Each year at Christmas, we celebrate God's presence in the world, by recalling the birth of Jesus. It is a season filled with immense hope and joy because we remember that just as God's Spirit was born in Jesus, the Spirit of Christ can be born within us. As God made a new beginning in the world through the birth of Mary's child, we can make a new beginning through the birth and rebirth of Christ in our lives. Bad habits and destructive behaviors can be transformed into loving attitudes and just actions.
Thus it is fitting that the beginning of a new year follows so closely on the heels of Christmas, because each year in January, we have the opportunity to make a fresh start. College students put the fall semester behind them and focus on a new semester of learning. Businesses close the books on the previous year and look forward to greater prosperity in the coming twelve months. People embark on new diets and new exercise routines, and make various resolutions for the new year. January may follow December as July follows June, but when our calendar reads January and we begin a new year, we have a sense of wiping the slate clean and making a fresh start.
For my first sermon of the new year I would like to suggest three new year's resolutions which, if you claim them as your own, will make a difference in your life, and also will affect a positive change within our world. The three resolutions are interrelated, and adopting the first one will help you to accomplish numbers two and three.
Resolution number one: Turn off the TV. The world in which we live is filled with noise, yet most of us are starved for meaningful discourse. There is plenty of racket and chatter, but there is very little genuine communication. For our lives to be rich and fulfilling, as God intends for them to be, we must have solid relationships with other people. Yet, strong ties are impossible to forge if we do not engage in meaningful conversation.
Nothing in our world has done more to disrupt and to discontinue conversations than television. The TV turns our faces away from one another and toward the mosaic monologue designed to entertain us. The art of conversation dies whenever we move from the table to the couch. The TV forces us to listen to other people talking and there's no opening for us to discuss the things that matter to us. We laugh at other people being funny, we cry when the characters are sad, and we cheer our sports heroes as if we were playing the game.(1)
Television has had a profound impact on our lives and most people are only vaguely aware of the ways it has shaped us. For instance, people have much shorter attention spans today than before the advent of television, and studies show that the average American sees in excess of fifty commercials every day. It wasn't that many years ago, when people could quote several verses from the Bible. Today, most people can quote more lines from commercials than they can from the Scriptures.
We must keep in mind that television commercials are not only attempting to sell us a product, commercials are often selling us a lifestyle. They are promoting certain values - values which are often at odds with the values of the Christian faith. Most commercials encourage us to indulge ourselves and to avoid anything requiring a personal sacrifice. Is it any wonder that so many people fit the tag of the Me Generation?
In the 1830s, waves of immigrants were arriving in the United States. To help them understand how to behave properly in public so as not to embarrass themselves, books on etiquette were introduced. These newcomers sought the advice of etiquette books because they saw them as the keys to climbing the social ladder. Today, nothing communicates how to behave in society as powerfully as television.(2) And what do we see? Sitcoms whose humor is based on sarcasm and vulgarity. Talk shows which highlight people yelling at each other and presenting deviant lifestyles as if they were normal.
But perhaps the greatest impact that television has had on our lives is to create a culture which is based on entertainment. The bottom line for almost everything in our lives, is whether or not it is entertaining. Commercials cannot simply present the claims of the products they represent, we expect them to be funny or nostalgic or exciting or sentimental. Sports has become entertainment. The players are celebrities and they have found that their stature grows not only with their athletic performance, but with their antics on and off the field. Schoolteachers find that it is more difficult than ever to keep the attention of their students, and many feel that they must be entertaining to be successful. Perhaps most disconcerting is the way that our news has become entertainment. Each year there is less and less substance and more and more sensationalism. All of the prominent news anchors learned that to keep their jobs, the reporting of the news would have to change. Dan Rather spoke the sentiment shared by many when he publicly complained that news teams evaluate material as much for audience response as they do for importance and news value. This is why the networks will run some stories into the ground while other newsworthy pieces receive little or no attention. They rely on their polls to tell them which stories will draw the greatest number of viewers.(3) This insures us that the news, like television programming, will aim for the lowest common denominator.
I am not saying that television is the root of all evil and that you should cut the chord or pitch the whole set. I recognize that television has also made some positive contributions. Sometimes seeing something is better than simply hearing about it, and there are occasional programs worth watching. But I am saying that most of us watch far too much of it, and that it is slowly shaping our culture in disturbing ways.
Resolution number two: Read more books. One of the greatest problems facing our society is that too many people have stopped reading books. In some small towns, libraries have closed due to lack of funds; yet video stores remain open until late at night seven days a week. Many children have substituted reading good books, with running electronic mazes where they slay electronic dragons. The sight of a child playing Nintendo just doesn't compare to the sight of a child curled up with a good book, traveling at warp speed through cerebral time and intellectual space.(4)
Books expand our knowledge of the world and they deepen our experience of life. Without food, we become physically starved. Without books, we become mentally impoverished. Books open whole new worlds for us that we never had a clue even existed. They help us to see things from someone else's perspective, and provide us the opportunity to read and reread things which strike a chord within us.
