Books and More Books (3)

 

Have you read Amusing Ourselves to Death, by Neil Postman? It is a must read. Considering it was published in 1985, I can only imagine what Postman would say today, were he still living. If you want to read some real prophecy, read this book. This is an example of prophecy and discernment birthed by common grace and general revelation and God-given common sense, and it far surpasses most of what is marketed as prophecy by many pastors, teachers, and “Christian” authors.

 

“It is my intention in this book to show that a great media-metaphor shift has taken place in America, with the result that the content of much of our public discourse has become dangerous nonsense.” Postman, page 16.

 

Not just public discourse, but discourse within the professing church.

 

“Television is our culture’s principal mode of knowing about itself. Therefore – and this is the critical point – how television stages the world becomes the model for how the world is properly to be staged. It is not merely that on the television screen entertainment is the metaphor for all discourse. It is that off the screen entertainment is the metaphor for all discourse…Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other.” Postman, page 92.

 

“What all of this means [our show business culture] is that our culture has moved toward a new way of conducting its business, especially its important business. The nature of its discourse is changing as the demarcation line between what is show business and what is not becomes harder to see with each passing day. Our priests [and pastors, and worship leaders, and evangelists, and small group leaders] presidents, our surgeons and lawyers, our educators and newscasters need worry less about satisfying the demands of their discipline than the demands of good showmanship. Had Irving Berlin changed one word in the title of his celebrated song, he would have been as prophetic, albeit more terse, as Aldous Huxley. He need only have written, There’s No Business But Show Business.” Postman, page 98.

 

“…it is not that religion has become the content of television shows but that television shows may become the content of religion.”  Postman, page 124.

 

It seems as if Postman is hitting the nail on the head. Here’s one more that speaks not just to advertising, but to much of the professing church:

 

“The television commercial has oriented business away from making products of value and toward making consumers feel valuable, which means that the business of business has now become pseudo-therapy. The consumer is a patient assured by psycho-dramas.” Postman, page 128.

 

Whereas Dorothy L. Sayers wrote that, “The beauty is in the dogma,” we now preach that the “beauty is in the mirror of self.”

 

Well, if you want to get a clue or two about why we are Biblically illiterate in the professing church, Postman’s book provides valuable framework.

 

I recently had a church elder tell me, after I suggested a book to him, “I don’t read.” Once, during my annual review by church leadership, I was criticized for expecting the leadership to read material I was giving them. Considering that elders are to be “able to teach” (1 Tim. 3:1) and that deacons are to be “holding the mystery of the faith” (1 Tim. 3:9); where do we get this idea that we are not supposed to read?

 

Yes Mr. Postman, we are indeed amusing ourselves to death.