Media Monkeys

As you may already know, we started a series this past weekend called "Media Monkeys." The point of the series is to identify some of the messages that we hear from the media and compare them to the messages that God wants us to hear.

This weekend we talked about the media's portrayal of religion. Topics of spirituality are pretty common in music, movies, television, and print. It is important to help our teens identify the messages they are receiving and compare them to God's Word to see if they are accurate. Now, there are so many different messages that we hear from media sources all the time. It would take quite a while to address and explain them all. Here are a few of the ones we touched on at REALife. Use these as a launching point to talk with your son or daughter about the messages they are hearing from the media. As we found at REALife this past weekend, this is a topic that really gets students talking.

Here are three of the messages we hear from the media...

1) God doesn't matter - Remove "Christian" movies and music from the conversation and think about the movies/music/tv shows that you watch. God and Christian values are not popular topics of conversation in media outlets. What message does this send to teenagers? From my perspective, it sends several messages: a) God isn't important, b) God isn't interesting, c) God isn't fun... basically to summarize these messages, God doesn't matter in my life. If God isn't important enough to sing about, if He isn't important enough to bring up in television or movies, if He isn't a part of the lives of celebrities in People magazine, then why should He be a part of my life? The absence of God in media is a subtle message that is playing itself out in very un-subtle ways. Our teens do not feel like God matters because that's how the media portrays Him. This is not the message that God wants us to hear. As parents and Christians we need to show teens that God means something to us.

2) Faith doesn't impact my life - There is a common duality in the world of celebrities that is portrayed to us through the media. Teens see a celebrity who they know sings about drug use or promiscuous sex, but at the VMA's (video music awards) they first would like to thank God for this great achievement. The message that we hear from this is that faith plays no real role in my life. The message we hear is "yes I'm a Christian, but that isn't going to change the way that I live." This, again, is not the message God is telling us. God wants to transform out lives, and it's important for us to identify what actions demonstrate obedience to God and what actions push us farther away from Him.

3) God is something that He is not - When God is represented in the media, He is usually misrepresented. For instance, a recent episode of the television show "Glee" played off the not so new phenomenon of finding the image of Jesus burned into a grilled cheese sandwich (a grilled "cheesus"). The character on the show named Finn proceeds to pray to this Jesus image to ask for things that he wants (to win a football game, to become quarterback again, and interestingly enough for sexual progression with his girlfriend). This episode was in no way pushing the understanding that God is in a grilled cheese sandwich (it seemed more like a joke than anything else), and the bigger issue I saw was the common understanding among teens to only go to God when the want something. To many teens, God is a cosmic vending machine whose only purpose is to give them what they want, and when they don't get what they want it proves to them that God isn't there. When the media portrays God to be something He's not, it's important to talk with teens about the truth of who God really is to combat inaccurate messages they would otherwise believe.

I hope that these few points start to get you thinking about what messages our teens are hearing from their media sources on a daily basis. Let this be a wake-up call to all of us to speak to teens about these messages they are hearing, and let's try to bring the truth of scripture into the conversation. Stay tuned in the upcoming weeks for more posts related to media, teens, and faith.