[Rector]

Block thinking

 

God created dinosaurs

God destroyed dinosaurs

God created man

Man destroyed God

Man created dinosaurs

= ....................................

 

Given the rise of feminism, the answer to this equation may be women inherit the earth, although I don't think this was the point being made in Jurassic Park. The film's theme is a good one, but we don't need to be convinced that humanity is out of control. We are creating ourselves out of existence.

Take television, a wonderful invention and what would I do without it when I need a relaxation-fix? These days Television is not just entertainment, it is Real Life. In fact, if ever a person gets the opportunity to speak on a talk show it becomes, as Thomas Kennelly puts it, "a confessional for redemption." Then again, too much TV seems to prove Satre's theory of nausea.

Yet, there is a subtle destructive side to television, a side that we very rarely notice. Pre TV we were linear logical-stream thinkers; we were literate people - we gained our ideas, our knowledge, from the written word. We were inheritors of 5,000 years of literature. As our eyes scanned each line of printed text we put the letters together and then the words and inevitably the argumentation. We learnt to understand our world and each other by means of logic. We were thinkers.

Then came television, digital streaming, ...... Just so we don't get carried away here, TV is not evil; it is not a twenty first century manifestation of Satan. Television is a wonderful medium and can be used for good or evil. As an entertainment media it is unparalleled, but in the quest for knowledge, it's a fraud. No logical stream here, just block experiential feelings - the Sesame Street phenomena. Once it was, "I understand and therefore I know", now it is "I feel and therefore I know."

No thinking, no effort, just feeling. The classroom, and yes, even the church, controlled by the Sesame Street phenomena and the knowledge that is within. What if knowledge is without, and emptiness within? God cannot be confined by the whims of our internal emotions. The Creator is an objective God, one who is beyond us and who speaks to us in words written down. God's Word written, such is the Bible, and such is truth.

 

[Pumpkin Cottage]
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