Most of the mail we got about Bethany Torode’s article “Avert Thine Eyes: Life Without TV” — and we got plenty — was positive. The following letter was an example:

My husband and I are proof that life without TV is possible. We got rid of it two years ago. A friend gave us a TV recently, but we only use it for good videos that we rent from the church library. We are not going to use it for anything other than good things.

Our marriage is happier than ever, our spiritual lives are richer every day. I feel like I was freed from a form of slavery.

One more thing: I am reading lots of good books, and I am thinking.

Blessings,

— Christine

However, some readers thought Torode went too far. Following are samples of their letters and the author’s response, detailing her thoughts on how Christians should approach entertainment.

First, in the article I read about TV, to me it came across that all television viewing was bad. Is that your point? If so, then tell me what is bad about the Christian stations? How about the news channels that keep us in touch with world events? Or how about the History Channel? The food networks? Sports channels? Home and Garden? Discovery? I could go on to name many more but I think from here you would get my point. All TV viewing is not bad.

Secondly please explain to me how you can say that television is bad when you use the Internet to spread your message? I mean come on now you must have realized by this time that there is 10,000 times more porno on the Internet than TV. The Internet is far more of a threat to us than television will ever be. Just think about it for a minute. How can your Christian morals allow you to use the Internet, and not TV?

— Jim

Is all television harmful to us? Torode never defines what is and what is not damaging. I cannot believe that watching Yul Brynner in The Ten Commandments is going to bring lustful or idolatrous thoughts into my mind. And I cannot believe that, after watching an episode of the children’s series Veggie Tales I am going to become a thief, rapist or killer.

— Melinda
Central Missouri State University

I wonder what your perspective is on book reading? Is it the same as your stance on television watching? I have an incredibly vivid imagination and oftentimes, books and dreams create more vibrant pictures in my mind than the strobing screen. Yet, most classic works contain scenes and content that would rival much of today's' sitcom fare. For example, the Christian Dostoesky’s works, especially Crime and Punishment (an incredible work about sin and redemption) would make the shameless Sarah Michelle Gellar's stomach turn. What is a Christian to do with that? Don a bonnet and hitch up the horse and buggy?

— Sarah
Patrick Henry College

Brian

* * *

Whoo-ee! Did I hit a nerve. I think it’s fair to conclude, based on the number of responses I received to my article, that television is vital part of most Americans’ lives, including many Boundless readers. Those who wrote in defense of their television (and movie) consumption wouldn’t have been so passionate if it weren’t so.

I’d like to address some of the letters that came in, as they deserve a response. Perhaps I should start by bringing in some wiser authors who have put greater thought into this subject than I have. As these quotes demonstrate, it is not just a “fundamentalist” notion to avoid television and related media. The following three writers are, respectively, a Newberry Award-winning author; an agrarian poet and essayist; and a Catholic college professor.

Creative involvement: that’s the basic difference between reading a book and watching TV. In watching TV we are passive; sponges; we do nothing. In reading we must become creators. — Madeleine L’Engle

After 40 years, the evidence is everywhere that television, far from proving a great tool for education, is a tool of stupefaction and disintegration. — Wendell Berry

Smash the television set. . . . Put the money you now spend on such entertainment into a piano so that music is restored to your home. . . . And then families will be together at home and love will grow again without thinking about it, because they are moving in harmony together. — John Senior

It’s not just writers and poets who are concerned about television viewing; scientists are weighing in with studies and data. The following is excerpted from an article in Scientific American magazine, passed on to me by a Boundless reader (anyone who disagreed with “Avert Thine Eyes” should read the whole thing, because I couldn’t possibly excerpt every valid point):

The amount of time people spend watching television is astonishing. On average, individuals in the industrialized world devote three hours a day to the pursuit — fully half of their leisure time, and more than on any single activity save work and sleep. At this rate, someone who lives to 75 would spend nine years in front of the tube.

. . . In 1986 Byron Reeves of Stanford University, Esther Thorson of the University of Missouri and their colleagues began to study whether the simple formal features of television — cuts, edits, zooms, pans, sudden noises — activate the orienting response, thereby keeping attention on the screen. By watching how brain waves were affected by formal features, the researchers concluded that these stylistic tricks can indeed trigger involuntary responses and "derive their attentional value through the evolutionary significance of detecting movement. . . . It is the form, not the content, of television that is unique."

