Kerry Koller gave this talk at a meeting for coordinators and mission branch leaders. He started with the assumption that we want a culture in our families consistent with People of Praise culture. In particular he analyzed the way time is used, with a focus on the problems of spending too much time on worldly entertainment and recreation. He offered a long list of worthwhile activities that build culture in the home.
Transcript
This document is a direct transcript of an audio recording, and may contain transcription errors and other minor edits for the sake of clarity.
KERRY: This is a pretty practical talk. For those of you who have had to weather my talks on these topics in the past, there will be no media bashing this morning [laughter] and no sleaze videos. Sorry. [All groan and laugh.] Itâs Sunday morning and itâs early.
So this is aâthis is meant to be real practical. Hopefully itâs the kind of thing that you can use in your own situation, your own family. This is very family-oriented, for those of you who arenât in fami- âwho arenât fathers, or who arenât husbands. And itâs also very American, so, I mean, it really talks about what I perceive as being an American phenomenon. I donât know if the phenomenon Iâm gonna talk about is as widespread in Canada, and I suspect itâs not. Itâs hardly part of the life at all in the Caribbean, I suspect.
My initial assumption is that if the people who are responsible for our economy and for the way itâs gonna unfoldâI suspect this will in due timeâthis sort of culture, mass culture, that we have in America will be very much a part of the culture of almost everyone. But as it stands now, Iâm gonna be talking very much from an American experience and to an American problem as I perceive it. But hopefully itâll be useful in some way to the rest of you.
I put an outline of the talk up here. And again, thatâs just in the interest of practicality. Perhaps youâll be able to use some of this with the guys that you head, in your menâs groups. Perhaps it will be useful in some of the families that you deal with in your branch or mission branch. Thatâs the object here, is to give you something thatâs real useful. And to the degree that itâs useful, then itâll be successful.
What I wanna talk about could be call- âtitled variously âTime in the Life of Our Families,â or something like âGetting Things to Work Right for Ourselves and for Our Kids.â Itâs ordered to the family; itâs ordered to raising kids; itâs ordered to what happens in the home. And it revolves around the use of our time, how time gets used. Itâll touch on a lot of other topics, but I use time as the center point because I think, pastorally, if we look at that and concentrate on how we use our time, we may solve some of the other problems that. . . . Some of the other problems are generatedâthat we have in our familiesâare generated by the way time gets used. So if we look at the way that time gets used and can make some adjustments in it, Iâm hopeful that we can make someâwe can solve some of the other problems that we find.
I start with the assumption that we want to have a âfamily cultureâ in our families, a culture consistent with the culture of the People of Praise. And that we recognize as fathers the obligation we have to raise our children of [sic] members of Christâs body, that we need to bring them to full adult life. That we have a human responsibility, a biological responsibility, for our children, but we also have a deeply Christian responsibility to launch them in the Christian life.
Iâm always amazed in myself how I can be concerned about evangelism and evangelizing people that I work with or people Iâm gonna meet, and overlook the fact that the people that Iâm responsible for in the kingdom of God and whose Christian lives are gonna be largely formed by me, the habits that they form now, the character thatâs formed in them, is gonna be largelyâa good deal of it is my responsibility, my and my wifeâs responsibility. And that avenue, that part of it, often I find very easy to ignore, and to ignore that my first area of evangelization is right there in the home.
And itâs not just evangelization in the sense of teaching them the truth of the gospel in a kind of religious sense, but forming their character and their personality such that theyâll be able to really be effective members of the body of Christ. As they grow up theyâll be men and women who can really lay down their lives for the kingdom of God and not have grown up with personality problems and character problems that are gonna block what God wants them to do, thatâs [sic] gonna make them ineffective or unable to move forward when God calls them, unable to do the kind of thing that Paul talked about last night, doing the hard thing, being able to take the next step with the Lord, and not to have a whole lot of personality and character problems such that theyâre unable to make that move or donât even want to make that move.
So I want to focus on time and how we use it. And my assumption is that most of the families, or a good number of the families, in the United States need to reorder the way that time is spent. And I suspect that to the degree that our families in the People of Praise participate in the larger American culture, that they alsoâwe also need to take a hard look at how we use our time.
By family here, I mean something like âfamily/home.â Itâs not just the personal relationships, not just the âfather, mother, brothers and sisters, childrenâ relationships, but also the physical environment, and what happens in that physical environment. So itâs the whole kind of totalâwhat you might call âtotal home life,â family life, as it gets experienced, and the culture thatâs associated with it. By âcultureâ here, I mean something likeâI donât know, itâs hard to captureâsomething like the lifestyle of the house, the things you recognize if you go into somebodyâs house. You know, if you stay with them for a week, you pick up what they do, how they view things, how their life is ordered, whatâs going on there, the way life is lived out in this environment.
For adults, the family or the home is an important environmentâthat is to say, in our lives as adults. Itâs the environment, I thinkâat least, when you contrast it to ourâthe area of our jobs and our obligations, itâs the environment in which we really are âourselves.â We relax at home. Weâre the boss. We can control what goes on there in a way that we canât, usually, where we work, or in fulfilling obligationsâsay, obligationsâchurch obligations or service organizations that you belong to, or those sorts of obligations that we have, civic obligations.
The things that happen in our homes are, at least from an adult point of view, at least in terms of our lives as adults, pretty much in our control, at least in principle in our control. I mean, I can turn the TV on and watch it if I want, and we can watch as much TV as I [sic] want. I can turn the radio on. I can go from one room to the next. I can read. I can sleep. I can go out and mow the lawn. I can have a discussion. I can do any number of things, butâI can take my shoes off in the front room, you know, [and] put my feet up on the coffee table. I canât do that at your house, but I can do it at my house. I mean, itâs my turf; itâs my area.
