Media Through the Lens of Jesus: Walking the Media Tightrope

I just got back from a weekend conference that we did with over 150 InterVarsity students from across the Eastern Carolina's entitled "Media Through the Lens of Jesus." We wanted to drill down into this important topic in students' lives, but we wanted to do so with great care. It's too easy and predictable to do a Christian conference on media where all we do is bash it for the whole weekend.

I got to do the lead-off talk on Friday night. And I talked about the spectrum of Christian experiences and positions when it comes to media. On the one end of the spectrum there is thoughtless consumption. Faith and media have very little to do with one another, we just take in whatever the heck we want and question anyone's right to say anything about it. This was me for much of my high school and early college days.

At the far other end is a position of retreat/isolation. This is the total removal of yourself from engagement with secular media and it's often loaded up with rules and regulations and a legalism that is quite burdensome. This was me during my junior year of college in reaction to where I had been previously. It sucked. By the end of my junior year my Christian walk was this onerous, joyless duty. I always felt like anything I did recreationally had to be specifically and clearly pushing me in my faith. I felt claustrophobic in my faith. I was also pretty judgmental of everyone else around me who engaged in media choices that I didn't feel free to.

My point was that neither one of these extremes of Thoughtless Engagement or Retreat/Isolation is a faithful place to be.

If those two ends of the spectrum are poles, imagine a wire running between the two poles creating a tightrope. It is always easier to hug a pole than it is to walk the wire. It always feels safer to cling to one extreme or the other than it is to walk in between. Neither one really requires much thought. But I believe that for most Christians, being in step with the Spirit, walking by faith, requires us to leave both extremes and to walk the wire.

I called the middle "The Sweet Spot: Thoughtful Engagement and Humble Abstinence."

I believe that we are called to engage media thoughtfully and intentionally. If an image-bearer had a hand in creating something, there is an echo of that image-bearing-ness present, however distant or faint. The desire for forgiveness, longings for eternity, redemption, hope--all these are evidence of Ecclesiastes 3--"...he has also placed eternity in the hearts of men, but they cannot fathom what he has done from beginning to end."

But there will be some things that we will abstain from consuming. Some things are just not healthy for our souls, good for our witness, or both. And that requires humility in understanding that my things and your things as a fellow believer might be different. It doesn't mean that there isn't room for you to call me out on something if you think I'm making foolish decisions, but it does mean that there's grace and space for us to make different decisions.

The call all weekend: to do honest self-evaluation, and to move to the sweet spot.

I'll blog more of the content from the weekend over the course of this week, there was some real good stuff that we covered.