The other day I sat down and watched an old television show called The Dick Van Dyke Show. It was a show I had watched as a child, and I had forgotten just how funny it was. My teenage son also joined me and when it was over he said it was one of the best shows he'd seen.  The comedy was simply based around every day events taken to the extreme and it was hilarious. The best part was what we didn't see.

Violence, murder, evil, sex, and foul language have overtaken the airwaves today.  This is Satan's world right now and he loves negative influences that work against what God stands for.

Over the years, we have been gradually spoon fed more and more of it. We have come to accept what we see, as normal and every day. We no longer turn away from it because it is so common.  Proverbs 8:13 says, “The fear of the Lord is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate” (KJV throughout). God hates evil!  Hate is a strong word to be taken seriously.

3 John 1:11 in part also tells us that we should “follow not that which is evil, but that which is good.” You may argue that simply watching something on television or hearing a song on the radio is not the same as doing evil, but if we are to emulate Jesus Christ then shouldn't we do as He would do?  If God hates that which is evil, then would Christ have anything to do with it?

I have often found myself listening to an old song from my teen years. The music begins to play and I think to myself, oh I love this song! I begin to sing along to the lyrics when suddenly I realize what the song is about and I am appalled. “What? This song is about adultery...drugs, murder, or whatever?” I ask myself. I wonder how I had never realized what the song was about before. Is it just that I never really listened or was it that I didn't care? Honestly, I cannot tell you why exactly, but I am sure it is that I now have God's Holy Spirit working with me, which helps me to be more aware of what to accept as good.

Psalms 34:14says, “Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it.” Departing from evil is not only physical. Evil comes in many forms. We must protect our minds as well.  If we continuously watch programs that show grisly murders, we can become accustomed to it. Personally I don't want to grow accustomed to something like that.

More and more my family is re-evaluating what we watch and listen to.  My husband and I were raised on television and yes, we like to watch it. However, in the last year we decided to make better choices. For us that meant getting rid of the satellite television. We have regular television and we use our computer and a movie service now. This means we have to seek out programming instead of just flipping aimlessly through the endless channels we used to have. We have become more selective and make better choices. We have also made a conscious decision to not accept certain things in our programming.

Maybe the series is fine, but an episode comes along that is not up to standards. We shouldn't keep watching because we like the series, instead it should be turned off. If the movie we choose is full of cursing or sexual content, it should be ended.  I have started and stopped up to five movies in a row before actually finding one suitable enough to watch. I also find myself choosing older programs and movies, but even those need to be weeded through, though not as often.

Morals have become a thing of the past in most programming and music today. As we allow these things into our minds, we tend to view them as acceptable. In Proverbs 4:26-27 we are warned to“Ponder the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established. Turn not to the right hand nor to the left: remove thy foot from evil.”When we view things as acceptable, we begin to turn away from the ways of God. 

We cannot brush off the seriousness of this. The old saying of “You are what you eat” applies to the mind as well. We are what we think. What we think is formed by what we put into our minds.  It's important that we choose wisely what we put there.

For more information on living right read the Bible study aid, Making Life Work.