THE MEDIA AND THE BELIEVER

We are all swimming in a sea of information - an information deluge. In this matrix, the believer is expected to keep his head above the water and not be drowned in this sea of information, disinformation, and misinformation. The challenge today, therefore, is information overload and the believer navigate his way through it.

Media is actually a way of communicating and it includes newspapers, television, radio, graffiti, banners, posters, billboards, videos, badges, notices, newsletters, bulletins, etc. However, when most people talk about the media, they refer to the mass media. The mass media refers to technology intended to reach a mass audience. It is the primary method of communication used to reach the general public. It includes radio, television, newspapers, magazines, internet, advertising, social media, websites, etc.

The mass media wields a lot of power. You may have heard the media referred to as the fourth estate of the realm. A lot of people think that the three other estates are the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary. But when the term was coined by Edmund Burke, the traditional European concept of the three estates of the realm were: the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners. Burke is quoted to have said that these three estates were represented in parliament, but in the Press Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important than the others. The media is a powerful force that you can only ignore at your peril. For example, the media single-handedly brought down Richard Nixon as the president of the United States with its dogged investigation of the Watergate Scandal. President Nixon was complicit in a burglary attempt at Watergate, the Democratic Party headquarters.

Mark Twain, one of the greatest writers of all times, put it nicely by saying that when it comes to the mass media you have two choices: One, you can ignore it and be uninformed. Two, you can pay attention to it, and be misinformed. It is better to be misinformed than to be uninformed because the misinformed person has the facts, but may not have the correct interpretation of the facts.

The power and reach of the mass media keep increasing. Therefore, the believer can ill afford to ignore it. There is even a scriptural anchor for believers to communicate. Hebrews 13:16 says “But to do good and to communicate forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased. So, the believer is not only supposed to do good, but he should also communicate. Here communication is seen as a sacrifice, so you must sacrifice your time for media outreach, evangelism, and even church public relations. We should communicate using the traditional media, and information and communication technology (ICT) and the platforms it offers.

The information and telecommunication (ICT) revolution has expanded the frontiers of the mass media to realms never before imagined or contemplated. From the comfort of your home, you could watch the online streaming of any event. When the Titanic sank, the information got to London after two weeks. If we were to have a disaster of such magnitude today, God forbid, rescue efforts would be beamed live to our homes by all the major news networks as breaking news. It would also have been streamed live on the internet.

This turn of events caused Marshall McLuhan, the late mass communication scholar, to state that the world had become a global village knit together by information and telecommunications technology. As the ICT becomes the standard, not the deviation, the temptation had been for believers to see this global village as a doomsday apocalypse. But that is far from the case. When McLuhan said this, he was unknowingly acknowledging a return to the basics. I believe there is God in what is going on. God is still the Chairman, Chief Executive, President, and Alpha of creation.

Guess what? When the Almighty created the Earth, He created it as a global village. There were no continents at creation. You simply had one landmass (a supercontinent) which the scientific community refer to as “Pangea.” Pangea remained a global mega-village until the days of Peleg when God decided to divide the earth into continents. The Bible says about this in Genesis 10:25 “And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of the one Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided, and his brother’s name was Joktan.” God divided the earth in such a way that all islands had people living in them. Australia is so far from everywhere that the aborigines could not have traveled there by sea. God divided the earth because He could knit it together again in His own time. Remember, in His time God makes all things beautiful.

I believe that we should see the ICT revolution as God bringing about a virtual global village using the media and communication technology so that the scripture in Habakkuk 2:14 could be fulfilled, “For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” The ICT Revolution affords the Church and believers the opportunity to cause the earth to be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

Every believer should communicate for the earth to be filled with the knowledge of God. History shows that Christians down the ages always remained relevant by using the technology of their time to advance the gospel. Like Paul, every believer should be an excellent communicator. Rising to the communication demands of each era had been the standard in Christendom. The Church had always made use of new technology in advancing the Gospel of Jesus Christ. When the Bible was first printed for public use, what was used as the modern technology of that time was the newly invented printing press. Rev Martin Luther used the moveable type printing press to get God’s word into the hands of people, and he described the printing press as “one of the highest acts of God’s grace.”

Luther thought so because the first book printed by John Gutenberg after he invented the movable-type printing press was a Latin Language Bible which he printed in Mainz, Germany in 1455. The Church had always ridden on technology and taken advantage of it. Technology had never been a burden to the church. With the invention of radio, Aimee Semple McPherson and other great men and women of God of the era seized the day and expanded the kingdom of our God using the radio. When television came, Billy Graham mounted it like an equestrian and his Billy Graham Crusades became a major plot in the television narrative. Others followed and the church won the battle of television.

So the mindset of the believer as it relates to the media and ICT should be that the Lord has opened unto us another door of utterance to speak the mysteries of God instantaneously to multiplied thousands and millions widely dispersed in time and space.

The Influence of the Media:

The Media exerts a lot of social influence on society. Scholars who have studied media influence believe that it has a key role in defining what we think, how we interpret reality, and what we think we are. In addition, the mass media influences the way we vote in elections and our knowledge and understanding of contemporary issues, etc. Media influence is both circumstantial and directed, intended, and unintended.

