#1937
Clean Up the Talking
Boxes
And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business,
and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you; That ye may walk honestly
toward them that are without, and that ye may have lack of nothing. (1 Thessalonians 4:11-12)
Youth is a gift of nature; old age is a work of art. I used to think that youth was such a waste,
so much to learn. And now, youth in the
rear view mirror, old age with its struggles through the windshield, is not a
time for daredevils or sissies.
My mother's parents lived in the house in which she and her
siblings were born, the house in which her father and his siblings were born,
the house in which his father and siblings were born: a large frame plantation
type house, biggest in the community, the type as in all old southern houses,
at one time, the kitchen built away from the house, still standing and still in
use, a house which survived the Civil War.
The light switch-refrigerator-electric stove were still miracles to my
grandmother who had lived most of her life before electric power lines came
into the community. After my
grandfather's death, a lady was brought in to care for my grandmother and one
family member thinking that she should be "enlightened" brought in
for my grandmother's enjoyment a television set (talking box). So, all of a sudden, people in a box talking
to her, she would talk back and wave at them, staggered that they would not
talk back or respond to her. Such is the
bottomless ocean of technology that has enshrouded our lives just during my
lifetime, eighty-six years. I still
cannot understand the impersonal attitude of the woman who talks to me on my
cell phone and she says such "curt" things to me "I did not
understand what you said" or "I am here to serve". (Is there really a little woman in this cell
phone I hold, is everyone in the world, even children, talking to someone in
their little phone?) What will life be
like at the schoolhouse, courthouse, or your house when robots are doing most
of the menial labors or even complicated things that a complex world demands?
My father's parents owned one of the first radio's in the
community, if you could hear anything above the static. But, they did listen to FDR's fireside chats,
etc. And this writer became totally
addicted to the radio, "The Lone Ranger", "Portia Faces
Life", etc. The first exposure for
most country folks to modern technology, after power lines arrived, a movie
shown in town on outside on the side of a building. The first time I ever saw a movie inside a theater
was "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs". The first TV set I ever saw, 1948, was when I
was a freshman at UNC-CH, in the store window of a furniture store. I finally owned one, a large cabinet with a
very small screen, just a few inches...everything black and white. If you want today's psychological problems
solved with young people...their lack of manners, their slang, their laziness,
their dissatisfaction with everything (real or imagined), CHILDREN WITH TOO
MUCH TOO SOON. Young people never knew
the talking box when it was on just during the hours of six to midnight, the
large peacock. People went to bed, did
not stay up all night watching trash, audiences snickering at sexual innuendo, "supposed
entertainers".
Yesterday, Mary Tyler Moore died at age eighty. Like so many of the early TV shows, she
entertained people with a clean, hilarious program. If our young people could only have seen
early TV shows such as Jack Benny, Charlie McCarthy, or even the Ed Sullivan
show. If our young people could only
have heard early radio shows such as "Fibber McGee", "The Great
Guilder Sleeve", "Lum and Abner", "Major Bowes Amateur
Hour", "Henry Aldridge" ("Coming Mother"), etc. They were clean-decent-acceptable in most
homes.
This old man has many warts and stains from sin (B.C. -
before Christ) but, I am astonished at today's acceptable language heard on
radio and TV, which at one time, one only heard in an Army barracks, which now
goes out over cyberspace. I well
remember while a student in Memphis ,
TN
Most, thank God, used entertainment like other forms of
indolence and care. My Aunt Mamie, who
owned a television set, would have all of her neighbors into her house to watch
"I Love Lucy". These people,
who had done nothing but survived by the undercoatings of living via hard work,
finally had something to enjoy, finally could hear one another laugh, and
finally could have some joy in a world of troubles-struggles. And, for the most part, it was clean
entertainment. For the most part, after
other stations were added in addition to the big three, CBS, NBC, ABC, one
could travel the world and see the sights which only a few of us had been able
to see by actually going there. With equality,
those with eyesight could view the great pyramids in Egypt ,
which sit at the exact landmass center of the Earth, could see the pyramids in
the Yucatan , the glaciers of the poles, the
frigid ice of Siberia, and the heated sand of the Sahara ...SUCH
A SOURCE OF EDUCATION.
But, as was the case in Heaven when one third of the angels
got kicked out by God, along with the Devil, Satan gets involved in
everything. And, like pornography in the
backstreet bookstores, peep shows, pornography was moved into your living
room. And, when enough parents,
preachers, physicians got concerned about the pollution of your children's
minds; much of television was cleaned up.
But, Satan never gives up...always on the job. He moved right into your living room, a smaller
box that didn't talk as loudly, that not only had a snare but a net
(internet). So absolutely-fantastically
educational that every home-business-student must have one...the computer, they
were made more acceptable by calling them fruit names such as Apple and
Macintosh. With such obviously innocent
characters as a "mouse", this sightless veteran has never seen one,
cannot use one. The computer has taken
over the world, from the nuclear silos to the restaurant kitchen...all life
revolves around the computer...all of Wal-Mart's inventory, all of Planned Parenthood's fetal tissue
abortion results.
The computer, like television, has become more addictive
than opium, more time consuming than eating.
And, at a time when children watch television four hours each day, old
folks watch television seven hours each day.
How addictive soap operas became.
One of my long time church friends was in a nursing home, many health problems;
she was too old-too broke for her pastor or church friends to visit her anymore. She had no money, treasure, talent, or time
to give them. I asked a woman preacher,
who I knew, to go and visit her. When
she went, my friend said to her, "I don't have time to see you; I have to
watch my story." Out in the
country, country church, one of my mother's friends asked the people at prayer
meeting to pray for one of the soap opera characters who had gone to the
hospital. This is how real Satan has
made sin such a pushover to everyone-every age-every economic strata. Technology has become so real; this writer
has made eight trips around the world, every continent including both poles,
passport stamped in 157 countries. I
have smelled poor sanitation, witnessed filth, particularly in Godless
communist countries. My first trip to
Communist China, I would not touch anything in the room without cleaning
it...filth everywhere. In Burma , you
could smell the toilets in airports from a long distance; this is what happens
when uncleanness, lack of sanitation, a sewer mentality takes over a world, a
nation, and the people of a nation. This
not healthy or holy, from the beginning God expected us to be holy because he
knew this led to physical and mental health.
“And ye shall be holy unto me: for I the LORD am holy, and
have severed you from other people, that ye should be mine.” (Leviticus
20:26) Looking back, Peter said,
"Be holy because I am holy." (1 Peter 1:16)
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