Turn It Off!

Is television curbing our appetite for the Almighty?

You always suspected it was so, didn't you? Now, an article in the Christian Education Journal supports it, but not for the reasons you may think. It isn't worldly themes or immoral content on TV or in movies that does the damage, but the nature of electronic media itself. Put another way, you could be watching Leave It to Beaver or The Real World -- it wouldn't matter; being plugged in stunts spiritual growth, especially in children.

The article by Linda Callahan, a child and adolescent therapist in Chattanooga, TN, lays out the idea that reading is the great casualty of kids' constant exposure to electronic media. Spending their days bombarded by what Callahan calls, "the Noise", there's no time and little inclination to spend time with printed material. The consequences for spiritual development are fascinating, and challenging.

Why does reading matter for spirituality? It's not so much that the accumulation of knowledge through reading produces a disciple; rather, that the same disciplines employed in reading - silence, solitude, study (and when a parent is reading to a child, fellowship) - happen to be those that are integral to the process of spiritual formation. By contrast, the inability (or distaste for or unwillingness) to reflect, to contemplate, to compose one's own thoughts or to understand the composition of another's - all of this has an effect on our ability to relate.

Sunday School, by its nature, has never been very good at teaching the relational aspect of Christianity. Classes are too big to allow for the kind of individualized questioning that would be needed to be helpful. Moreover, the kinds of questions that ought to be asked don't lend themselves to black-and-white responses. Sunday schools are good at being, well, schools, which always trend towards efficiency and quantifiable measures, rather than qualitative ones. As a result, a child can be really good at Sunday school, delivering all the right responses, but really bad at being a Christian.

Relationships, on the other hand, require the development of a particular set of skills, and the uniqueness of each child guarantees that these skills will develop at uneven rates, making "normal" or "standard" or even "expected" achievement a relatively worthless concept. The task for anyone who cares about child spirituality isn't how to ensure that kids acquire more knowledge, but how to give them practice in growing the ability to relate to an unseen God.

And this brings us back to reading, which itself requires those same abilities but which itself is also threatened in an increasingly wired world. Says Callahan, "In subtle and not so subtle ways, television and film are contributing to the indifference to Christian spirituality and to the high levels of alienation and purposelessness that are common in children, youth and adults today." However, the act of reading, which involves time alone, free from distraction, decoding and understanding written messages, helps to build the sort of skills (and, I would contend, even the temperament) needed to experience a relationship with God.

First, Callahan suggests, "Noise-free reading times should be a part of each day," and that "to get started the entire family should go the library." Parents and kids should own books, lots of them, and time spent exposed to electronic media should be sharply monitored. Care to guess how much time the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends is advisable for children under age 2 to spend each day in front of "screen media" (television and videos)? Exactly none; yet even this uncle of five has given DVDs as gifts recently, because videos of favorite cartoons have become so standard a part of early childhood it's hard to imagine a home without them. Exactly what's wrong with TV viewing, apart from its robbing time from reading, is the subject of next week's blog, but Christian parents would do well to heed Callahan's warning: there's far too much of it in almost every home.

Moreover, she writes, "Christians must deliberately counter the effects of the Noise within the church." From the nursery right up to the adult service, "modern" churches are marked by the degree to which they've employed video, graphics, musical and lighting elements that emulate professional stage productions - in other words, "the Noise". Therefore, it's important to understand that the prescription for Christian Education programs is not necessarily sustained silent reading (which would be impossible anyhow with young children) but the nurturing of disciplines - habits of heart, life, and mind - that foster spiritual development. Classrooms should be places of fellowship, not passive silence. The assumption that a quiet classroom indicates more learning and is therefore the key to spiritually flourishing kids needs serious reexamination. It isn't a question of whether classrooms ought to be noisy or quiet, but the effect of either on children's engagement: does it promote activity or passivity?

"The Noise" is not going away. But Christians can go away from The Noise. Daily unplugging and avoidance may prove to be not only a choice, but a necessity for healthy spirituality.