its borders. In addition, by removing the settlers and building a wall, the people of Israel are much more secure. Consequently, there are good reasons to believe that the removal of the settlers and the disassociation with Gaza represent a wise political and strategic decision.

The point is that the pictures tend to overshadow reason, leading the viewer to adopt a position on this issue without processing the related facts. This reality makes television and movies powerful tools for propaganda.

However, the really bad news is that visual communication is just one form of non-rational communication. Much of our verbal communication occurs in contexts that lead us to process the words non-rationally. One example of this phenomenon is music. Who thinks about the validity of lyrics? Answer: nobody, or at best a scant minority. Yet, if it is a favorite song, we listen to the words over and over again until, linked to the tune, they are embedded in our memories for decades, if not for the rest of our lives. Even though I was not ever particularly an Elvis fan, I can still quote the lyrics from many of his songs that I have not heard for about half a century.

Another powerful form of verbal communication that we tend not to process rationally is found in the storyline of movies and television programming. For the most part, as we watch the story unfold our brain is in neutral. We tend to go wherever the scriptwriter, armed with an arsenal of propaganda tools and total control of the world being portrayed, leads us. I recall watching a movie while I was in college about a man whose wife was portrayed as self-absorbed and nasty, while his secretary was kind and caring. The storyline carried the viewer to at the conclusion that the inevitable affair was the right thing to do. Even though I was a believer at the time, I caught myself thinking, “Yes, go ahead. Your secretary deserves to be loved and your wife punished.” When ultimately I realize what I was thinking, I was shocked. It amazed me that the film producer could so easily get me to reject the morality that I thought I adhered to so strongly.

In light of the fact that vehicles of communication in our society are largely in the hands of liberals, it is essential to ask how many irrational humanistic concepts we have adopted. The “we” here is not only a reference to secular society, but to evangelicals as well, who drink deeply from these fountains. In addition, there is a danger that those communicating through evangelical media have themselves been polluted by the general culture. Therefore, even our in-house channels are suspect.

Consequently, like the CIA investigating for moles within their ranks, evangelicals must examine their worldview for unbiblical ideas that have unwittingly infiltrated their thinking. It is my position that we have adopted many such concepts, and that they are sapping us of our vitality. This development makes an evangelical reformation essential.

Amusing Ourselves to Death, by Neil Postman, is one of the most insightful books of the past several decades. In that publication, Postman made two significant observations. First, he noted that our society has moved from communication by words to communication by pictures.

The advent of television and the popularity of movies give support to this thesis. I am constantly amazed at the extent to which our society is a movie culture. The overwhelming majority of the American public is able to converse broadly and deeply regarding actors, actresses, and movie plots. Many young people watch two or three movies per week. This is not to mention the astronomical number of hours our society in general, and children in particular, spend in front of the television.

I found one response to a survey I took regarding television viewing habits quite informative. The question had to do with the respondent’s perception of how much she watched television. The woman responded that she did not watch very much, “just in the mornings before work, in the evenings, and on weekends.” She was in essence saying that she watched television all the hours that she was not sleeping or working. I probed further to ensure that I was understanding correctly, and it turned out that I was. Yet, her analysis was that she was not a heavy television viewer. Neil Postman was right. It seems that most people watch more television than they think that they do. We have become a society that learns predominantly through pictures.

Postman’s second salient observation was that we process non-verbal communication differently than we do communication via words. We tend to process verbal communication rationally. Reading about a subject, or discussing it, tends to force us to think about it. However, non-verbal communication tends to penetrate our psyche without rational processing. For example, if the media repeatedly shows graphic pictures of wounded or slain soldiers in Iraq, this will arouse public sentiment against the war without rational processing on the issue. Likewise, withholding pictures on certain issues prevents the development of certain sentiments. In light of this, the blackout by the media on pictures of abortions and pictures of 9/11 betrays its bias on these issues.

This observation suggests that non-verbal communication constitutes a powerful tool for propaganda. Public opinion can be aroused and culture shaped on issues without the public rationally processing them. The fact that the overwhelming majority of the people controlling the pictures in our society hold a strong liberal bias represents an issue of concern.

In our previous posting we were discussing how psychology has become the religion of our society. Such an assertion may be disconcerting in view of the absence of public discourse on the issue. None of us remember any discussion on whether or not to adopt psychology as our religion. Therefore, the assertion that this has happened can come as a shock. However, even more amazing is the number and nature of the concepts promoted by psychology that we as a society now accept as truth, even though they have never been debated in the public arena. As Neil Postman suggested, we have become a society that adopts concepts without rationally processing them.

Evangelical Christianity has not escaped this approach to assimilating ideas. We, too, have been infiltrated by various theological concepts in the absence of theological debate. Since the ultimate sources of these concepts do not have a biblical orientation, most of the ideas that have infiltrated our worldview are not biblical. Therefore, we need an evangelical reformation that begins with a rational analysis of our current beliefs to determine which ones are biblical, and which are not.