Itâs where we really are ourselves, in a way. We really shed a lot of social restrictions that are imposed on us from the outside, and do things the way we want. Itâs a place of support and relaxation psychologically for us, and spiritually. Our loved ones are there, and people who understand us and are committed to support us. And itâs a place whereâthose of us who have childrenâwhere we raise our children. I mean, itâs the center of the child-raising operation. The whole family home environment is the center of that.
For the children, the home, it seems to meâIâm just giving this some thought and thereâs a lot more to be said about itâbut it seems to me that it certainly is the key environment in the life of the child, both relationally and structurally. Itâs got the key relationships, especially for a younger child. It has the key relationships that the child depends uponâagain, physically, for life and for protection and nurturing and support; but also psychologically, for being loved, being supported, being formed, being corrected, being disciplined.
Theâin the young childâs life, it seems to me that the home and family life really forms him, and actually in a sense controls his behavior. Children will say a lot of things likeâyounger children: âI wonât do that because Dad doesnât want me to.â Okay? I mean, itâs because itâs just notâit would go against theâkind of the âethos,â or the ethic, of the home, and what your parents expect of you.
For older children it gets much more complicated, of course, because theyâre growing out of the home situationâespecially adolescents, and many times pre-adolescents in our society, because they haveâa lot of them have disposable income; because they have a whole lot of opportunities open to them; they have a lotâthey can travel. . . . You can get a driverâs license at a relatively young age; a lot of kids have cars or access to cars. . . . They have a much wider life experience. But the home, it seems to me, is stillâitâs still âhome baseâ for them, psychologically and physically.
But itâs only one of the environments they have to negotiate. They have their own set of friends. They have different environments theyâre in and out of. They have the school, and they have all those things. And most of those, we as parents donâtâarenât in touch with at all, and have very little knowledge of what goes on in them. And from the kidsâ point of view, of course, even if we did, we would misunderstand it and misread it. [Some laugh.] We just wouldnât be part of it. We wouldnât experience it.
So as the child gets older, it seems to me that rightly the childâs horizons expand, experiences get more varied, and the home becomes only one of many environments, one of many set [sic] of relationships. But I think it still is central. It is a benchmark, a home base, a touchstone for that child.
And what Iâm trying to get at in saying all this is to reiterate the importance of the home and of home life for the child all the way through their childhood years. It variesâthat is to say, its importance varies as the child gets olderâbut I donât wantâI want to impress upon us at least my conviction that theâthat what goes on in the home is super important.
And itâs the kind of thing that we ought not to just simply step back from and say, âWell, it doesnât matter at all. It doesnât matter at all, because thereâs [sic] so many other influences on the child, in the childâs life, that we just possibly canât make a dent in it. And who are we anyway to control this, and why should we do this?â And just to kind of sit back and let the child haveâand not set anyânot create a culture, not create an environment, not create a home/family life for the child to grow up in. I think itâs possible to step back from the situation, to underestimate the importance of the home, especially in the life of the teenager.
I think itâs also possible to overexaggerate it. And that is to act as if this an environment where I as the father or we as the parents are totally in control, and we can control all of these things. And if we push all the right buttons and control everything, then of course the child is just gonna be grand, justâturn out just the way we want. Itâs this little factory where you produce wonderful children. And that overestimates our role and the role of the family. Itâs a continuum; it changes as the child gets older. But it seems to me that itâs crucial at all stages. And it seems to me thatâagain, that the responsibility for what happens there and for structuring it and giving it the proper form lies with us.
Iâd also want to suggest, by mentioning the importance of the home in the life of the adult, is [sic] that the home is where we live too. I mean, itâs our home. Itâs our life thatâs being expressed there. Itâs not a stage set. Weâre not writing a drama and acting out this little drama on this stage set for the benefit of the children. What the children do is live with us. Theyâve been drawn into our life, into ourâwhat we create out of ourselves. What the culture isâthe culture that we surround ourselves with should be the culture or the life that the children experience.
So the home is, it seems to meâis some sort of a whole tapestry. And all of our livesâthe childrenâs lives, the wivesâ lives, the husbandsâ livesâtheyâre all interwoven in that tapestry. And although we operate out of it in different kinds of ways, itâs fundamental. And how that thing isâhow that tapestry is woven is really essential.
Now I want to suggest that one of the things that we do, then, in looking at our families, is that we analyze the way time gets used. I want to suggest three major areas for most folks. Most of our time can be broken down, it seems to me, in[to] our time at work, or for children, time in school; the second area would be where weâour obligations that are not work-related, that are not salary-related, but obligations that we take on; and thirdly, what we might call our leisure time. And what I wannaâI wanna raise the question if in most lives that doesnât simply mean entertainment time.
Work time is the time that we spend earning money. Also, itâs the time in which we make a contribution to building the earth, improving the lot of mankind, providing services. John Olsonâs daughterâs in our household, and I know both John and she work at Carpetland providing services for people. They do home decoration; they sell carpeting, and things like that. That makes peopleâs homes beautiful. I know my dad works, and I used to work when I was a teenager and in college, in the moving business: a service industry, moving peopleâs homes and household goods. Itâs the kind of thing thatâitâs a service that people need. Steelworkers making steel for automobiles, or. . . . And then you go on and on and on with all the various kinds of occupations that you can think of.
