The Courage to Be Bored

I know someone who is constanly saying "I'm bored." So, I know this article rings true.

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Kids and Video Screens

A new study reveals just how addicted our kids are to video devices.

If I asked you what your teenage children are doing right now, you might not know. But the New York Times and the Kaiser Family Foundation have a pretty good idea.

According to a recent Kaiser study, if your teenager is awake and isn’t in school, he or she is staring at a screen a smart-phone, a computer, or watching television.

The authors claimed to have been “shocked” by the results.
Kaiser’s researchers interviewed more than 2,000 kids between the ages of eight and eighteen. They found that, on average, the participants in the study spent seven and one-half hours a day using these devices! What’s more, that figure understates the amount of time American kids devote to consuming media and other related activities.

For instance, it does not include time spent actually talking on these smart-phones or sending and receiving messages. That adds another one and a half hours to the total. When you add time spent doing several media-related things at once, that is multi-tasking, American kids spend the equivalent of eleven hours a day tethered to an electronic device.

The authors were “stunned” because they believed that media consumption among kids had already maxed out when they last measured it in 2005. What didn’t take into account, either then or now, is what drives the heavy usage: dread of being bored.

As one 14-year-old told the Times, “I feel like my days would be boring without” my smart phone. It’s not only him. As New Testament scholar Ben Witherington recently wrote, smart-phones “are seen as the cure for boredom.”

This “boredom” is “in most cases...the state of mind of those who lack imagination and therefore require all kinds of stimuli to prevent them from losing interest in things, and even in life.” That’s why people, adults as well as kids, are “constantly fiddling with their cellphone.” The alternative to all this fiddling is being alone with your own thoughts, which terrifies people used to the constant stimulation provided by our media-saturated culture.

Happily, parents can help their kids to avoid this trap. The Kaiser study found that parents can make rules limiting this kind of mindless media consumption and that their children will follow them. It won’t be easy but, then again, swimming against the cultural tide never is.

Speaking of swimming against the tide, even more important than rules and limits is teaching our children that we don’t need constant stimulation. On the contrary, being quiet and still is an essential part of the Christian life. We are told “be still” so that we may learn who God is. God spoke to Elijah in a still small voice.

Neuroscientists tell us that many, if not most, of our most creative and productive moments come when we step back from all the stimulation and let our minds be free. In other words, what many people call “boredom” is good for us in ways that the constantly-stimulated can’t begin to imagine.

We’re not talking about letting our minds wander just anywhere. What we’re told to do is invest our life in a relationship with Christ. In His word, in prayer, and in meditation.
Unplugging and stepping back for some time alone with God is yet another reason for us to unplug our kids and ourselves and risk being bored. For all the right reasons.

Freedom from Porn

One CEO Takes a Stand
By: Mark Earley

Here's some refreshing news. A major corporate executive takes a stand against pornography.

In the never-ending battle of the technological titans, score one for Steve Jobs. No, the CEO of Apple hasn’t come out with yet another groundbreaking iProduct, at least not since the iPad.

But he’s done something even more extraordinary—he’s brought good values into the mix.

Jobs has made it clear that he wants to keep pornography off Apple products as much as possible. Obviously Apple can’t control everything its users do, but it can make porn scarcer on its products, and it has done just that.

A British newspaper, The Guardian, reports, “So insistent is Apple [on this policy], many magazine publishers developing ‘apps’ for the new iPad . . . have had to self-censor.”

As you might expect, this has triggered a frenzy among some critics. Ryan Tate, a writer for the Gawker website, sniped at Jobs about suppressing his customers’ “freedom,” prompting Jobs to respond, “Yep, freedom from programs that steal your private data. Freedom from programs that trash your battery. Freedom from porn. Yep, freedom.”

When Tate replied that he didn’t want “freedom from porn,” Jobs answered, “You might care more about porn when you have kids.” In a correspondence with a consumer, Jobs went even further, speaking of his company’s “moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone.”

How refreshing it is to see someone who actually gets it—that yes, there are those of us who prefer to be free from the storm of smut that assaults us from every television, computer, and phone screen. The supply of pornographic material is so overwhelming that access to it is certainly not an issue of “freedom” anymore, if it ever was.

Jobs has pointed out that people who want to see porn on their phones, and who want easier access to it on their computers, can easily get all they want if they buy other companies’ products. But as he said in a press conference, “That’s a place we don’t want to go—so we’re not going to go there.”

What Jobs seems to understand, and what his critics seem to be ignoring, is that there’s so much more to pornography than just issues of economics or free speech. It shouldn’t even need to be explained, but apparently for some people it does: Pornography is an ugly, poisonous, degrading business for everyone involved, whether they’re making it, using it, or selling it.

