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Topic: Television, Influence, Temptation
A few months before I was born, my dad met a stranger who was new to our town. From the beginning, Dad was fascinated with this enchanting newcomer, and soon invited him to live with our family. The stranger was quickly accepted and was around to welcome me into the world a few months later.
As I grew up I never questioned his place in our family. Mom taught me
to love the Word of God, and Dad taught me to obey it. But the stranger
was our storyteller. He could weave the most fascinating tales.
Adventures, mysteries, and comedies were daily conversations. He could
hold our whole family spellbound for hours each evening.
He was like a friend to the whole family. He took Dad, Bill, and me to
our first major league baseball game. He was always encouraging us to see
the movies and he even made arrangements to introduce us to several movie
stars.
The stranger was an incessant talker. Dad didn't seem to mind, but
sometimes Mom would quietly get up - while the rest of us were enthralled
with one of his stories of faraway places - go to her room, read her
Bible, and pray. I wonder now if she ever prayed that the stranger would
leave.
You see, my dad ruled our household with certain moral convictions.
But this stranger never felt an obligation to honor them. Profanity, for
example, was not allowed in our house-not from us, from our friends, or
adults. Our longtime visitor, however, used occasional four letter words
that burned my ears and made Dad squirm. To my knowledge the stranger was never confronted.
My Dad was a teetotaler who didn't permit alcohol in his home not even
for cooking. But the stranger felt like we needed exposure and
enlightened us to other ways of life. He offered us beer and other
alcoholic beverages often.
He made cigarettes look tasty, cigars manly, and pipes distinguished.
He talked freely (too much, too freely) about sex. His comments were
sometimes blatant, sometimes suggestive, and generally embarrassing. I
know now that my early concepts of the man/woman relationship were
influenced by the stranger.
As I look back, I believe it was the grace of God that the stranger
did not influence us more. Time after time he opposed the values of my
parents, yet he was seldom rebuked and never asked to leave.
More than thirty years have passed since the stranger moved in with
the young family on Morningside Drive. But if I were to walk into my
parents' den today, you would still see him sitting over in a corner,
waiting for someone to listen to him talk and watch him draw his
pictures.
His name?......We always just called him...TV.