There's nothing on!

I don’t watch a great deal of television, but when I do sit down in an evening…I am likely to exclaim that, ‘There’s nothing on!’ Extraordinary: Freeview provides us with a bewildering variety of channels to supplement the big 5, but I frequently end up reading in preference to the ‘box’. Maybe my powers of concentration are poor; maybe I am unduly fussy in this age of consumerism ( I do have a weakness for whodunits, some kinds of drama and unhurried travelogues )…or it may be that, along with many others, I share a distaste for reality TV in its many forms. I don’t knowingly hanker after 15 minutes of fame – and so would struggle to identify with the contemporary take on ‘talent’ shows; knowing that contestants are selected with such care, and that scenarios are planned in enormous detail ( in order to elicit the most likely TV ), I refuse to go along with the belief that this kind of television is essentially unscripted and therefore all the more entertaining. Don’t get me wrong: I do enjoy some kinds of television and accept the many ways in which it continues to benefit humankind, but so often it strikes me as a decidedly static and unengaging form of entertainment, however frequent the opportunities to ‘vote’ might be and however cogent the arguments for the necessity of escapism in demanding times. Candidly, I suppose that I am one of those who would rather live life than watch others living out their take on life: this is not an elitist comment, merely an observation…

Some folk argue that the Christian life is akin to a reality TV show with God as director: with faith we sign up to it, in the gospels we are provided with the necessary directions, standards and values…and whilst the nitty-gritty of the dialogue and our actions is unscripted, there is an element of predictability about our behaviour and any final outcome. My response to this line of argument is not printable in a family magazine! There is nothing remotely competitive about the Christian life: we are not in the numbers game and scriptural injunctions to ‘run the race’ and the like are sometimes taken out of context. Equally, I do not think that the fundamental Christian idea of free will – with all that it implies – can be equated with the idea of ‘unscripted’ in terms of television. Free will offers a profound comment on the way in which we have been created by God and the responsibilities which come from Christian living. We are not acting out a cosmic drama for the benefit of a viewer-God: we are engaged in something that is both more intimate, more immediate…and yet more significant, more far-reaching than we will ever know in this life.

I suppose that I ought to move this discussion up and along a notch, by sharing with you my thoughts on so-called universalism, predestination and the like, but this will have to wait until another time. Suffice to say here that I am opposed to any belief which erodes our fundamental (sic.) freedoms!