As my colleague Kim Moreland recently mentioned on our blog, The Point, new studies are demonstrating yet again just how dangerous and addictive it can be. It tears at the fabric of marriages and families and of society itself. Its use is connected from everything to higher divorce rates to human trafficking to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

Aside from the occasional reference to protecting kids (which is enough), Steve Jobs didn’t go thoroughly into the reasons for his policy. But for whatever reason, he truly is demonstrating corporate responsibility, the kind that we desperately need more businesses to show in this sex-obsessed society.

May he continue to stand by his principles, and may his tribe increase.

Praying for Marriage

Reflections on a Joy-Filled Day
By Mark Earley

I rejoiced at the recent wedding of my son to a wonderful Christian woman. And I was reminded how precious the institution of marriage is to our Lord.
Two weeks ago, my wife, Cynthia, and I witnessed the marriage of our son, Mark Jr. He is our third child to be married—we have six. As with the weddings of my other children, it was one of the happiest weekends of my life.

There is little more a father can hope for than to see his children grow to maturity in Jesus and to marry someone who also loves Jesus. Mary Alice’s face was astonishingly radiant as she and Mark stood together at the altar. And Mark’s face was filled with a sense of awe and wonder—as if he were asking, “Do I really deserve this blessing?”

The pastor reminded the young couple that marriage involves submission, humility, respect, and love. (I reminded them that a sense of humor helps a lot!) And we were all reminded that marriage is a picture of Christ’s relationship with the Church—a glimpse of the joy and unity that will one day be made perfect at the coming of His Kingdom.

As I stood there, assuming the position of best man, my thoughts kept flashing back to when Mark Jr. was a baby. Cynthia and I would stand over his crib and pray for his life and destiny. We prayed for a wife who would love God, love him, and love people. Now I was seeing the answer to that prayer some 22 years later. And it gave me renewed confidence in God’s faithfulness over the long haul.

I had recently been reminded by Mike Timmis, the chairman of Prison Fellowship’s board, to reflect upon the fact that Jesus’ first miracle was at a wedding. He could have picked the most auspicious public event in the Roman Empire, but He picked a rural wedding. And he turned water into wine. Indeed, weddings, marriage, and all the solemnity and celebration that go with them are important to Jesus.

So now, after our celebration, I go back to praying—praying for my three children yet to be married and praying for our newlyweds. I pray that as romance and roses turn into diapers and dishes, their union would continue to bring honor to God, joy to them, and blessings to others.
But I also have to pray for the institution of marriage itself—especially within the Church. It’s no secret that marriage is on the ropes in this country, with anywhere from 40 to 50 percent of marriages ending in divorce. Even worse, divorce rates among born-again Christians are about the same.

And of course, we’re witnessing the reinvention of marriage in America as something other than a lifelong covenant between one man and one woman.
But today, would you join me in praying for marriages around the world? Would you ask God to restore to His people a sense of the sacredness of marriage? Pray that God would defend the institution of marriage.

But most of all, pray for the marriages of your family and friends—and your own. Ask God to rekindle love, fidelity, and servanthood as the cornerstones of these holy relationships.
I know that’s my prayer for Mark, Jr., and Mary Alice.

‘Up’-lifting

By Mark Earley
Pixar Reminds Us of What Matters

In recent years, Disney’s Pixar Studios has been something of a godsend for parents looking for wholesome, high-quality entertainment. With great films like WALL-E, The Incredibles, and many more, Pixar has provided family films with heart, films that tell genuinely good stories and avoid the crassness that’s so prevalent in many children’s films today. And their films, without being “message movies,” usually provide plenty of food for thought for both kids and adults.
Pixar’s latest effort is simply titled Up, and it’s well worth seeing. Up tells the story of an elderly widower, Carl Fredricksen. Faced with the prospect of being sent against his will to a retirement home, he decides to fulfill a lifelong dream of his and his wife’s, and heads off to Paradise Falls in South America.

From the advertisements for the movie, you’ve probably seen how he gets there—via an elaborate, only-in-the-movies gadget, made up of his house and an enormous bunch of balloons. But Carl’s journey also has something to tell us about the dangers of hanging onto a dream—even a good dream—too long and too hard.

