How To Watch Television and Still Glorify the Lord Jesus

Grace and peace, Saints.

You would be amazed at some of the things that Jesus has shown me.  I know I am.  In 2011, I asked Jesus to do one specific thing for me: to show me how to make the Bible real in my life.  I asked Him to show me how to apply specific teachings, verses, and passages in the Bible to my everyday life so that the Bible would become a living, breathing, reality to me, not just a Book to be picked up on Sunday and forgotten the rest of the week.  I wanted Him to take the mystery out of the Bible.

God heard, and God did.  He answered my prayer.  I have since found that things you and I wouldn’t normally spend much time thinking about actually confirm things that are written of in the Bible and are often prophetic. 

Let me give you a practical example of the importance of this.  I don’t much like television.  During my four-year separation from my wife, I lived in St. Louis, Missouri, while she lived here in Munich, Germany.  Our children, who were 10, 9, and 6 at the time, lived with me for the first year and a half of that separation.  Because I wanted to raise my children without the negative influences of television, we owned no television set.  So the only time we would see television is when we visited someone or if there was a television at a McDonalds or something.  After the children went back to their mother, I continued this practice.  On those occasions I did want to watch television, I would watch one of my favorite television shows from the old days on YouTube.  When I wanted to hear the news, I would turn on the radio, read my news feed on the internet, or go down to Schnucks supermarket, where there was a television that was always tuned to CNN. There I would have a donut and coffee and catch up on the news. 

When my wife and I reconciled back in March 2012, I had to get used to television all over again, because my wife loves television.  She has also trained my children to love television.  Because the media are not God-fearing people, the programs that the media create do not glorify the Lord Jesus.  They glorify Satan and they glorify sin.  So you can imagine the challenge this presents.   But God showed me how to take what the children see on television and use it to expose Satan’s lies. 

Yesterday, for instance, we were watching Cosmo and Wanda (the German title), the cartoon featuring Timmy Turner, and his two fairy friends.  At one point in an episode, there just happened to be two wooden boards and three nails lying on the floor.  One board was longer than the other.  It suddenly occurred to me that Jesus was nailed to a cross constructed of two boards, one longer than the other, and He was fastened to that cross with three nails: one each for his wrists, and one to hold his feet.  Because my children have grown quite accustomed to me doing this, and in fact, catch a lot of things themselves, when I paused the program and asked them what they thought those things represented they understood immediately, and answered correctly.  In fact, only one of them missed the significance of those symbols.  Hey, two out of three ain’t bad. 

A couple of days ago, The Chronicles of Narnia was on television.  Now, I have avoided watching this program before and forbade my children to watch it, because I know that the movie is based on a book written by C.S. Lewis, who many believe was a Christian, but who was really into the occult.  Occultism in movies is bad enough, but so-called Christian occultism, or Gnosticism, is much worse.  A child exposed to Gnostic teachings who is not firmly grounded in the faith could be led astray.  Many have been. 

In that schoolteachers are exposing our children to occultism through movies and books, I decided that I would watch it together with them and show them not only how Satan is using those movies to beguile children into the occult, but also how he makes his deceptions enticing with very realistic special effects like talking dragons, unicorns, and other mythical creatures brought convincingly to life.  Having been a science fiction and horror movie buff for many years, I know full well the lure of these movies.  I also know that because there is no graphic violence or overt sex or anti-Christ imagery in these movies, a clever teacher can beguile an unwitting child into believing that nothing is wrong with them, and that the parent that objects to them is too “puritanical” and strict.

Many of our children’s teachers are pagans and witches who present themselves as open-minded and easy-going while portraying Christian parents as religious prigs, fanatics, doomsday preachers, Bible-thumpers, homophobes, or anything else they feel threatened by.  If they can get our children to trust them instead of us, they have won the battle.

With this is mind, my children and I watched the program together, and afterwards we discussed it in light of the Bible.  The children understood immediately that Atlan, the lion king, was a metaphor for Jesus Christ.  Of course, there was more symbolism there.  As a matter of fact, the entire adventure was a sort of occult initiation.  But I didn’t discuss this with them.  It sufficed for them to know that Jesus is not in the movie making business, so if we are going to watch television, we had better be on the lookout for the lie Satan is going to try to sell us, because that is always his end game.

I would be lying if I said that I didn’t enjoy the movie.  Like I said, I grew up on this stuff.  That is why I have to be very careful what I watch and what I let my children watch.  Though I’m too stable and grounded in the truth to be misled, I know that this kind of movie is really anti-Christ.  Therefore, I ought not to watch it, nor let my children watch it. 

The sequel to The Chronicles followed the original, but I told my children that we would not be watching that.  They were very understanding and decided to go into their room and play.  And that was that.

The Still Man