Studies of media influence have arrived at four conclusions.

1. It is a form of diversion - a form of escape or emotional release from everyday pressures.

2. It engenders some kind of Personal Relationships – this occurs through television personalities and characters and sociability through discussions about television with other people.

3. It leads to Personal Identity - the ability to compare one's life with characters and situations within the media, and hence explore personal problems and perspectives.

4. It leads to Surveillance - a supply of information about what is going on in the world.

However, the audience can resist being controlled by the media, through the exercise of choice. You may choose not to watch that program or to read that article. Selectivity, as has been noted already, suggests that audiences have to ‘resist’ media influence or bend it to their own wishes.

Media influences can be seen as weapons deployed in the war between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. In this war, an instrument as powerful as the media cannot be spared the agony of battle. The devil had gained some grounds in the battlefield, and he is battling the church seriously. But the good news is that the church is marching on, and the devil is in retreat.

Media influence also hurts because the default mode of man’s imagination is evil. The devil is using this to his advantage. Genesis 6:5 And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Because imagining evil is the normal mindset of the unregenerate human being, the media plays to the fears of the masses. That is why bad news is good news. Bad news sells newspapers. Calamity leads to profit for the media industry. Some people ask, “Why does the media mostly publish bad news?” Because that is what the public is interested in. The media plays to the fears of the people.

Therefore, few human endeavors are as imperfect as journalism. It has a capacity for bias, for sensationalism, for jumping to conclusions, for opinionating, for self-interest, for laziness, for corruption…in fact for all known human failings. Yet there is no other human endeavor that is as important for the survival of democracy and society than the media. Knowing all these what do we do? This is what we should do: keep abreast of what the media reports, but trust God that all shall be well.

As Christians, the Bible enjoins us in Isaiah 8:12 “Do not call conspiracy everything these people call a conspiracy; do not fear what they fear, and do not dread it.” So even though the media are awash with reports of bad news, we should choose to believe the report of the Lord. We should choose to stand on faith and believe what is in God’s word. The media may have painted the true picture when Israel was besieged, but the correct information was that a measure of wheat shall sell for a shekel the next day in the gate of Samaria as the man of God spoke to the king. What God said came to pass. God is not a man that He would lie, nor the son of man that He would change His mind.

What God has said will surely come to pass. Ememofon was the sole survivor when the commercial bus she was traveling in caught fire. In the sea of fire, she heard a voice, “You shall not die.” Then a force threw her out of the bus. When her auntie rushed her to hospital, the doctor refused to admit stating, “No doctor admits a patient that he is sure is dying.” In the midst of the argument, Ememofon, who was unconscious, shouted, “I shall not die. God says I shall not die.” Surprised the doctor admitted her saying, that “it was against his professional judgment but he had no option as a Christian to admit her.” She was over 80 percent burnt. The doctor assigned to care for her was an atheist, who was surprised Ememofon survived the fire incident. He queried her how God spoke to her. One day, Ememofon told him that if she died, she should not be taken to the mortuary because she would come back to life. “But you said God spoke?” the doctor said. Ememofon did not know why she said that.

Then one fateful day she died by about 8.00am. The doctor was there and locked up the room to keep his word and stop her from being taken to the mortuary. At 4.00 pm (eight hours after) the doctor was raging, “I told you there was no God, now you have died. That is the proof…” Ememofon came back to life, but the doctor did not notice. “Doctor,” she said. The doctor jumped back in shock and jumped forward again, “Ememofon, You are alive.” She had no pulse and no sign of life at all - but she was talking. As the doctor monitored her, the signs came back and she lived. The doctor is now a believer. God’s word supersedes everything else in this world.

Media Violence, Influences, and the Believer

One of the major influences of the media which we need to guard against is media violence. In 1999, two teenage students of Columbine High School, Eric Harris, and Dylan Klebold, stormed their school with assault rifles, killed thirteen students, and wounded twenty-four others before committing suicide. Why did they do it? The general answer would be Satan. But the method used by Satan was that their lives centered around violent video games. Law enforcement agencies described Harris as a psychopath and Klebold as a depressive but believed that a causal factor in this killing spree was their obsession with violent imagery in video games and movies, and this led them to depersonalize their victims.

There is also what is called “Movie copy-cat killings.” These are instances when people watching murder scenes in films or video games would replicate them in real life. You have the case of Robert Thompson and Jon Venables who kidnapped, tortured, and killed two-year-old James Bulger after watching Child’s Play 3, a video film rented for them to watch by Venebles’ father. The film included a scene where Chucky, a character, was sprayed with paint and killed. There was also the case of Matthew Tinling who killed Richard Hamilton after torturing him to reveal his banking details in a home for homeless people. He copied the killing from the “Cutter Trap” scene in the film SAW 1V.

