… the American family muddles on …

By: American Decency Staff

“… And so the American family muddles on, dimly aware that something is amiss distracted from an understanding of its plight by an endless stream of television images. …” [Taken from “Plug In Drug” by Marie Winn While a teacher in the public school for eighteen years, I became burdened over the powerful impact that television was having upon the children that I taught. I saw first hand in the seventies and eighties degradation that troubled me. One of my greatest efforts of working to combat the negative impact of television was to challenge children to “get into” reading. I hoped that if they got into reading they would see the great benefits of reading good literature and stay away from watching the “boob tube.” A book that influenced me significantly at that time was a book entitled the “Plug In Drug” by Marie Winn. Here is one of my favorite quotes from that book written probably in the 1970s. “And so the American family muddles on, dimly aware that something is amiss distracted from an understanding of its plight by an endless stream of television images. As family ties grow weaker and vaguer, as children’s lives become more separate from their parents’, as parents’ educational role in their children’s lives is taken over by television and schools, family life becomes increasingly more unsatisfying for both parents and children. All that seems to be left is Love, an abstraction that family members know is necessary but find great difficulty giving each other because the traditional opportunities for expressing love within the family have been reduced or destroyed. …” [Taken from “Plug in Drug” by Marie Winn] http://www.mariewinn.com/plugin.htm What I was concerned with on television in yesteryear as a teacher of elementary aged school children is child’s play compared today. Now, too, having parented four children in the 70s through the year 2007 the pressures have skyrocketed. Many questions arise and many of us who have raised kids over these years are even more so asking questions of this nature (below) today. (1) How do you keep children from the wicked influences of television? (2) Even if you make the commendable decision not to have television in your home most everybody else does. We don’t raise our children in a vacuum. We go visit family members and friends. They have television. How to keep their hearts, minds and souls from being influenced by their television and the resulting attitudes, actions, lifestyle of a world highly shaped by television? (3) How to parent in such a time as this – to raise up children who truly love the Lord and have hearts for Him? [Ultimately the only way that I know of to keep them from being led down the path of moral debasement and spiritual destruction is that they love Christ and have the power of His resurrection in their lives.] ——————————————————- Pastor John MacArthur speaks to the condition of our culture recently. See: The entire version http://www.lightsource.com/ministry/grace_to_you/20070527/ or: Focus on the Family’s broadcast: http://listen.family.org/daily/A000000496.cfm American Decency Association Bill Johnson, President P.O. Box 202 Fremont, MI 49412 PH: 231-924-4050 www.americandecency.org

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