Itâs not just simply a matter of making a living; itâs also a matter of making a contribution to the life of mankind. But it is the areaâthatâs the area Iâm talking about when I talk about work. Itâs the area in which we earn money and in which we make that kind of contribution to improving the lot of humankind.
And when I talk about school time, Iâm talking here about actual class time and time spent in learning. Iâm not talking about the peripheral activities that happen at a lot of schools, which in a lot of schools are not so peripheral. Theyâre absolutely at the center of what goes on. The sports and cheerleading and flag waving and yearbook editing andâyou know, this club and that club and the other thing. Iâm not talking about extracurriculars. Iâd put that in entertainment for the students. When I talk about school, Iâm talking about the analog of our work, okay?
Obligations: everything from driving your kids to soccer games to serving in churches and parishes, People of Praise meetings, covenant obligations that we have, menâs group meetings. That sort of thing. Things that weâve committed ourselves to do that take time, and that we want to have as part of our lives.
And then lastly, leisure, which is everything else that we have, except for sleep. And everything else is what Iâll call leisure here. And what I want to suggest is that forâprobably for most people, it really means entertainment and relaxation. Most of the time thatâs not spent in work or school and obligations, I think, for most folks in America, is at least understood to be for entertainment or relaxation, where we seek to fill our time after our obligations and after our work is finished.
This means everything from sitting around reading Sports Illustrated, you knowâthumbing through it in the eveningâto TV, movies, recreational sports, hobbies, light reading, on and on and on. Those things that we relax with and we entertain ourselves with.
So I wanna focus our attention on the amount of time that gets spent in entertainment. And I also wanna talk about the resources that get allocated for entertainment: stereos, jam boxes, VCRs, your Walkman, your Watchman1, sporting goods. Lots and lots and lots and lots of things that getâthat we have that are there simply to support the level of entertainment or relaxation in our lives that we want to have.
I remember, after Iâright after I was marriedâactually, it was a few years after I was married, we were living here in South Bend, and we went back to California to visit my folks. I come from a large family of nine kids, so there wasâthatâs important in the story. We went home, and we had been living graduate student young married life, you know, with cardboard boxes for bookcases, and that, you know, typical sort of thing.
And [we] got home, and we were just amazed at how many things there were in my folksâ home. Like, there were just . . . things. It was just kind of this existential reality, walking in, just surrounded by things. There were all kinds of things that were operable and things that were broken, you know, that kids had discarded. But there were radios and TVs, and thereâs [sic] stereos and thereâs tennis rackets and, you know, ice skates and baseball bats and gloves. I mean, just everywhere you looked, there were just things. And most of the things were ordered towards relaxation and entertainment. If you just took all those things, kind of piled âem up, you know, you could [inaudible; âpracticallyâ?] fill the living room. Youâd just go from bedroom to bedroom andâjust things! It was just incredible. Just an enormous amount of things.
I think if I went through my house now, after being married for 20 years [Kerry chuckles], I could probably find a lot of things just like that. You accumulate those things as you go along. But I think itâs interesting, if you do a little inventory of what youâve got, how much of it is ordered towards relaxation and entertainment! And how much money we have invested in it.
And, when we think about what weâre gonna buy next. . . . Okay, do a little exercise. What ads do you watch in the newspaper? I watch twoâthe ads every night; I watch the ads where they sell electronic gear. Two places. [Inaudible; âIâm always looking atâ?] CDs and stereo gear. Iâm always checking the prices to see. . . . âMaybe! Maybe tomorrow is my next purchase. Maybe.â [All laugh.] But itâs all ordered to entertainment and relaxation, you know? I mean, and itâsâI suspect Iâm not too different than [sic] most of us in that regard.
So we spend, I think, an enormous amount of time, and we have committed an enormous amount of our resources and a lot of money, to entertainment. And I think even more than for our own entertainment, we do it for our children. Thatâs something that I think Iâve seen. I may be wrong aboutâI mean, I could be wrong about all of this. But I mean, this is an observation that Iâthis is a personal observation.
As I look around and am in and out of homes of all kinds of people, andâincluding my own, it seems to me that parents spend an enormous amount of money. They spend and takeâmake all kinds of efforts to make sure that their kids have enough to entertain them. I mean, the level of toys. . . . And, as kids get older, especially stuff thatâs associated withâlike, visual: TVs, movies, and things like that. And on the other hand, sound: stereos, jam boxes, portable stereos, you know, stereos in your bathroom, stereos in your bedroom, stereos you can carry around with you, stereos you can carry in your pocket. I mean, thatâs an enormous amount of stuff thatâs spent on our kids. Sporting goods and recreational stuff: a lot of that, it seems to me, we buy for our kids just so they can entertain themselves. I mean, justâitâs like, when theyâre home from school and theyâve done their work, theyâve mowed the lawn, then what else are they supposed to do but entertain themselves and relax?
As a society or culture, we might be amusing ourselves to death. [Some laugh.] We might just be entertaining ourselves out of existence. I mean, if thereâs nothing left but work and our obligations, and thenâand our leisure time is full of just entertainment and relaxation, thatâs hardly the sign of a healthy society, I think.
So I want to suggest that each of usâthis is the practical point of itâthat each of us do some sort of analysis of our time. And I think that might be useful in some pastoral situations too. Just ask people to do an inventory of their time, and also of the materials: their commitments to the means of and instruments of entertainment.
Should we be spending so much time on it? And why should we accept the idea that after work and school and our obligations are taken care of, that the rest of our time is for entertainment? It seems to me thatâs the big mistake. We do have leisure time, and we do need some relaxation and entertainment in our lives. Everybody needs that. It seems to me thatâs reasonable. Itâs not necessary, but it seems to me itâs certainly reasonable.