A 2002 report by the US Secret Service and the Department of Education, which examined Harris and Klebold school shooting case, and 36 other such cases concluded that “over half of the attackers demonstrated some interest in violence through movies, video games, books, and other media.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics in its report stated that “Extensive research evidence indicates that media violence can contribute to aggressive behavior, desensitization to violence, and nightmares and fear of being harmed.” In the same vein, the Media Violence Commission of the International Society of Research on Aggression holds that “Over the past 50 years, a large number of studies conducted around the world have shown that watching violent television, watching violent films, or playing violent video games increases the likelihood for aggressive behavior.”

In the developed countries, an average person watches nearly seven hours of video each day, and nearly two-thirds of TV programs contain physical violence. Anything that promotes something or hypes something is referred to as propaganda. What we call entertainment in movies is actually propaganda for violence. If you manufacture guns you do not need to advertise them because it is done by the entertainment industry for you free of charge.

So, in a way, the media is like the man who set his seat on fire in the cinema hall and ran out screaming “Fire! Fire! Fire!” They advertise violence and express outrage when violence takes place. On our part as believers, we need to guard our minds and ensure that we do not get sucked in by the spiraling wind of violence.

This is why the Bible enjoins us in Proverbs 4:23 (NIV) Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. It is even put in a clearer perspective by the Message Bible, Proverbs 4:23 Keep vigilant watch over your heart; that's where life starts. As believers, we should keep a vigilant watch over our hearts, and the hearts of our children for life starts in our heart. The only known way to keep a vigilant watch over your heart is to guard against what you watch, what you hear, and what you read.

Sister Judy’s 14-year old daughter, Katie, was invited by a church member for a sleepover. Judy, a believer, did not see anything wrong with that, since the family concerned was a Christian family and all the other invitees were people from their local church. She readily agreed.

Judy later heard that the girls watched horror movies and not wanting to be the odd one out, Katie also watched. After that night, Katie had nightmares for months. Says Judy, “The film was essentially a spiritual attack.” If Judy were not a strong Christian, she would not have known how to help her child and her child’s destiny would have been compromised by one act of indiscretion. While we should be concerned about school shootings and other violent behavior caused by media violence, we should also be concerned about what the media does to people like Katie and how to help them.

“The media distort reality,” Says Prof Emmanuel Tanay, a professor of psychiatry, “If you live in a fictional world, then the fictional world becomes your reality.” Many live in this fictional world. A few years ago, a six-year-old girl in Japan jumped from a 43-story building to her death. She had watched an anime of flying children and she believed all children could fly. She slipped to the balcony without anyone watching and jumped to her death. The Japanese government swung into action to stop the film.

Apart from inducing violence, the media can also induce what is known as “social isolation.” A family in Japan thought their son was an extreme introvert. That was until they stepped into his room and discovered that he was defecating into buckets, while enmeshed in video games. He did not want to lose a game by stepping away from the computer into the toilet. This is known in Japan as “Hikikomori” and it is classified as a psychiatric case.

Hikikomori is a major problem not only in Japan but in every country in the world. Some youths affected by this bug live as hermits. They withdraw from all social contacts, and may not leave their homes for years. They stay indoors 24/7 and play online video games with other youths online. They have no social life of any kind. The internet is their universe and reality. This disease is estimated to affect 1.57 percent of the total Japanese population.

As the problem has spread, countries have deemed it necessary to combat it. In Britain, the government’s efforts to combat social isolation, led, in 2018, to the appointment of a Minister for Loneliness in the person of Tracey Crouch. The global village syndrome has led to increased loneliness. Why? Because people are not deploying the traditional methods of socializing anymore. Instead of walking down the street to socialize with your neighbor and share cups of coffee, you send him a text or chat him up on WhatsApp. Text messages and social media cannot take the place of personal contact and the human touch. According to Mark Robinson of Age UK Barnet, an NGO, “Loneliness can kill. It is proven to be worse than smoking 15 cigarettes a day.” So, when you communicate, when you reach out and touch someone, you may be saving a life.

The American Psychological Association says that 40 percent of Americans over the age of 45 suffer from chronic loneliness, “Being connected to others socially is widely considered a fundamental human need – crucial to both well-being and survival.” This is the void we as believers need to fill in today’s global village. John Ukpe told me a compelling story. He said that every day on his way to work in Texas, USA, he would spot an old man sitting alone in the veranda of an expansive house and his heart would go out to him. So, one weekend he drove into the compound and told the man he just came to chat him up. The man, a widower, was delighted. He informed John that all his children were grown up and in different parts of the world. They struck a friendship that lasted until the day he told my brother that his children had decided to take him to an Old Peoples Home. When he died, he left a will that his children should offer the landed property and building to John at whatever price he would offer. If John was not interested, they could sell it in the open market.

In this cold world, we must let the light of our compassion show. This is the best time for believers to thrive. This is the best time to shine our light and let the world run to the brightness of our rising.

“Extreme examples show that infants in custodial care who lack human contact fail to thrive and often die, and indeed, social isolation or solitary confinement has been used as a form of punishment,” says Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a professor of psychology. This world needs love and the love this world need is in the Church. The media has disconnected people, but the Church can reconnect people, and reconnect the world to God.