You see, Carl is so obsessed with getting to Paradise Falls that he loses sight of the importance of relationships with others around him. When a little boy named Russell stows away on his flying house, Carl treats the child as little better than a nuisance. And once they’ve made it to South America, as Russell makes friends with a bird and a dog that they encounter, Carl sees the three of them as creatures who are only useful if they can help him get to his destination.
His goal isn’t a bad one. It’s even noble in a way, as he’s pursuing it partly in honor of his beloved late wife. It’s just blinded him to the needs, desires, and worth of others. It’s like C. S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity about pursuing good things in bad ways. He said, “Pleasure, money, power, and safety are all, as far as they go, good things. The badness consists in pursuing them by the wrong method, or in the wrong way, or too much.”

What’s interesting is that the villain of the movie is, in a way, exactly like Carl. This villain was an explorer who was unjustly called a fraud when he couldn’t prove that he’d discovered a new South American species. So he spends his life obsessed with restoring his reputation, to the point of running roughshod over any person or anything that gets in his way. His desire for justice—not a bad thing in itself—drives all other moral considerations from his mind.
At the heart of the story is this dilemma: Will Carl become just like this cold and cruel man, or will he finally come to see what’s really important? It takes a poignant reminder of his happy, love-filled marriage to open Carl’s eyes. And I can tell you, it’s a reminder that doesn’t leave a dry eye in the theater.

So take your family to see Up. It’ll help all of you see adventure—and human relationships—in a whole new light.

Pride and Prejudice

FYI: I finally saw the P&P series that was done back in 1996 and it is good because it does stay true to the book. But I do say that the leading actor in the 2005 movie portrays more of Mr. Darcy's character than the actor in the series. Love both, however, the movie portrays more of Austen's Characters and Romanticism in the book than the series even though you see less of alot of the characters that take part in the book. And yes, my husband once again, laugh with me, not at me, mind you after I sat him down, yes again, to tell him the difference between the series and the movie. I know he's glad I'm done with P&P.
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By Mark Earley
Not Just Another Romance

This month’s Great Books Audio CD with Dr. Ken Boa is about one of the most popular books of our era—even though it was published nearly 200 years ago.
As Ken says, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is an “enduring classic of romantic comedy.” “Enduring” is almost an understatement. Austen’s work, always well loved, has exploded in popularity in recent years—with the help of film and TV adaptations and even updates and spinoffs. And Pride and Prejudice is by far the most popular of all.

Ken explores the reason for that popularity, and finds plenty to celebrate. Austen, he says, shows “incredible wit and moral insight” in this “novel of the mind and of the heart.” Even within her relatively narrow field of experience, she was a highly skilled observer of the human condition. Her work provides “rich social commentary” that still rings true today, along with “subversive satire and elevation of the status of women.”

Ken traces Jane Austen’s remarkable depth of insight to her Christian faith. As her brother wrote, Austen “was thoroughly religious and devout.” Yet, as one critic said, her faith was “not forced upon the reader.” Yet it certainly helped to give her a deep understanding of both the faults and virtues of human nature, as well as a concern for showing the importance of character growth in her work.

(As some of you may recall, my former colleague Lori Smith has written extensively about Austen’s faith and morality in her book A Walk with Jane Austen, which I highly recommend if you haven’t already read it.)

Pride and Prejudice, as you may know, is the love story of two intelligent people who nonetheless start by completely misunderstanding each other. Austen excels at helping us identify with the viewpoint of Elizabeth Bennet, the heroine. We see through Elizabeth’s eyes, experience her mistakes along with her, and, as Ken says, we “go through the same learning curve that she undergoes.” So by the end of the novel, we too have learned something about snap judgments, first impressions, complacency, and cynicism.

All these qualities in Austen’s work add up to make Pride and Prejudice something far beyond a conventional romantic novel. And I think it’s telling that Austen’s work is so incredibly popular in an era that lacks so many of the beliefs, values, and manners that she held dear.
It’s ironic that while a society like ours may love Austen’s work, it’s not always willing to change to reflect her principles.
It was true in Austen’s own time, and it’s doubly true in ours. But no matter how far short our society falls of the Christian ideal, something in us hungers to read about people of character and virtue—about what Ken Boa calls “the need for recognition and reconciliation between the conflicting claims of the individual and the culture as a whole.”

Above all, it is this reflection of timeless ideals and standards that makes Pride and Prejudice truly enduring—and a great choice for this month’s installment of Ken Boa’s Great Books Audio CD Series.
With summer coming up, hopefully you’ll have some time on your hands. If you’ve never read it, I highly recommend Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

Winsome Warriors

By Mark Earley

The Battle for Life Continues
A picture of a baby in utero flashes onto the computer screen. Images of the fetus seem to pulse, reminiscent of a baby’s heartbeat.
On the screen the following words appear: “This child’s future is a broken home. He will be abandoned by his father. His single mother will struggle to raise him.” The background music continues as we watch the baby grow.
New words flash on the screen: “This child, despite the hardships he will endure, will become the first African-American President.”
The picture on the screen then changes to the jubilant moments of Barack Obama on election night. The short piece closes with a simple yet provocative tag line: “Life. Imagine the potential.”