But the big problem is thatâit seems to me that this has taken over. Entertainment has taken over so much of our leisure time. And it is creating a mindset that really what life is about is work, meeting our obligations, and then using our time well to entertain ourselves or to relax.
So the question is, how should that time be used?
We should use the time to build ourselves up spiritually; it seems to me [thatâs] one of the uses for our leisure time. And here by âspiritually,â I donât mean just simply in the religious sense, but I mean in the broad sense, to build up the human spirit: those things in us, and in our children, and those we have toâwe care forâthose things in us which come from the hand of God, which make us human, the spiritual things of human life. And that ranges [sic] everything from the directly spiritualâfrom God himselfâto the things of the human spirit that God has given us. And it seems to me, thatâs what we ought to be doing with our leisure time, is [sic] looking to build ourselves up in those areas, and to developing those areas in the lives of our children.
I think this is whatâs indicated in The Spirit and Purpose, and I think itâs in section 14. At least the version I have is section 14. I think some of the numbers have been changed. Either 13 or 14 in the version thatâs over here on the table. But it saysâthis is a commitment we have as People of Praise! This is a quote:
We want to be involved in all that is good in the culture of the world, [knowing that] science, art and music are means of human refinement . . . . This implies a certain unique cultural development in the People of Praise which we wish to transmit to our childrenâChristian concepts of freedom and the ascendancy of the spirit in mankind.
Thatâs a small âs.â âThe ascendancy of the spirit in mankind.â
We are gonna use our time that we have left over in this third category, and we will have a culture in our home. The question is, will it be the use of time, and will it be a culture, worthy of creatures made in the image and likeness of God, worthy of creatures who share in Godâs life through the gift of the Spirit? We are temples of the Holy Spirit.
Let me look atâlet me talk a little bit about some of the problems here of leisure time as entertainment.
The first one Iâve talked about some, and that is to say that thereâs too much time involved for most people. Whatâs wrong with that? Well, one of the things is, it takes up time thatâs necessary for more important activities. Okay? The things Iâve just been talking aboutâand Iâll talk about in a minute some more. Butâthings that we could be using that time for that are of themselves more important for us as human beings.
Secondly, itâs time fundamentally ordered to pleasure and self-gratification. Thatâs what entertainment and relaxation is primarily about. Now, thereâs nothing wrong with some pleasure, and thereâs nothing wrong in itself with this gratifying ourselves a bit, okay? Some relaxation and some entertainment. But the fact that itâs an area which is primarily dominated by pleasure and self-gratification, [it] seems to me, means that it merits special attention. Thatâif youâre anything like me, those areas in whichâthat are ordered to my own ego and to my own pleasures are areas that I flag as being ones Iâd better watch very carefully. They are the ones that I eas- âI will so easily go astray in. They are the ones that are the most interesting and the mostâcertainly the most immediately gratifying and rewarding. And the easiest ones to go to extremes in, toâjust to step over the boundaries. So that that very fact, it seems to me, merits our attention.
Building a life where our time, our extra time, our leisure time, is spent in entertainment seems to me to encourage an enormous amount of laziness and self-centeredness in people. I donât know if youâve had this experience with your children, but itâs a recurring experience that I have with my children of all ages. I suspect that itâs an experience we can have with [sic] ourselves as adults, but itâs easier to see in our children.
And . . . if your child sits around and watches TV a lot on a particular day [inaudible], if my child sits around and watches TV a lot on a particular dayâand it might be sportsâI mean, it might be good old wholesome stuff, sitting there all day watching the U.S. Open or watching ESPN or whatever. I find that if Iâby the end of the day, the kidâs a zombie. Heâs really into a very kind of self-centered frame of mind, that really has to beâhe needs to be gotten out of a certain kind of frame of mind, to get him to, you know, mow the lawn, or to get her to help with the dishes, or to help with the dinner, or something. And, I mean, it worksâjust sitting around being mesmerized. . . . And itâs not just the TV. You can do it with music. You can do it with sp- âI think you can do it with sportsâI mean, actively participating in sports. You can do it with movies. . . .
That is to say, when you spend an enormous amount of time gratifying yourself, it has the effect of just making you very slothful and lethargic and very self-centered, I think. Even in the short run, like thatâI experience it in the short run. More importantly [sic] here is the long-run phenomenon that I think we need to worry about. This is especially dangerous, I think, in the lives of our children, especially teenagers, who have so much access to so much leisure, to so much entertainment, and whose character and personalities have not been sufficiently well-formed yet. Theyâre just too young. Okay? And it has an enormous effect on them.
We want them to be strong, committed members of the body of Christ, able to lay down their lives as adults for the Lord and for their brothers and sisters. But if we submerge them in self-satisfying entertainment, if thatâs the way they grow up as teenagers, theyâre hardly gonna be in a position when they become young adults to be willing to lay down their life or to make big sacrifices for the Lord and for the kingdom.
Iâm thinking here particularly of those who went down for the People of Praise to Grenada just recently. Well, they made an enormous sacrifice!
John Zwerneman, whoâs a young M.D.âJohn has given upâthisâll beâJohn has not been able to go into private practice yet, because heâs given his life over to the mission. He and his young wife and their young sonâI mean, theyâve been traveling around the world just giving themselves to other people.
