John Piper: Why I Don’t Have a TV & Rarely Go to Movies
July 9th, 2009 by Victor
Saw this recently and thought it was very good. We live in an evil age and we would do well to consider the following. Let me know your thoughts.
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Now that the video of the Q&A at Advance 09 is available, I can look at it and feel bad all over again. Here’s what I regret, indeed what I have apologized for to the person who asked the question.
The first question to me and Mark Driscoll was, “Piper says get rid of my TV, and Driscoll says buy extra DVRs. How do you reconcile this difference?”
I responded, “Get your sources right. . . . I never said that in my life.”
Almost as soon as it was out of my mouth, I felt: “What a jerk, Piper!” A jerk is a person who nitpicks about the way a question is worded rather than taking the opportunity to address the issue in a serious way. I blew it at multiple levels.
So I was very glad when the person who asked the question wrote to me. I wrote back,
Be totally relieved that YOU did not ask a bad question. I gave a useless and unhelpful, and I think snide, answer and missed a GOLDEN opportunity to make plain the dangers of the triviality you referred to. . . . I don’t know why I snapped about the wording of the question instead of using it for what it was intended for. It was foolish and I think sinful.
So let me see if I can do better now. I can’t give an answer for what Mark means by “buy extra DVRs,” but I can tell you why my advice sounds different. I suspect that Mark and I would not agree on the degree to which the average pastor needs to be movie-savvy in order to be relevant, and the degree to which we should expose ourselves to the world’s entertainment.
I think relevance in preaching hangs very little on watching movies, and I think that much exposure to sensuality, banality, and God-absent entertainment does more to deaden our capacities for joy in Jesus than it does to make us spiritually powerful in the lives of the living dead. Sources of spiritual power—which are what we desperately need—are not in the cinema. You will not want your biographer to write: Prick him and he bleeds movies.
If you want to be relevant, say, for prostitutes, don’t watch a movie with a lot of tumbles in a brothel. Immerse yourself in the gospel, which is tailor-made for prostitutes; then watch Jesus deal with them in the Bible; then go find a prostitute and talk to her. Listen to her, not the movie. Being entertained by sin does not increase compassion for sinners.
There are, perhaps, a few extraordinary men who can watch action-packed, suspenseful, sexually explicit films and come away more godly. But there are not many. And I am certainly not one of them.
I have a high tolerance for violence, high tolerance for bad language, and zero tolerance for nudity. There is a reason for these differences. The violence is make-believe. They don’t really mean those bad words. But that lady is really naked, and I am really watching. And somewhere she has a brokenhearted father.
I’ll put it bluntly. The only nude female body a guy should ever lay his eyes on is his wife’s. The few exceptions include doctors, morticians, and fathers changing diapers. “I have made a covenant with my eyes; how then could I gaze at a virgin?” (Job 31:1). What the eyes see really matters. “Everyone who looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). Better to gouge your eye than go to hell (verse 29).
Brothers, that is serious. Really serious. Jesus is violent about this. What we do with our eyes can damn us. One reason is that it is virtually impossible to transition from being entertained by nudity to an act of “beholding the glory of the Lord.” But this means the entire Christian life is threatened by the deadening effects of sexual titillation.
All Christ-exalting transformation comes from “beholding the glory of Christ.” “Beholding the glory of the Lord, [we] are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18). Whatever dulls the eyes of our mind from seeing Christ powerfully and purely is destroying us. There is not one man in a thousand whose spiritual eyes are more readily moved by the beauty of Christ because he has just seen a bare breast with his buddies.
But leave sex aside (as if that were possible for fifteen minutes on TV). It’s the unremitting triviality that makes television so deadly. What we desperately need is help to enlarge our capacities to be moved by the immeasurable glories of Christ. Television takes us almost constantly in the opposite direction, lowering, shrinking, and deadening our capacities for worshiping Christ.
One more smaller concern with TV (besides its addictive tendencies, trivialization of life, and deadening effects): It takes time. I have so many things I want to accomplish in this one short life. Don’t waste your life is not a catchphrase for me; it’s a cliff I walk beside every day with trembling.
TV consumes more and more time for those who get used to watching it. You start to feel like it belongs. You wonder how you could get along without it. I am jealous for my evenings. There are so many things in life I want to accomplish. I simply could not do what I do if I watched television. So we have never had a TV in 40 years of marriage (except in Germany, to help learn the language). I don’t regret it.
Sorry again, for the bad answer. I hope this helps.
Pastor John
Paster John’s comments were very well put, his heart for God really shows through.
We got rid of TV almost two years ago and have not missed it one bit. I like to think we were very selective about what we watched when we did have it but still it was there. Just last week while we were out walking in the evening (a very nice thing to do instead of sitting in front of the tube) I said “How did we ever have time to watch TV”
I think the biggest freedom is experienced by not feeling bound by the time a TV show is on. We still watch DVD’s we get from the Library so we are able to be very selective and only watch what we have chosen to watch and just as importantly when we want to watch it. Its great I highly recommend it.
