Steps I can Take

Yesterday, I wrote about changing the algorithms of our visual input.  I have to confess, before I knew what an algorithm was, I have a love of movies…movies with guys like Denzel, Liam, and Keanu.  I’d find myself rooting for Denzel to kill everyone and when he said, “I wish you had more time,” and blew the guy up I cheered.

Kim and I watch Netflix shows and from time to time I find myself pulling for the character to either kill or be killed.  I know that it is “just a movie,” but I wonder how that type of violence and the violence our children experience on video games impacts our society.

I am ashamed to say that when I was younger, I shot a lot of birds…not that kind of bird…the flying kind!!  My grandmother would see me leave her house with a pocket full of 22 cartridges and she always said, “Don’t shoot my redbirds!”  I stopped killing them years later.  I had a shotgun and was in my back yard with the girl I was dating at the time.  I saw a blackbird in the tree and without thinking, I just raised the gun and shot.  It fell the ground; my girlfriend picked it up and turned to me with tears in her eyes.  I realized at that very moment what I was doing was wrong.  I don’t mean those who hunt birds for food…I mean senseless killing for killings sake.

When so many platforms glorify murder, sex, and the objectifying of women…should we really be surprised when it shows itself in real time?  I’ll go back to a statement from Thad Cardine, “Stop pretending your inputs don’t shape your soul.  They do.  Every podcast, post, swipe, scroll, shortcut, or silence is forming you—or deforming you.”

Surely, we can agree that porn has an impact on rape, incest, and women and children being trafficked.  Can we also agree that violent movies and video games have an impact on the murder rates…not to mention music that glorifies it.  I can’t control what is produced, but I can take the necessary steps to control, as much as I possibly can, the things that enter my life.

There really is a battle going on in our culture, but before it ever gets to the categories we assign them, like fundamentalist or progressive, it happens first in the mind.  If we can’t learn to set a guard over our mind, our eyes, and our ears we will never be able to protect our heart.

David said, “I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless.”  Can we start there?  Ask the Spirit to help you set a guard over what you watch and hear and see if that doesn’t help with setting a guard over our thoughts.