TV or Not TV, That is the Question!



Our dear old television gave up the ghost a couple of weeks ago. Alas, it had served us well. Our first reaction was to run right out and see what it would cost to replace it. It was, after all, nearly the big week when all of our shows come back on after the long summer break. We happen to have this lovely Crate and Barrel entertainment center, the focal point of our living room, that just begs for a nice big TV. And besides, what else are we supposed to do with all of our time?

TV for us has been an unusual cultural experience. We started our marriage thirty three years ago with a tiny little set. So small, in fact, that we had to sit one in front of the other to watch it. That worked fine since we only had one chair in the living room of our first apartment. One of us would sit in the chair and the other on the floor directly in front. We would switch places at commercial breaks. It worked just beautifully, thank you very much. We had televisions at several points during our early years and even the first few years with kids only when we had someone living in our home who brought one with them. We did this with fairly regular frequency. We had each of our younger brothers for a season, a pastor and his wife without work, one of our children's nursery workers who needed some TLC and even a dad who had just kind of lost his way. When they came, no matter how dire their situation, their belongings almost always included a TV which they were more than delighted to share with our family. It was not until we had four children that we actually went out and purchased a television. At that time we were homeschooling and chose a small set with a built in VCR. Remember VCRs? We used it mostly to watch videos. We were very careful about what television shows our kids watched. Well, I will admit that we let them watch the original A-Team but not much else until much later on. I hated Sesame Street but would allow Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood but that's a whole 'nother post. We would often put the kids to bed and then have an at home date. We would watch a movie, fold clothes together or just enjoy popcorn without benefit of kids. It worked well. A bit later we graduated to a bigger TV when Dad decided the kids were old enough for Nintendo 64. That TV lasted many years, through the whole Clinton scandal, Saved by the Bell and even Boy Meets World. The kids love to remind me of how we often had to discuss what we had seen on a particular show. One remarkable memory involved one of the last episodes of Boy Meets World when Cory and Topanga contemplate having..."the sex," as it was known to our children. They decided against it because they just didn't think it was the "right time." I made very sure that every one of my kids learned that the only right time was after they were married! At least one of the kids remembers that event well enough to tease me about it now. I guess I may have been a bit rabid at the time. I wish I could say I was sorry, but I just can't. We tried really hard to make sure whatever we watched would not harm our kids, or violate scripture but we tried not to be preachy. It wasn't always just about bad words or too much skin. We were alert to shows that made parents or any adult look stupid and untrustworthy or fostered attitudes we wanted to avoid. TV continued to play a secondary role in our home for a long time. We rarely had a set in the living room, preferring to make it fairly uncomfortable to watch for very long. We had limits on content and how much time anyone spent watching. Unfortunately, at some point, the one-eyed monster found its way into our living room. Dish Network followed pretty quickly afterward. We were caring for a child with cancer, which meant lots of down time,  but once that set and all that programming came in it was very hard to get it out. We sent that big, clunky TV with one of the boys when he moved out on his own. It was replaced  by a sleek, new flat screen model, a gift from a son and daughter. It made a couple of moves with us and served us well, providing hours of entertainment both through broadcast television, DVDs and Wii tournaments. As life slowed down with the departure of our children we found that we were watching TV more and more. I had even begun to watch daytime television during those long fourteen hour days alone, something that had never been part of life for me. What had I become!? Oprah?! Seriously?! I know lots of "older" folks watch lots of TV. They may even do so from the comfort of their matching recliners. I did not envision that for us, certainly not this early into our Empty Nest Journey. I didn't like where this was going. I could feel the gentle nudging to reconsider this major purchase. It didn't hurt (or maybe that's exactly what it did) that we have family members and friends who are unemployed or underemployed and that we have a child who has the opportunity to go to a very faraway place and help lead worship for 45,000 people. How could we justify spending hundreds of dollars on a new TV when we could do so much more with it. And furthermore, all those new shows we were waiting to see? Every last one seemed to have slithered into the yucky place while we weren't paying attention. I loved House and Bones, Castle and CSI. The Mentalist and NCIS and even our silly SciFi shows. But now, a good crime story is just not enough, its all about who is sleeping with whom! How is this in any way adult? Again, not preaching. But for us, it just doesn't fit with the life we are and have been trying to make for all these years. It doesn't really fit with the whole "I will set no worthless thing before my eyes." concept. I don't want to spend my life staring at the TV and I don't want to become dull of spirit. I want to love what God loves and hate what He hates. I don't want to find myself rooting for the cute couple to finally "hook up" even though they aren't married, or at least aren't married to each other! I want to be grieved by that. Silly reality shows, talent competitions and what is up with the vampires?! I just can't really find anything worth our time.

OK that all sounds really nice, huh? Well, it turned out to be way harder than we thought. I don't know what withdrawal from drugs or alcohol feels like and I would never want to trivialize such a thing but this was no picnic. The last couple of weeks have been tough. We just couldn't really find anything to do, especially me, on all those dreadfully long days. And seriously, I have this beautiful entertainment center. What am I going to do with that? Bill had offered to take the broken TV out the day it died but I said, "No! That would leave a big, ugly hole in our living room." Finally, once we decided we would not be returning to TV Land anytime soon, I gave in and let it go. Last night we disconnected all those cables and wires and hauled the sad set to the garage. We got rid of the DVD player and packed up the Wii. We also came up with what I think is a reasonable solution for the spot left vacant.



Before we got to this place in our marriage, we talked a lot about how we wanted to spend these next fifty years (OK, maybe fifty is a bit optimistic, but humor me.) We wrote things down. We made lists of some of the things we used to like doing but that got crowded out because of time or funding constraints. Maybe we just forgot to do some things. We included things we have never done but always wanted to try. I went back and looked at that list and it did not include watching a lot of TV. Oh, we may get one again some time in the future and we know we can hit up one of our nearby kids if we just really want to see a game. We don't think TV is necessarily sinful, it just isn't for us right now. So, TV or not TV? The answer for us right now is no.