Now, if our children are gonna be like that, I suspect that weâre not gonna let âemâwe canât let entertainment and that kind of self-gratification and laziness and self-centeredness get institutionalized in their character, and getâbecome a part of their character. We need to do things to build them up as strong charac- âstrong men and women, young men and women with some resolve, with some determination. And who can face those things in themselves that lead them to laziness and self-centeredness, and overcome them. And I think that how we organize our time in our homes, and how we organize especially that leisure/entertainment time, will make a contribution to forming them in the right way.
A second area that is a big problem hereâand I have touched on itâis thereâs just too much money, I think, that we invest in it. And I would say that certainly from a People of Praise point of view. I think one way you can understand this talk is [to] think of it as an extension of the âProvident and Resourcefulâ teaching2. âProvident and Resourcefulâ doesnât only have to do with putting wheat berries in your basement. It has to do with living a certain kind of life, a certain kind of simple but humane and adequate life, in the 20th century. And it seems to me that what we teach in there has a lot to do with how we use our time and how we use our money.
And there are some necessities, and thereâs [sic] some ways of using the things for entertainment and for leisure that are really worthwhile. And itâs worthwhile investing some money. I think itâs worthwhile having some decent way of reproducing music. I think itâs worthwhile having a decent library collection. Dan [DeCelles] is always talking about the right use of VCRs and the ability to use the VCR for really good purposes, âcause you can tape shows, good shows that are on at different times, and put âem together for your family. You can edit stuff, and you can work a lot with it. So I donât wanna say that we shouldnât have some time committed to it or some money, but I suspect the temptation is for us to spend a lot more here than we need. And that money could really be used for the Lord, in the People of Praise and in the work that the Lord has called us to.
The third thing isâand this was the point of the Sports Illustrated article3âis that entertainment is largely the place where the values of the mass culture touch us most easily. Thatâsâit seems to me, thatâs the access. Itâs the main area that [sic] the mass culture has access to us. And the mass culture, much of it, simply does not share our values. And if we surround ourselves and our children with so much entertainment, where shot through that entertainment is aâis continualâwhat do I want to say?âcontinuous re-articulation of values that we donât believe in, we are go- âwe are leaving our children and ourselves open to really being affected by those values and really weakening our character. Worse than weakening our character: forming our children in values that we really donât want them to have.
Let me just talk about just some ran- âI just want to talk about some random experiences Iâve had with mass culture recently and make a couple points about it.
I was in one of these neighborhood medical centers gettinâ one of my kids sewn up after they did something. And I was just sitting there waiting for âem and grabbed People magazine, which is always an eye opener [laughter], and just flipped open to a page and read a little blurb about the movie Top Gun. It said, âTop Gun is a movie with all these wonderful dogfights in it and itâs got all thisâitâs a box office smash.â And said, âBut what they had to do in Top Gun was theyâafter they had edited down the whole thing, they brought it back so that they could âsex it upâ a little bit.â And so what they did was, they reshot a sex scene in there. They wanted to sex it up, but they wanted a PG rating. So what they did is, they hadâI havenât seen the movie, but this is the way they described itâthey said that the hero and the heroine took all their clothes off in the elevator and made love, but they did it by silhouette. And thatâs how you got the PG rating.
So, I was thinking, âGolly, now, nobody has told me that, you know, in any of the reviews Iâve read.â Itâs supposed to be a nice movie with all these good dogfights. You know, the kind of movie you send your 12-year-old kid [to] and sayâyou know, your 12-year-old boyââAw, go on down and see that. You know, itâs a manly movie, a lot of shoot-âem-up and stuff like that.â [Laughter.] But thatâbut my point is that thatâs whatâs going on. Now thatâs a PG movie, as far as I know.
Now Bud [Rose] told me he had a good solution to that. He went and saw it, and then when he took his son to see it, he said (this is a really good point, I think)âhe said, âThereâs a bad scene cominâ up. Letâs go out and buy some popcorn.â Then he took the kid out and brought him back.
But we donât know. You walk in, you donât know. You send your child off to see something. My point is, itâs just a flip of the coin what youâre gonna get in values. The ratings donât tell you anything, and [sic]âand what these guys are gonna be pushing in the movies and what our kids are gonna see. And not just see once, but [laughter]. . . . Thatâs a little empirical test. [Kerry laughs too. Cause of laughterâsomething occurring during the talkâis not clear.]
MANâS VOICE: Is Kerry plugged in too? [All laugh and clap.]
KERRY: Thatâs right. Itâs brought to you by modern technology. Iâm actually home asleep. Iâm actually here asleep! [Continued laughter.]
The whole area of pop music is something that Iâve talked a lot about and I wonât say anything more about it [except] just toâthatâsâjust to call it to your mind and all the sleaze thatâs associated with that. Worse than the music, a lot of times, are the disc jockeys. When Iâve turned âem onâI mean, theyâre really outrageously bad, really dirty. I mean, itâs amazing!
I saw on a USA TodayâUSA NetworkâI donât know if you get that. One night I wasâitâs a cable network. I was sitting around one night and I just flipped it on. I saw the filthiest, dirtiest movie Iâve ever seen anywhere. I mean, and Iâyou know, Iâve been in various places. And it was just incredible! It was on TV as well, about 1:00 in the morning. It was just outrageous! And I couldnât believe it, that it was on TV. But I was thinking, there are all kinds of teenagers sitting aroundâcould be my teenagers, you know, sitting around, you know, Friday night, just flippinâ channels. âHmm, this looks interesting!ââand then watch it.
TV shows, sitcoms: theyâre just totally unpredictable. I think in terms ofâwell, theyâre predictable in the sense that almost always youâre gonna get some values in there treated as normal that we donât accept and we donât want as part of our lives. And some of itâitâs unfortunate, because some of it is packaged pretty well.
