I don’t often travel alone, and when I do, I don’t turn on the TV. Watching it isn’t how I want to spend the little time I have in the room, and since my on a working trip, I don’t think my managers want me to lollygag around the room for long, especially when I could be lollygagging right under their noses. (Lollygag is a distinctly American word from 1862, perhaps deriving from the old world loll meaning “to relax completely.”)
I know many Christians will approve of my habit of ignoring the hotel room TV, because it guards me from any temptation to watch the soft porn or worse which is usually available on premium cable channels. (Pornography, by the way, was first used as an English word in 1858. It comes from a similar Greek word which meant “writing about prostitutes.” I wonder how many models or actors would want to think of themselves as prostitutes.) I wonder if a growing number of other believers, those who vocally criticize “fundamentalists” for hiding from the world in their church-bunkers, would see what I do as hiding from the world also or maybe a lack of self-control due to a prudish morality.
(A prude is an excessively modest or discreet person. The word comes from an old French world, which meant “good, virtuous, modest.” The word had variations for male and female, the male version meaning “a brave man.”)
Regardless any criticism, I think leaving the TV off is one step in cultivating an acceptance of silence, a small detox from the constant noise in our media-saturated world. Doing that should help build contentment, self-control, and even purity. How can I surrender my indefatigable pride to the Lord of Life if I hide in a bunker made by the world markets? Isn’t that one of the many meanings of Psalm 119?
As a singular number (me) of people vocally criticizing fundamentalists for hiding in their church-bunkers, I see what you are doing as thoroughly praiseworthy, for both reasons you gave.
What I see as UN-praiseworthy is the perhaps the original meaning of pornography. It is disturbing to me that a word used to refer to an inherently sinful activity (looking upon people–most often women–with lust in one’s heart) starts off as a word that would include the Gospels, writings that chronicle a prostitute’s repentance and eventually make her a featured character. I am reminded of the editors of Doestoevski’s Crime and Punishment, who complained that it was immoral to portray a murderer as coming to faith in Christ, since Christianity was the respectable religion of Russia.
Any steps taken to protect oneself from sin, and particularly those steps that acknowledge one’s own weakness, sounds to me incredibly Christian. But an upper-class disdain for and purposeful ignorance of the plight of those mired in sin (their own, society’s, or both) seems to me anti-Christian. I’ve seen the latter destroy marriages, destroy friendships, and lead people to reject Christianity. Just as there are countless stories of pornography and other sexual sins doing the same.
I wonder if this is because at their root, both the shallow self-centered attempt at fulfillment that is pornography and the deeper, more complex attempt at fulfillment that is separating oneself (in one’s mind) from the mire of other “sinful people” are really two sides of the same coin–a way of justifying one’s actions and importance, and not having to recognize in oneself a sinner who must daily ask, as he offers, forgiveness.
Very good points. Thank you. In what I read about the origin of the word pornography, I believe it referred to depictions which were mostly lascivious, so I doubt any story containing a recognized prostitute would have qualified, only those of a certain type. Just has depicting someone naked would always be indecent, but not necessarily pornographic.