Anyone who spends time with a book has experienced reading a paragraph that puts perfectly into words our own thoughts and feelings. We say to ourselves, "That's what I have been trying to say." And with the author's assistance, now we're able to articulate it.
Often times a book gives validity to a thought we've had, and then challenges us to think the idea through even further; raising questions we had not considered and making claims which prompt us to ponder other possibilities.
Books stimulate our imagination, which not only broadens our understanding of the world, but also provides us with tools to help us solve problems we face. We conjure up new ideas and think creative thoughts. In addition, a good imagination is a prerequisite for being concerned about others and treating them with kindness, because it is our imagination that enables us to walk in the shoes of another.
Life is simply too short for us to learn everything through experience. Books teach us the truths that people have uncovered in the past and help us to avoid making costly mistakes.
Reading a book can be a very satisfying experience. It can bring you a chuckle, lift your spirit, broaden your knowledge, and deepen your respect for other people. And books are best, when we share them with one another. Sometimes Camilla and I are in the same room, each of us reading a book. One of us will come across a few lines that we especially like and we will say to the other, "Listen to this." And we read it to the other. It's like sharing a small gift, as well as letting our loved one know what strikes a chord within us.
Reading to children is essential and is one of the benefits of having small ones in the home. Reading a book to a child at bedtime should never be seen as a duty, but rather a wonderful opportunity for shaping the life of one we love.
Resolution number three: Have more conversations. The art of conversation is dying. One main reason is that people are too frequently glued to their television sets. Are people watching TV to avoid talking with one another? That may or may not be their conscious intention, but that is the result of their actions. How many evenings of meaningful discourse and genuine sharing are lost, because one person is staring at the tube?
Another chief obstacle to meaningful conversation is that most people aren't very good listeners. People want to talk and they want to be heard, but they put little effort into listening to others. I am convinced that one of the greatest ministries we can perform is to genuinely listen to another human being. So many people feel that nobody ever really hears them, and that leaves them feeling frustrated and alone, and wondering if anyone really cares.
A man attending a business conference was seated next to a pleasant, motherly-looking woman. Attempting to make polite conversation with her, he asked her what she did for a hobby. She replied, "I talk to my plants." But the man didn't pursue the conversation. He made a snap judgment and thought to himself, "Oh great, she's some kind of kook." He didn't think he wanted to hear what she had to say, so he just let the conversation die right there. Later in the evening, he wished he hadn't. It turned out that this woman he was sitting beside was the keynote speaker of the conference. The plants she talked to were her plant in Chicago, her plant in Detroit, and her plant in Los Angeles."(5) There is no telling how many meaningful conversations we have let wither?
Resolve to engage others in meaningful discourse. Generate a conversation about things that really matter. If you have children living at home, have chats while everyone is sitting around the table so that they will learn how to listen and learn how to share the things that are important to them. But don't expect to be immediate experts. Since we have lost our touch with meaningful conversation, there will be false starts and dead ends. "How was school today?" "Okay." "Did you learn anything new?" "Nope." "What did you do in English class?" "Nothing."
If you are unsuccessful in drawing them out, then you do the sharing for awhile. Tell about the most significant part of your day. Share your thoughts about the things you believe are important. Talk about a book you've read and why you liked it.
You may have several other new year's resolutions you plan to make. I hope you will find some room on your list for these three. In fact, maybe they could serve as fodder for a good conversation.
Number one: Turn off the TV. Don't let the television become background noise in your home. Turn it on for a specific show and then turn it off. Take control of your life. Don't let the media moguls shape it for you.
Number two: Read more books. Purchase a book at the store or order one off the Internet, borrow books from friends or check them out from a library. And don't just hord what you're reading. Share a sentence or a paragraph with someone you love; and read a book to a child whenever you get the chance.
Number three: Have more conversations. Ties with others are initiated and sustained through speech. So, pull yourself up off the couch and go back to the table, because God has created us in such a way that we can't really live without the sound of each other's voices.(6)
NOTES
1. Robin R. Meyers, Morning Sun on a White Piano, (New York: Doubleday, 1998), p.9.
2. William F. Fore, Mythmakers: Gospel, Culture and the Media, (New York: Friendship Press, 1990), p.40.
3. From an article by John Killinger entitled "Life as an Amusement Parlor," published in Preachlink, by Cokesbury, Nashville, Tennessee.
4. Meyers, Morning Sun on a White Piano, pp.27-28.
5. From a sermon printed in Lectionary Homiletics entitled "Hiding Angels."
6. Meyers, Morning Sun on a White Piano, pp.12-13.
© 1999 Dr. Gregory Knox Jones, all rights reserved