There are things you regret saying.  I always said that we would never let our super son watch a certain television programme.  Apparently his cousin was watching it, he started saying she was watching it and lo and behold he wanted to watch it and tehn for us to record it.  This has made me realsie that I have a scale of the relative evils of children’s television.  Starting from the most evil to the least evil it goes:

Evil++) Things my child will never see

Evil+) Things my child requests and we get from the library for a short time only

Evil) Things my child requests and we let him watch on television when it is on

Evil-) Things my child requests and we let him watch on a video we have recorded

Good) Things my child requests and we purchase a video or a DVD of said program.

Now I have used no names here as I do not want to be sued by Television Companies if I say that program XYZ is bad.

Now the reasons I say this long introduction is I had a realisation the other day that the reason some of us get into messes is the stuff we watch.  You see we imitate what we feed ourselves on.  We are what we eat is what we say figuratively about our food but I am starting to realise it is as true for language, values and behaviours.  If we see something enough, not just on TV, or read about it lots, we start to think hey that might be ok.  In otherwords the seeds of disaster are sown not at the end of the process but at the beginning.  It is for this reason I keep my super son away from some programmes – I do not want to sow destructive things into his life.

John talks about this as the “lust of the eyes” (1 John 2:16) and James talks about this sort of lust giving birth to sin (James 1:15).  It is a process of giving birth, of not just conceiving the idea but giving it nutrients to grow with.

So what are you feeding with what you watch?