I wasâone of the things I did was program the VCR this last week to just pick up a lot of sitcoms, and Iâve been going through âem to see if I could find some clips to use. And one of the shows was Cheers, which is really funny! I really like it. [All laugh.] And really well-written. Itâs just a terrific show. But full of all kinds of immoral sexâI mean, in terms of theâin the attitudes of people, in terms of whatâs said. And the thing that upsets me about it is not that I canât handle it as an adult; I mean, itâs not erotic. But here I am in my household, you know, so Iâm sitting there watching TV with myâyou know, with a couple of young women in household and maybe a couple of my kids, and they just run this stuff by.
Iâm watching itâI watched itâone of the clips said, you knowâthe guy whoâs the bartender, I guess his thing is that he thinks heâs really Godâs gift to women. I think thatâs the storyline. And thereâs this conflict between him and this gal whoâs a waitress there. And theyâre kidding back and forth. But anyway, heâs standing there, and thereâs a gal at one of the tables. And he says to the waitress, he says, âYou know, that woman over there, Iâve got a date with her. You know, sheâs really in love with me and she just canât handle, you know, being around me. Itâs just incredible. Right now sheâs just sitting over there undressing me in her mind.â
And Iâm sitting there, going . . . [inaudible]. Now that just runs right on by. But here I am with these young women in my household, with these young guysâI mean, itâs like, Is that the way we talk? Is that the way we think about each other? I mean, it introduces a whole new note into relationships. And like, Do we talk like that? Do we think like that? And thatâs the kind of thing you run into all the time, which I findâI reallyâI find really bad news.
The Sports Illustrated story was an example of that. That was just supposed to show youâI mean, it was just amazing. I was just sitting around at home, I picked that thing up, and I was just amazed at the way they just simply sold a whole set of values to the reader. They just wholesale sold you the good of materialism and lust. I mean, that was what the bottom line was. And it was just held up as being wonderful! âHey guys, isnât this what you really wanna be?â
And the fact that I just picked that up at random makes me think that is probably pretty much what youâll find in an awful lot of what they do. The fact that they do the bathing suit issue ought to tip us off that itâs not just once a month that theyâyou know, once a year that they get those thoughts. [All laugh.] And itâs a pretty long-term commitment.
In terms of the values of the mass culture, that we get inâthat are really damaging, that we get in entertainment, through the entertainment media, it seems to me, that we have to watch out for, is [sic] certainly the whole area of what one author called the whole kind of âgeneralized lustâ in our society. And Iâeverybody is a sex object. And everything has a sexual overtone to it. Which I think is justâitâs damaging to personal relationships. And one of the things thatâs really bad about it is, it has a really bad view of women. Women areâyou know, if you watch enough primetime TV, women are really sex objects. That is to say, theyâre to be looked at, theyâre to be thought about as sexual partners. The jokes, theâeven in the dramas, the whole story moves that way. And whatâs happening now because of the whole equal rights movement: as men are more and more being turned into sex objects, itâs like, men have had their lusts on TV; now itâs the chance for the gals to have their lust on TV and in the media too. And itâsâI think itâs really disconcerting.
Anotherâthe other main area, it seems to me, is materialism. We pick up the sexual stuff real fast, you know. Weâre real sensitive to that. But if you watch the mass media, materialism is one of the biggies thatâs being sold too. And I think we tend not to be very sensitive to that. I donâtâIâm not sensitive to that.
One thing that I thought of as one example is The Cosby Show. Everybody watches The Cosby Show. Itâs a wonderful family show. Family-oriented values, etc., etc. Hereâs the man whoâs the head of his family, so says TV Guide. I never thought that. [Laughter.] In fact, I alwaysâthis is a footnote: I alwaysâthis is my own personal impressionâI always thought Cosby in that show was the wifeâs vision of a perfect husband. [Some laugh.] Itâs not my vision of a perfect husband.
At any rate, the thing that, [it] seems to me, that we donât pick up is that theyâre walking around there in their $600 sweaters and theâall the kids got [sic] their new Esprit clothes on and theirâyou know, got [sic] their different hairdo every day. Thatâitâs an enormously materialistic atmosphere. Nobodyâs talking about material goods; theyâre just living it out in front of you. And itâs very attractive.
And it seems to me that just as parents, we need to think about that. You know, we need to be able to say something to our kids about it, and notâand understand that values are being communicated there too. Not necessarily intentionally; not necessarily through people with evil minds or something. But itâs just [that] they accept that way of life and theyâre portraying it in a very attractive way. And it seems to me, again, a scenario that we canât not address.
Okay, so what are we gonna do? Let me talk to youâtalk about mass culture here. It seems to me that we canât remove it from our lives and the lives of our children. I mean, it seems to me: A. Itâs impossible. You gotta read. Youâve gottaâI mean, people are gonna read Sports Illustrated, theyâre gonna read Time, theyâre gonna read Newsweek, theyâre gonna read U.S. News & World [Report]. Theyâre gonna read, and then weâre gonnaâwe wanna watch some TV, and we wanna be able to go to movies, and we wanna be entertained. So it seems to me virtually impossible to take it out of our life.
It seems to me itâs alsoâitâs probably simply wrong-headed. There is some good entertainment; there are things worth reading. Itâs mixed up, and itâs shot through with a lot of stuff we donât wanna take with the good stuff. But it is something that we donât wanna take out of our lives, is what I want to suggest.
