The Medium Is The Message

As a kid, we didn't have a colour TV in our house until 1987, we only got a video in 1990. So, up to the heady age of 13, if I wanted to watch something like Battlestar Galactica or Thunderbirds, anything that took place over dinner time, I had to negotiate with Dad and Mum.

These days, i-players and the like have made such negotiating scenarios redundant. But tonight, I sat in front of my computer monitor (which for all sorts of reason, now sits in the living room) and chomped my way through some of Freddy's delicious Chinese left overs whilst watching stuff.

What did I watch? Well, Warren Cole Smith has written a book: A Lover's Quarrel with the Evangelical Church.

Here he is, giving a 37min synopsis of the book. For me, the best bit is from 28min in where he talks about how the medium is not morally neutral, it changes the message:

“The remarkable thing about television is that it permits several million people to laugh at the same joke and still feel lonely.” T.S. Eliot

If you want to watch a truly Christian "movie" don't look at the big screen or the little one, look at the flesh and blood lives of people who have been transformed by the one true Word - Jesus Christ.

Through the Spirit of God, the Life of Christ becomes the life of his Church (Gal.2:20). Through that same Spirit, the story of Christ, becomes the story of his people (Phil.3:10-11).

I then dumbed down with a bit of light sci-fi entertainment and watched, What Darwin Didn't Know. ;-)