Imagine for a moment that there was a media package you could purchase where there were five channels made available in your apartment or home. On one channel there was news, on another there was weather, on another sports, on still another children's programming. On the fifth channel, there was footage of your spouse being horribly ridiculed. For the sake of this example, suppose that you are a man and on this fifth channel there were segments broadcast were your wife was mocked, interspersed with pictures of her head electronically pasted onto a naked body that was perversely abused. Say that the monthly fee for this package, once collected from the customer, was equally paid out to the five channels responsible for the content. How much would you pay for this media service?

Of course, it must be that anyone who loved his or her spouse would not pay even one cent per month for such content. No matter how excellent the content were on the other four channels, the fifth channel would completely taint the media package. Instead of buying the package, would you not despise this media service and beg those around you to also not patronize the company that offered this? The thought of your beloved, your only spouse, being publicly humiliated would surely bring immense sorrow and restlessness to your spirit. Until your dying day, you would doubtless be consumed with righteous anger that your spouse was so mocked.

This situation has a close parallel in our world today with cable television. On some channels are news and weather. On a great many more are channels that mock God and his holy word. MTV alone, with its highly sexualized and degrading portrayal of women, surely goes against the essence of God's very character. Many other channels carry content that directly oppose the essence of Christ's teachings. In fact, it is fair to say that at any given moment, 24 hours a day, there is content on at least one cable channel that is clearly opposed to God, his character, and his word. We must acknowledge that in paying the monthly fee, one's money is distributed to support all of the channels.

In the Hebrew bible, God sometimes likens himself to Israel's husband. In the New Testament, Christ is portrayed as the groom and the church as the bride. With this backdrop, sin becomes tantamount to prostitution and adultery, a mockery of God's goodness, since it represents taking what we have been given and using it for marital unfaithfulness and the shaming of our husband. In fact, there are many times in the bible that sin is explicitly likened to prostitution and adultery. Perhaps the two most graphic descriptions are in Ezekiel 16 and 23. In Ezekiel 16, God speaks a parable through Ezekiel. In the parable, God himself rescues a baby in the field who was rejected by her parents, and lavishes care, affection, and gifts upon the newborn girl. She grows to become beautiful and famous, but then later rejects God and prostitutes herself. God's description of the young woman's behavior is quite graphic:

Your fame spread among the nations on account of your beauty, for it was perfect because of my splendor that I had bestowed on you, says the Lord GOD. But you trusted in your beauty, and played the whore because of your fame, and lavished your whorings on any passer-by. You took some of your garments, and made for yourself colorful shrines, and on them played the whore; nothing like this has ever been or ever shall be...And in all your abominations and your whorings you did not remember the days of your youth, when you were naked and bare, flailing about in your blood... You played the whore with the Assyrians, because you were insatiable; you played the whore with them, and still you were not satisfied. You multiplied your whoring with Chaldea, the land of merchants; and even with this you were not satisfied. How sick is your heart, says the Lord GOD, that you did all these things, the deeds of a brazen whore; building your platform at the head of every street, and making your lofty place in every square! Yet you were not like a whore, because you scorned payment. Adulterous wife, who receives strangers instead of her husband! Gifts are given to all whores; but you gave your gifts to all your lovers, bribing them to come to you from all around for your whorings. So you were different from other women in your whorings: no one solicited you to play the whore; and you gave payment, while no payment was given to you; you were different. (Ezekiel 16:14-34)

This is the reality of what the sinner does -- instead of demanding payment for giving away what is valuable (in the parable it involves sexual favors, but would also include time, strength, material goods, etc.), he or she renders payment in order to be exploited. This is the case with cable television -- it is paying for God to be ridiculed and for oneself to be exploited. It is paying to be exploited insofar as one's conscience is being desensitized and one's mind inculcated with worldly thinking and images. And it is no excuse if a person does not watch the "bad parts" of cable television as one still is paying for God to be ridiculed. Consuming any part of it still means paying for all of it. Much like only watching the news channel in the hypothetical example given in the beginning, one still is paying for, and thus supporting and encouraging, that fifth channel.

Sadly, today almost no church teachers or pastors even comment on this issue. For a variety of reasons, including a lack of conviction on the subject or for fear of offending the congregation, the shepherds remain silent. Yet their silence is no excuse. It is also likely that that patronizing cable is so widespread partly because people do not truly believe that God is a person. If directly questioned, most Christians would say that they do believe God is a person, but their actions flatly contradict their words. In fact, many professing Christians treat God as a rulebook, as insurance policy, as a regulated source of pleasure, or as a vague lifeforce. Those who understand God as a person, look to him as their beloved, and understand even a fraction of the sin so glorified on cable television would surely not patronize such material.

Let us have the attitude of the Psalmist who writes, "My eyes shed streams of tears because your law is not kept" (Psalm 119:136). So very few shed these tears today. And if standing up for the honor of God in this way means being branded a legalist or fundamentalist, then let us embrace these epithets with gladness.

I strongly urge all professing Christians who read this to immediately cancel all cable subscriptions and to encourage others to do the same. This is necessary to avoid patronizing that which so obviously mocks God. Let it be the case that God's church be able to pray with sincerity, "May your name be treated with reverence," or as Tyndale translated the first petition of the Lord's prayer, "Hallowed be your name."

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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