This brief pro-life ad was created by CatholicVote.org to be run during the Super Bowl. Unfortunately, NBC refused to air it. Nonetheless, it has received over a million hits on YouTube.

Given the new administration’s ideological commitment to abortion, there’s no doubt that the next four years will be tough on the pro-life movement.
But we can’t be shortsighted. Like the ones who made that short video, we need to be creative and to think of ways to awaken the moral imagination of the American people.

No one is too young to play a role. I recently saw the video of a 12-year old girl named Lia, who decided to choose the plight of the unborn as the subject of her school speech contest. Her teacher encouraged her to pick another topic—one not so controversial. But Lia was adamant.
Her speech has now received more than 100,000 hits on YouTube. And here’s what Lia said: “What if I told you that right now, someone was choosing if you were gonna live or die? What if I told you that this choice wasn’t based on what you could or couldn’t do, what you’d done in the past, or what you would do in the future?”

Lia continues, “Thousands of children are right now in that very situation. Someone is choosing without even knowing them whether they are going to live or die. That someone is their mother. And that choice is abortion.”

Stirring words. And a great reminder that no one is too young to have a role to play in this important struggle for human rights. She also reminds us that sometimes it takes the innocence of a child to see and condemn the reality of evil.
And while the pro-life movement needs to engage the hearts, minds, and consciences of the nation, we must also continue to reach out and care for those who are struggling with an unwanted pregnancy or the aftershocks of choosing abortion.

I’m thrilled to see efforts like the Abortion Changes You campaign, begun by Michaelene Fredenburg. They are reaching out to help people who have been devastated by abortion, and also to raise awareness. The Abortion Changes You campaign placed 1,000 ads across New York state last year, in subways and billboards, sending people to its website, where anyone dealing with the aftereffects of abortion could find resources and help.

We’ve got to continue to think outside the box like this, all the while proclaiming the goodness of life, caring for those wounded by abortion, and helping women to make the right choice—life.

Be Fruitful

Be Fruitful
By Mark Earley

A new book by Steve and Candice Watters, the creators of Focus on the Family’s Boundless webzine, broaches a subject that makes some blush. The title says it clearly enough: Start Your Family.

With the average marrying age increasing, and adults devoting more energy in their 20s and 30s to their careers, some couples are, as the Watters say, “pushing snooze on the biological clock.”

The result, they warn, is that “by the time the average couple tries to have kids... they are often surprised to find they are already moving past the peak of their fertile years.” In fact, a U.S. Census Bureau study found that the proportion of 40-something women who were childless and unlikely ever to have children doubled between 1976 and 2000.

Norms have shifted, and ever so subtly an American culture of married with children is disappearing. Barbara Dafoe Whitehead explains the trend in her report, “The State of Our Unions.” She writes, “Demographically, socially and culturally, the nation is shifting from a society of child-rearing families to a society of child-free adults. The percentage of households with children has declined from half of all households in 1960 to less than one-third today—the lowest percentage in the nation’s history,” she concludes.

The result is a coarsening of culture and a growing isolation for families with small children.
But the Bible tells us clearly that children are a blessing from the Lord. And God wasn’t kidding when he told us to be fruitful and multiply. Indeed, we were created to create, to be partners with God in one of the greatest miracles and creative acts we’ll ever participate in—the birth of a child.

But as having children and raising them to love and honor Christ becomes less and less the norm, the church needs to revisit both the blessings and opportunities children bring. I’m glad Steve and Candice have helped highlight some of these in Start Your Family.
Children give us a chance to see the world through fresh eyes. We rediscover the delight of a winter snowfall, spring blossoms, the wonder of a bulldozer and a ballerina.

But children also bring us happiness in a way our culture no longer understands. The ancient concept of happiness, which Aristotle termed eudaimonia, meant “an activity of the soul expressing virtue.” Having children is an opportunity for us to learn selflessness, to serve others, and sometimes to see our sinfulness on display in a way that makes us want to change.
Children are also an opportunity to advance the Kingdom of God and to make disciples. Psalm 127 compares sons to arrows in the hands of a warrior. A son or daughter with a heart for God reaches places, generations, and people that we never will.

So do what you can to help others see that children are a blessing from the Lord. Maybe you can give them a copy of the Watters’ marvelous book Start Your Family.

And if you are married and maybe pushing the snooze button, perhaps I can share this word with you: “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to start your families.”