The orienting response may partly explain common viewer remarks such as: "If a television is on, I just can't keep my eyes off it," "I don't want to watch as much as I do, but I can't help it," and "I feel hypnotized when I watch television." In the years since Reeves and Thorson published their pioneering work, researchers have delved deeper. Annie Lang's research team at Indiana University has shown that heart rate decreases for four to six seconds after an orienting stimulus. In ads, action sequences and music videos, formal features frequently come at a rate of one per second, thus activating the orienting response continuously.

. . . Jerome L. and Dorothy Singer of Yale University, among others, have suggested that more viewing may contribute to a shorter attention span, diminished self-restraint and less patience with the normal delays of daily life.

. . . More than 25 years ago psychologist Tannis M. MacBeth Williams of the University of British Columbia studied a mountain community that had no television until cable finally arrived. Over time, both adults and children in the town became less creative in problem solving, less able to persevere at tasks, and less tolerant of unstructured time.

Of the letters that came in, none defended shows with obviously sleazy content — although when readers brought up good-sounding points in defense of their overall viewing activities, I suspect that they were trying to divert attention away from my valid points against the content they allow to sneak in. (There is no conceivable way you could watch much primetime television, or a newly released movie each week, and claim that everything you view is defensible and worthwhile.) The cumulative factor also comes into play here — content that is “obviously” sleazy to some people becomes less and less obvious to anyone (myself included) who consumes mass quantities of television or movies. Friends of mine have gone on “media fasts” and attest to the improvement in their sensitivity at the end of the period.

On shows with clean content: a show on the Discovery or History channels may be decent and even edifying, and I’ve seen a few valuable documentaries on PBS. But even “good” programming becomes bad when we absorb too much. “Educational television” is generally an oxymoron, because of the passivity involved in the screen.

The difference between a history book and watching the History Channel is that reading a book requires an active intelligence, as John Senior has stated, and imaginative effort for co-creation, as Madeleine L’Engle pointed out. Good books elevate our thinking — they expand our vocabulary and our ability to understand abstract concepts; they exercise our mind like a muscle. Good television attempts to do this, but rarely succeeds because it requires so little mental exertion on the part of the viewer. It’s the difference between running a mile and getting up off the couch. (I haven’t mentioned the content of so-called educational programming. A few weeks ago, while my family was visiting a cabin that had cable TV, my siblings clicked on the History Channel. The program at the time was about the history of one of Marilyn Monroe’s dresses. Who needs to read Edward Gibbon or Alexis de Tocqueville when you’ve got Dish Network?)

* * *

A couple of readers brought up the Internet. That medium certainly contains its own hazards, but I see the Internet as more of a tool than television. The reason is that, unlike TV, it’s not inherently passive. Of course, it can be used exactly like a television — for watching movie trailers (or even contraband movies, my 14-year-old brother tells me), music videos, etc. It can be used like a Playboy magazine, to view pornography. But it can also be used like an instructional book, to glean information — I’ve learned quite a bit about cooking and sewing, among other things, from visiting various Internet sites. It can be used like a mail-order catalog, or a virtual thrift store (I’ve furnished almost my entire home with bargain eBay purchases). Sometimes, it can be used for intellectual engagement, through sites like Boundless. It can be used like a telephone or a photo album, to connect with friends and family. So, it’s much more complex than television.

The Internet is still an inferior tool to books for learning, though — the scrolling-and-clicking, back-and-forward format of it encourages skimming, and the overwhelming volume of links and text on most Web pages is visually overloading. Also, computer screens, unlike printed pages, have a straining effect on the eyes. The Internet should be handled carefully, because it is such a tempting tool for procrastination — I have wasted hours of my life writing lengthy and personal e-mails to people I’ve never met, having inane arguments on discussion boards, and surfing the Web, just to put off all the work I know I need to be doing in real life.

The cumulative effect of the Internet can be bad, just as the cumulative effect of reading or painting or anything else can be bad — it’s a matter of balance, and of limiting yourself. If my husband sat on the couch reading all day and evening (something he is actually tempted to do at times) and never interacted with his family, that would be wrong. We are both still on the computer far too often, something we realize and regret during the times that we actually wake up and examine how we spend our days. (Writing my TV article has really opened my eyes to my own problems in these areas!)

