SUNDAY: Bible Study - 9:00 AM | Worship - 10:00 AM | PM Worship - 6:00 PM WEDNESDAY: Bible Class - 7:00 PM ~ 8110 Signal Hill Road Manassas, Virginia | Office Phone: 703.368.2622

            Last year, for my fiftieth birthday, you gave me a Kindle Fire.  I have made it my constant companion.  A book is a better text delivery system, but you can’t carry 800 books in one hand (or even two).  When I carry my Kindle I carry 800+ texts, most of them downloaded for free.  Amazing.  I also carry a video library with me.  If I want to watch Barney Fife buy his first car, Steve McGarrett nab a rogue cop, or John Wayne fight the Mescaleros I can watch that on my Kindle too.  If I had had this in High School I would never have graduated. 

            I have four Bugs Bunny cartoons on my Kindle.  Bugs is one of the formative influences of my life, and you really can’t find him on television anywhere anymore.  I have wondered why, these past few years, he has disappeared.  But after watching the Wascally Wabbit wecently (excuse me – “recently”), having not seen him for a few years, I understand.  Two of the cartoons I have are the Duck Season/Rabbit Season cartoons.  The premise of both is that it is actually Duck Season, but Daffy Duck has gone out of his way to convince Elmer Fudd that it is Rabbit Season.  Both cartoons turn on Bugs besting both Daffy and Elmer by winning a war of words.  In the first he keeps getting Daffy to say: “Shoot the Duck! Shoot the Duck!”  In the second Daffy is goaded into saying “Shoot me now!  Shoot me now!”  In both cartoons Daffy is shot in the face repeatedly at point blank range with a double-barreled shotgun.  Hilarious.

            Or at least it was forty years ago - and so it is to me still.  But it makes me nervous too.  Watching someone be shot in the face with a shotgun is probably not the best entertainment to provide a child.  Of course, those cartoons were originally intended for adults, but I consumed them after school and on Saturday mornings during children’s programming hours.  I would also like to add that I have never shot anyone in the face with a shotgun – not even a duck.  But those cartoons don’t quite seem appropriate anymore, after Columbine and Newtown.  Even the phrase “wascally wabbit” pokes fun at Elmer Fudd’s speech impediment.  That isn’t cool anymore either.  It should never have been cool.

            Then again, kids today play first person, shoot-to-kill videogames that are frighteningly realistic.  I remember seeing a kid play Mortal Kombat years ago, and being shocked when their combatant ripped the spinal cord out of an opponent.  I thought at the time, “What kind of psychopaths will this game turn out?”  Now Mortal Kombat seems as quaint as Bugs Bunny.

            Pondering these notions I thought about going on to talk about the changing values of our culture, or the comparative merits of Johnny Quest and Call of Duty, or perhaps take a moment to bemoan the coarsening of our entertainment.  But I think a more important point would be to assert that it matters to God what we allow into our heads through our eyes and ears.

Finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Philippians 4.8

            It only makes sense that what I store in my brain stays there, and that once there it has its effect.  So much bombards our senses that we are often without a choice.  We see and hear things we would rather not have seen and heard.  Often, however, we do have a choice.  God expects that we will exercise that choice for good – that we exercise discretion and discernment when we download something into our consciousness.  We are responsible for managing brain-intake, and cultivating goodness.  This must be done deliberately, or it will not be done at all – which the verse above asserts.

            Perhaps the most important thing Paul says in the passage above is: “Think.”  Unfortunately, we often pay as much attention to what goes in through the ears and eyes, as Elmer Fudd pays to whether it’s Rabbit Season or Duck Season.

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