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God and TV
Kristina Cooper reflects on why she has given up watching television and the benefits she has experienced
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"TV becomes the faithful friend that airbrushes God out" When you live alone and work a lot, all too easily the TV can become your friend in a way that isn't healthy. It can soothe and entertain in such a way that it airbrushes away all your little pains and difficulties but in doing so also displaces your need for God. Why turn to Him when you have a multi-channel possibility of delights before you? When there is so little silence in our lives is it any wonder God can't make His voice heard? For the last couple of years, I have given up television for both Advent and Lent. I still, however, have blenched at the idea of total abstinence. There's always been something that is too good to miss - like the Pope's funeral or whatever - and before long I find I'm back on the slippery slope of too many late night detective shows. "Watching TV makes me selfish" It was this summer that changed things. Every August I go home to my mum's for two weeks of R&R. I go for nice walks in the Dales, chat to my mum, sleep late and….watch too much television….and, I hadn't really connected it before - I stop praying. It's as if I not only take a holiday from my work, but I take a holiday from God too. This shows itself in all kinds of subtle ways. I regress and become like a child, allowing my mother, who's in her late 70's, to look after me without thinking of her needs. She hates the feature films I like, but because I'm home for such a short time, she uncomplainingly lets me have my way and goes to bed early rather than doing what she would prefer - ie playing a word game. Watching TV, however, makes me selfish and helps me to blank out anybody else's desires - after all this is my holiday and I deserve it. This year, however, I had agreed to give a retreat over the August Bank Holiday weekend for the Ampleforth Day of Renewal Community. As a result over my holiday break I had to prepare. This involved listening to talks on John of the Cross by Ralph Martin, reading some of John's writings and praying about it. As a result I hardly watched any television. And I felt so much better for it. Indeed at the end of this year's annual break I actually felt refreshed in a way I usually don't. "Why isn't God so manifest in the West?" Although it might be easier and even more agreeable to watch the TV, it was doing the godly things that actually made me feel happier afterwards. John's teaching on attachment also challenged me. I am very quick to point out the deficiencies in our culture, but conveniently neglect to see the way I am a victim of them too. I do have God in my life. He's very important to me, central even, but I like my comforts too. I want God and… And that's the problem. I might think I'm very lucky. I'm having it all unlike those poor people in Africa. A nice relationship with God and a nice life too! But am I? I remember watching the TV programme "The Convent". In it one of the characters, a charming witty Bohemian type, was enthusing how much she loved it with the Poor Clares. She loved the silence and the lack of pressure etc but she only kept the rules that she liked and ignored the rest. No doubt she thought she was getting the best of all worlds. But apart from being oblivious to the problems she was causing to those around her, she was missing the very essence of what the convent had to teach her and the joy that can come from obedience and self-denial. "Was my attachment to comfort stopping me from finding God in a deeper way?" I began to reflect on my own life. Perhaps I wasn't having it all. Maybe my attachments to the TV and to the other ways I was good to myself, might be ensuring my comfort, but were in the end stopping me from finding God in a deeper way and seeing Him work more around me. How could God really speak to me when there was no silence and I was always busy working, or entertaining myself? I remembered how it was only when he stopped his night time TV viewing and got rid of his television, that David Wilkinson, the pastor from the famous book "The Cross and the Switchblade", began his amazing ministry with the gangs of New York.
What the Church needs most of all today, said Pope John Paul II in his prophetic pastoral letter "Novo Millennio Ineunte" is not new programmes but saints. We tend to imagine that saints are perfect people, but as those who have known any beatified ones will confirm, this is not the case. A saint is rather someone who has given their whole life to God for His Kingdom, not holding anything back but putting their total trust in Him. If we who have received the Blessing of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit are not prepared to continue on this journey to holiness, then who? Twenty years ago I attended an ICCRS conference in Rome. The theme of the retreat was Luke 4.18 "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor." No prophecy was allowed that year for various reasons but the Lord found his own way of making his voice heard. There was a printing error on all the conference merchandising, quoting it as Luke 8.14 instead of Luke 4.18. Luke 8.14 turned out to be from the parable about the Sower. "As for the seed that fell among thorns, they are the ones who have heard, but as they go along, they are choked by the anxieties, and riches and pleasures of life, and they fail to produce mature fruit." "The risk of giving up worldly pleasures" I felt God was giving me a challenge. Was I prepared to give up some of my comforts, my attachments, my luxuries, and give Him a chance to fulfil me instead in His way? But it is a risk. By giving up our "riches", our worldly pleasures, we make ourselves vulnerable. We uncover the void that lurks beneath our busy lives. What if God doesn't show up? What if we end up being miserable without the TV? Asceticism has always been part of the Christian life, but it is an area that we in the West today have conveniently forgotten about. We just don't like denying ourselves and don't see the point. But it's only in doing it that the benefits emerge. Maybe it's only my imagination, but since my new regime I feel I'm noticing things around me more. Maybe it's because I have less sensory overload that it seems easier to pray. Or maybe it's God's little encouragement to me to carry on? Deep down I am more at peace and freer in a way I can't explain, in spite of the usual crises around me which continue as before. The days seem brighter too and the skies bluer - but then that's probably global warming! "Creating a space for God" Denying ourselves good things in life, is not about masochism, but about creating a space for something better. For God. Where this can lead, should encourage us all. I found an inspiring example of this in Philip Yancey's new book on prayer in which he quotes from the writings of a Jewish woman called Etty Hillesum, who was a prisoner at Auschwitz and who kept a journal about her experiences. She wrote, "sometimes when I stand in some corner of the camp, my feet planted on your earth, my eyes raised towards your heaven, tears sometimes run down my face, tears of deep emotion and gratitude.. And I want to be there right in the thick of what people call horror and still be able to say: "Life is beautiful", yes I lie here in a corner, parched and dizzy and feverish, and unable to do a thing, yet I am also with the jasmine and the piece of sky beyond my window. … For once you begin to walk with God, you need only keep on walking with God and all of life becomes one long stroll - a marvellous feeling." What a vision of total freedom in God. Perhaps even worth giving up my favourite black and white movies for?
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