Famine in the Land

A trend I see in our society is very disturbing to me. Actually it's been happening during my entire lifetime, thus it is a trend that will probably not be reversed. It is the direction the civilization is going. I am speaking of the "dumbing down" of the masses. People are reading less and less. The electronic media has unfortunately played a major role in this situation. It grieves me that none of my three adult children are "readers", whereas I most definitely am.

I would like to share an excerpt from an article entitled, "Why Johnny Can't Preach" by T. David Gordon from the September/October issue of Modern Reformation magazine:

"Poetry [also] trains the sensibility of the significant.
When not addled by narcissism or narcotics, poets
do not write about the trivial. Poets do not write
about hula-hoops or 'The Biggest Loser'. Why expend
the laborious effort at craftsmanship that poetry
requires merely to observe what is trite?
Television, by contrast, is essentially trivial.
It either has triviality as its overt content or,
on the rare occasion it attempts to address
what is consequential, it does so in a trivial
manner. Imagine, for instance, 'The News Hour'
on PBS doing a ten-minute television spot
and calling it 'in-depth coverage.' Most of
us know perfectly well that a significant
matter of public policy can hardly be defined
or introduced in ten minutes. Only by
television's preposterously silly habit
of 'covering' news items in fifteen or
twenty seconds can a ten-minute discussion be
considered 'in-depth.'
People who watch large amounts of television,
therefore, tend to become tone-deaf toward
significance. They rarely see it and therefore
do not notice it when it does appear".

I pray that, as my generation slowly leaves this planet, God will raise up a new generation of true "readers."