But it seems to me that what we do need is to control it. We do need to put it in its right place. And it seems to me the right way to do that is not toâis to look at our use of time, and to see how much time weâre spending onâin this area.
Okay, how to do it. . . . [Inaudible.] Here I wanna suggest some things, then, about moving things forward. And Iâve suggested some of this already.
I think that itâs a good idea for us to inventory our time use and that of our children. I donât know if you do this now, but when I was involved in a lot of pastoral work we used to all make up schedules. And it was a goodâit was a very useful pastoral tool. And we made our own weekly schedule, and your head could oversee it and look and see what youâre doing. It was very, very helpful. I think that kind of inventory about what actually happens with the time is worthwhile. Itâs a worthwhile exercise.
Also, inventory the instruments, or the means, of entertainment: toys, etc. Jam boxes, Walkmans. So weâre just surrounded by toys and all of these goods that are supposed to bring us all this entertainment. And in that case, it seems to me, we really have to ask ourselves, âWhat is necessary here?â There is probably a certain level of things that are necessary in a home. I thinkâI mean, Iâve often thought of throwing my TV out, but I think itâsâthat would be wrong. I mean, I should have a TV. And we should have a TV in the house, I think. But what is necessary and whatâs superfluous?
What is necessary is not what the ads tell us is necessary. Nor is it what the peers of our children tell us is necessary. They have a whole view of whatâs necessary that really is interesting if you ask them. [Light laughter.]
Thatâs a decision, I think, that we need to make as fathers, [as] husbands and wives, sitting down and askingâmaking some decisions about that. And then making the adjustments: adjusting of the time; adjusting the use; and adjusting further purchases, getting some control of our expenses in the area, how much weâre gonna spend in these areas.
And thenâand this is crucial to what I wanna talk aboutâfill in the time with important activities.
This is all, in a sense, somewhat negative. That is to say, kind of moving time allocation within leisure timeâreallocating timeâsort of wanting to make entertainment time shrink for most of us and most of our families. Shrink some, and get it more under control. But the question is: What do you do with the rest of the time?
What you do with the rest of the time is the important thing, it seems to me. Itâs what you do with the rest of your leisure time where we can really build a culture in our homes, where we can really build our relationships, where we can really build the human spirit.
Let me suggest some things that can be done there. A couple obvious things. Reading Scripture. Reading spiritual books, serious spiritual books. Going to good movies: looking for movies that have more than simple entertainment value, movies that make us think or deepen our feeling, deepen our sensibilities as human beings. Discussing things with one another; talking to each other in the family. Discussing all kinds ofâthere are all kinds of topics that can be discussed. Talking about the news.
Reading the newspaperâs a good thing to do, especially useful for children. Get them involved in something beyond themselves. Bring that up at the dinner table and talk with them about it. âWhat about disarmament? What about the peace march that just went through town? What do you think about that? What about the arms race? What about Russia? What about America? What about Reagan? What about poverty?â Get them out of themselves. Get them involved in some issues that are human issues, thinking.
Be deliberate in yourâin getting the discussion going. My experience at household dinners, at dinnertime, is that I have to really have a sense about what I want to have talked about there. And if I want to talk [inaudible; âabout somethingâ?], I have to make sure it happens. Itâs not a conversational free-for-all. Itâs a âheadedâ situation, and you can make conversation happen and you can get good discussion, but you have to be deliberate and decide to do it. It usually doesnât just happen. It usually takes a little bit of an effort, and especially by theâby ourselves, who are responsible for what happens at the dinner table.
Having good music around and playing good music, I think, is important. One of the things that occurred to me not too long ago was that a record library is something like a book library. And just like I want to have a good book library in my home for myâas part of what we are as a family, I want to have a good record library. You oughta beâjust be able to pick offâlike youâd pick off a good book off the shelf, you oughta [be able to] pick off a good piece of music.
Cut down on noise in the home. An awful lot of what goes on, itâs just noise. I can imagineâyou know, Iâve seen some of this through teaching and working at Trinity School here. Almost all of the kids who have a real hard time with study . . . also have an awful lot of noise in their homes or in their lives. Theyâre plugged into Walkmans. Theyâreâgot jam boxes going everywhere they go. Theyâre out washing the car and they bring the stereos outside to play music. Theyâre watching TV all the time. Thereâs all kinds of outside noise going on. And so itâs no wonder they canât settle down internally and study, settle down and think, without the excitement and the external noise.
I also wonder how anybody can grow up to be very prayerful and reflective as adults if theyâve grown up as teenagers totally surrounded by noise, if theyâre so used to it psychologically. And I see adults that Iâve been pastorally responsible forâitâs not just teenagersâwho have been raised that way as young men and women, who now have a very hard time not having their life filled with noise. Turning the radio off, not blasting the radio when theyâre doing housework or doing chores or working on their car or something like that. And I think that also has a very bad effect on their prayer life, âcause they just canât settle down inside.
Reading good books of all kinds, yourself and your children. More than just light reading; more than spy thrillers, which I enjoy reading as entertainment and relaxation. But picking up good books. And I donât mean scholarly books, necessarily, but autobiographies, current events, history, all kinds of interesting things. Novels, short stories.
Another area in terms of leisure time thatâs very worthwhile, I think, here, is enjoying nature. Going out and just being in Godâs creation with the family, or with [sic] yourself.
Visiting museums and galleries. Watching good TV shows. Thereâs a lot of good stuff on TV. Watch it, discuss it. Use the VCR in a creative way.