John, thanks for your recommendation. What led you to lose the TV?
Hi Victor
It just seemed like we were watching less and less and paying through the nose for cable.
What used to really bug me was sitting down to try and watch something and then you spend half an hour surfing channels just trying to find something worth watching then when you find something mildly interesting the commercial hit and so you go back to surfing and end up forgetting what it was you were watching its a mindless frustating complete waste of time.
Some friends of ours who have only had the network channels have not been able to watch anything because of the switch over to digital transmission and they have found they dont miss it at all.
I have seen that younger people in our fellowship no longer bother with cable or or regular TV they just watch the programms they like on the web.
The only ting I have ever really missed on TV is watching some of the Major golf tournaments, but even that had a positive I go round to a friends house and end up having a great time spending time with other people, and if I want to watch a game of English soccer then I go to an English pub, life is good.
I dont want to try and say there is any spiritual aspect behind this
it wasnt based on any decision to be more spiritual or less worldly I was just sick of the mindless crap (excuse the language) but that is something I feel quite strongly about.
God bless and enjoy your weekend
John
lol, this reminds me of a funny “ball in hole” bit on the game of golf, and how if you really look at it, golf is a rather pointless game with the maximum waste in resources. No offense, I think all commercial sports are a waste of time.
That’s what I do more and more these days. I can watch when I want to, and there are fewer commercials.
There was a golden age of television. Remember when we used to
see the great names and the movies that had a good story, whether it was a western, or a movie about a jury, or whatever?
Why don’t they make a good story about a judge who has to decide about abortion, and it’s about trying to base a case on
sexual equality, which makes no sense, and finding that we have to
value every life, and upon such values we have to make decisions?
Or how about a movie about what the effects of a state giving out
marriage licenses to people of the same sex and what happened to
their society?
Or how about a movie about a church that decided to teach every
one of it’s congregants how to be a judge, a deliverer, a worker
in the ministry of reconciliation, hearing all matters between two
parties whenever there is a dispute, or disagreement between them that causes one to suffer, and how they made the plea for
mercy, and saw people forgive and repent when their sins became
known?
Or how about a movie that shows what happens when church
musicians got together for a worship conference that brought a
whole nation of young people together because the words they
sang was the gospel in purity and light, and there was nothing in
any of it that was of worship of self, but all the worship went to God?
Or how about a movie about a school that had students start a prayer and scripture reading time after school and had to battle the
school system to let it happen, and through it all we could see the
hand of God working?
Or how about a state governor that decided it was time for him to
share his faith in God in everything he did, giving God praise in every speech and how that began to change a nation?
Or how about a story on a meeting of leaders from different denominations that came together to discuss things that they disagreed on, and decided that the only answer was to give up
as a necessary doctrine anything that the rest of the group did
not necessarily agree with?
Or how about a story where a neighborhood decided to get together and battle city hall about an adult entertainment business
that moved into their neighborhood and how they took on the city
and state government?
Or how about a story where a man decides he’s going to start a ministry work to ex sex offenders and is able to connect them with
children who need spiritual support, as a way of healing them and
also blessing the children? That connection say, was made by written letters and such to children of other nations and each letter
was read and translated and by that process the children were protected? In this process, maybe he had to battle the judges.
It could be about how these men were healed by God and God gave them such wisdom that these children became great leaders.
Maybe they taught these children to look to God in everything and
about some things in life to watch out for, and they did it in such
discression, wisdom and love that they became the mentors that
gave the instruction that no other pastor or teacher could?
What other kind of stories could there be on TV?
Good post…
My life definitely has huge areas of needed improvement, but my progressive walk for the LORD is extremely more concrete (all praise to GOD) since the t.v. was removed from the house… J. Pipe makes a good point here,
–”I think relevance in preaching hangs very little on watching movies, and I think that much exposure to sensuality, banality, and God-absent entertainment does more to deaden our capacities for joy in Jesus than it does to make us spiritually powerful in the lives of the living dead. Sources of spiritual power—which are what we desperately need—are not in the cinema.”–
What’s on television is ran and determined by those of the world not of GOD, so to sit down and watch it is to “fellowship with the world” in a sense, which is not the spiritual growth children of GOD should be thirsting for. Devil has a way of using t.v. as a temporary fix to our thirst (which has us constantly seeking it out for fulfillment), yet GOD’s telling us to come to the fountain (HIM) for this and to seek out anything else but HIM would lead us to a life of spiritual dryness & emptiness.
I’ve found that I can substitute it with the cpu or radio or something else of the world, which would lead to the same empty (& ultimately destructible) conclusion, so what we fill that time with is key; but I vote negativo for the t.v. and challenge anyone who has one to shut it down for a bit and see if they see improvement in their walk & focus for GOD.
hmm… I wonder if anyone’s ever done a sermon jam on this? oh snap, you don’t say…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uLDTp89XYc