A Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste

I sometimes find it interesting that people who decry study and reading are riveted to video and television. Even good and godly video. They seem to fail to understand that all they are doing is “watching” a book. All of that research came from books and such but reading is somehow unspiritual and unnecessary while watching some teacher or some video is holy. Go figure.

There are few things that can shape the mind like a good book. It takes discipline to read (or study) a good book. A video cannot replace it.

Carl Bernstein decries what he calls the "idiot culture". He says we have moved "toward the creation of a sleazoid info-tainment culture in which the lines between Oprah and Phil and the New York Post and Newsday, are too often indistinguishable. In this new culture of journalistic titillation, we teach our reader and our viewers that the trivial is significant, that the lurid and the loopy are more important than real news. We do not serve our readers and viewers; we pander to them...for the first time in our history the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming the cultural norm, even our cultural ideal."

(http://www.sptimes.com/2004/03/19/Tampabay/Ex_Watergate_writer_l.shtml)

And the sad thing is that way too many Christians will cluck their tongues at Bernstein’s words, convinced that they are not taken in by such an idiot culture, when in fact it is almost impossible for any of us not to be, and the mere fact that we refrain from watching Jerry Springer or "Survivor Thailand" or "South Park" convinces us that we are all right. Dare I say this? I’ll soften the blow by not being all that specific: much, if not most, of the stuff that we find offered to us in Christian bookstores, and on so-called Christian television, is not helpful to us in this regard either!

Television is fun to watch, but it is utterly and entirely dependent on the spoken and written word.” So do yourself a favor … pick up a book, a good book (better yet, “THE GOOD BOOK”) and let it sink deep into your soul.

BY CULTIVATING THE PRACTICE OF SEEING THE WORLD THROUGH THE EYES OF FAITH

"All truth is God’s truth!" One compelling argument for Christian education is an understanding of this truth.

Can I understand history--indeed, does history make any sense--apart from an understanding that there is a God who is an active agent in the affairs of men?

Can I understand math without understanding that God created an orderly universe?

Can I understand music without recognizing the creativity of the most high?

Can I understand language without an understanding that God is Himself a Communicator? "The Heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world."

Can we understand science without having a firm grasp of the fact that "in the beginning, God created"?