* * *

Some readers mentioned the News as a good use of television. The only TV news I’ve watched lately was in an airport, where you can’t escape from CNN, but I understand the desire to keep “up-to-date.”

Is TV really the best source for news? While I don’t believe that TV news is controlled by the government, I do believe it is severely inhibited by the advertising moguls funding it and the ideologies of those who report the news (whether “left” or “right”). As historian Paul Fussel once said, what the authorities don’t want published is news; everything else is public relations.

Current events interest me, but only to a certain extent — there is nothing new under the sun. What should concern each of us most is that which affects us on a local level, in our own lives. Some national events do this; others do not. But even those that do — such as Sept. 11 — are not generally best processed through TV. The “news” there happened over the course of an hour at most, but the cameras continued to roll and the CNN talking heads babbled on for days. One of my friends who doesn’t own a TV commented that everyone she talked to on Sept. 11 who had watched the events on television was frightened, depressed, shaken and irrational. Those who hadn’t — who had simply heard about it from others — were much more calm, thoughtful, and sober. (I don’t regret having missed the sight of people jumping to their deaths from skyscrapers, and I don’t think any American is the more enlightened and virtuous for having watched it.)

Even supposing that the news is important to keep abreast on, so-called respectable news shows like Dateline and 20/20 have degenerated into the sensational (because that is, after all, what gleans the Nielsen ratings, which in turn bring in the advertising bucks). News magazines like Time and Newsweek are a step above television, but in recent decades their content has been adversely affected by having to compete with television.

Sam and I get most of our news via word-of-mouth and by occasional radio updates. I don’t miss much of the rest. Even though I have no desire to, I still know all the Hollywood “news” — all the names of the current movie stars, who they are divorcing and marrying, and how much they weigh — thanks to a simple trip through the grocery store aisle. It’s amazing how much you pick up without trying.

* * *

On books (such as the Bible) with “adult” content, more nuanced discretion is needed. There are books that are pornographic in nature and cause a man or woman to lust, and they shouldn’t be read. There are books that deal with illicit acts but do not do so in a pornographic way, and these can be beneficial to read. A woman reading a typical romance novel will most likely be stirred to lust; a woman reading the account of Lot having sex with his daughters in Genesis probably won’t.

When we switch to visual forms of expression, it gets even more tricky. There are paintings of nudes that attest to the glory of God’s creation; there are other works of art that are pornographic. The criteria for determining such matter varies person to person, depending on the level of purification of the viewer. A young man in college might conceivably have a hard time sitting through a slide show of Rembrandt’s nudes in his Art History course without stumbling; if that’s the case, he should avert his eyes. (More likely, however, he will be far more tempted by simply going to the mall, or even walking past the ladies undergarment section of Wal-Mart — where a false form of feminine beauty is used to sell products, in contrast to the realistic and plump portrayals of Rembrandt.)

The screen, however, can claim none of these tricky nuances — the modest, artistic veil of language or paint does not exist with a camera. I cannot conceive how any man can watch a movie with blatant female nudity and not respond with lust. One male reader wrote protesting that I write about screen media with “the extreme view that we are all babies who are not able to deal with the reality of human nature.” On the contrary, I’m well aware that God has given men bodies and minds which respond to the glory of His feminine creation in ways that are beautiful in the right context, and destructive in the wrong one. It is precisely the honest and humble man who deals frankly with his human nature by forgoing most television and movies.

* * *

King Solomon lamented the brevity of life—how much more would he have lamented the stupidity of a people who spend an average of nine years of their lives staring at a screen? Time is ticking. Man is like a wildflower, who withers away in the blink of an eye.

My husband and I have taken nightly walks together since we were engaged, and are always depressed by the flickering blue glow emanating from all the homes we pass. A hundred years ago, people would have been out on their porches visiting with the neighbors, or out taking walks, or playing catch in the yard. Now our country is full of cities and towns where millions of people spend the few hours of free time they have zoning out in front of the mesmerizing blue glow.

G. K. Chesterton said, “I suppose that even Jonah, once he was swallowed, could not see the whale.” Which is why I would encourage any American to try fasting from television, movies, and random Internet surfing for at least six months and see what affect it has on his life. Ideally, the time saved will be invested in interacting with friends and family — playing games, telling stories, debating and discussing things — and reading good books, creating art, or working with your hands. He may soon wonder how he found time to watch TV in the first place.