Sports and exercise in a rightly controlled way. Itâs interesting: sports and exercise, I think, can also become just really enormous forms of self-gratification and, funny to talk about, laziness. I find that myself. I like to do competitive bike racing, and itâsâtraining for it is just a lot of fun. I mean, Iâd love to take a couple hours out of every workday and go work out on my bike, you know? Itâs really great. But itâs probably not what I should be doing. Itâs aâbutâitâs a real form of self-gratification. And I think sports and exercise is a good thing for all of us, but I think itâs also an area that we can really beâwe can really err in by going too far. Then it just ends up being more laziness.
Okay, let me just say a couple more things and then Iâll finish.
As parents, I think we need to do the best. We need to keep the best in mind in the situation. We really need to have high ideals about what goes on in our homes, what the culture is like in our homes, how the leisure time is used, whatâs happening to our children. We really need to have the best as the highest ideal. And we need to do the best, ourselves. We need to make a decision to do whatâs best and to prosecute that course of action. We need to do what is right. When we see what is right, we need to pursue it.
And we shouldnât waffle. I think a real big problem that parents haveâand I know I haveâis waffling with our kids. We donât wanna disappoint them, we donât wanna make it too hard for them, we donât want âem to be disapp- âwe donât want them to remove their affection and love for us, we donât them to pout, we donât want them to sulk around. And so we waffle. We want them to have their own way. And it seems to me that itâs really important that we really do what is best, set our sights, and carry it through, and not waffle. If we know what weâre doing is the right course of action, then we really need to pursue it.
There are a couple of good examples, I think: analogies that help here. And it works into what Paul said last time about [how] if youâre gonna do something good it takes hard work. It doesnât come easy. Iâthereâs a law ofâI think itâs a law of thermodynamics, but certainly itâs a law in my experience as I get older: that I spend an enormous amount of my time just keeping order in my own life and in situations that have a momentum to erode at a very fast rate. An awful lot of my time is spent just keeping things together, okay? [Laughter.] I mean, psychologically, but also externally. I mean, itâs an enormous amount of time. And it seems to me if weâre gonna make advances in any of these areasâall of our inclinations are towards laziness, sloth, and comfort, self-gratification. And it seems to me, when we make progress we have to make it byâwhat weâre gonna do is gonna be something hard. [Inaudible; âItâs gonna be aâ?] . . . conscious decision. Itâs something thatâs gonna take some real effort to move forward.
Two analogies that are helpful. The first one is: if you want to grow some beautiful flowersâokay?âyou have to cultivate them. You have to work with them. You have to feed them. You have to nourish them. You have to pinch âem off at the right time and prune âem. You have to continually weed the flowerbed. Now, if you donât do that, something will grow there, okay? It has its own law of nature [that] itâs following. Something will happen. It will be full of weeds. It will be ugly. It will be terrible. But if youâbut to make it beautiful, you have to work at it constantly.
And it seems to me thatâs a good analogy in the situation we have here. We have to cultivate ourselves and cultivate our lives and cultivate the culture of our homes. Something is gonna happen in that time. Somethingâs gonna fill it. Some values are gonna be expressed. If we want to have our homes be that kind of garden, then weâre gonna have to take the effort to cultivate it, to weed it, weed out the bad things, to support the right things, and to make things move forward.
Another good example is the whole area of nutrition. And, you know, the easy thing is to eat junk food all the time, okay? And junk food isâyou know, we need a little junk food in our life [light laughter], a little dessert now and then. But if weâre gonna be healthy, we need to take the time, we need to be deliberate, we need toâmenus have to be planned, food has to be bought, a style of cooking has to be adopted that really is going to bring health, okay?
And it seems to me itâs the same kind of situation that we face in this other area. That is to say, we need a conscious decision. We need to get away from the junk food of the mind, the junk food of the spirit, and move on to something really nutritious and something wholesome.
Two quick stories. It does work. I was riding home with Bill Wacker last night and we were talking about this. And he was saying how his familyâevery night after dinner, they spend about a half hour reading aloud to the children and then talking. And, like, theyâve justâthey worked through the Narnia chronicles [The Chronicles of Narnia] with all the children, [and] The Hobbit. And now theyâre working through The Lord of the Rings. Itâs possible to sit down with your family and to read and to spend time together. I thinkâif Iâm not wrong, I think the DeLees do that, too. At least my children have been over there when thatâs happened. Theyâve come home and said, âAfter dinner they sit and read.â And it seems to me thatâs exactly the right kind of thing.
Another story is that Iâone of our teachers at Trinity told me that she had met one of our recent graduates who saidâwho pleaded with her for some reading recommendations, and said, âYou know, since Iâve graduated, all Iâve been doing is watching TV, and Iâm just rotting. Iâm justânothing is happening. Itâs just terrible. Tell me some good things to read.â Now, so here was someone who really wanted, you know, some direction in it. And so I wanna suggest that it is possible, and that our children will learn to respond to it in a positive way.
Amen. Thatâs all I have to say.
[Applause.]
Endnotes
1. The original Sony Walkman (1979) was a miniature portable cassette player (the brand name came to be used for all such devices, including portable digital audio devices today). The Sony Watchman (1982â2000) was a portable pocket television. Return to text
2. The communityâs Provident and Resourceful teaching series emphasizes exactly what Kerry is talking about here: being wise and frugal with our time, money, and possessions, so that more of these things are freed up for our life together and the building of the kingdom of God. Return to text
3. Kerry may have referred to Sports Illustrated in an earlier talk. Three pages later in this talk, he will mention Sports Illustrated again and say more about the significance of this magazine in forming its readersâ values. Return to text
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