We Live in An X-RATED World

Today, children, teenagers, young adults, and adults are constantly bombarded with images from the media. Some of these images might be positive, like when the news shows people doing good for others. However, a large majority of the images we see are negative, even depressing at times.

There are two types of negative images that I am talking about. The first is, the sadness and difficulty of war and an economy crisis. We hear about it all the time these days, and that's because we are in the middle of it. Negative images like these can actually inspire us to depend more on God in difficult situations like war and financial troubles.

The second type of negative image that we see is less obvious. I call these de-humanizing images. These are the images that make human beings less human. Let me explain that... Have you ever seen a commercial that used an attractive man or woman to sell something? It happens in most of our commercials! While this may seem completely harmless, take a look at what this says about the human person. It says that we are tools used for selling things, and that those buying the things are going to buy them because they are attracted to the good looking people selling them. That hardly sounds like the words we hear in Genesis when God created man "in his own likeness and image."

De-humanizing images go even further than that. All of a sudden there are commercials for things like birth control and tv shows that promote sex before marriage. Television and advertising use the human body to sell, but they also avoid issues of morality and make the moral standings of the Church look old fashioned and out of date. Nowadays it can be hard to find someone who understands why sex should be saved for marriage and why birth control is telling us that the female body was not made right.

Those are just a couple of examples... but hopefully it gets the point across enough. So what now? What do we have to do about it all? We can't exactly stop the war, convince everyone that the moral teachings of the Church are true, can we? This requires discussion AND action. Whether this action is something big or just how we talk to others in our daily lives, we should see that Jesus calls us to actively live out our faith, not sit by the sidelines and let the world lose itself without our help. We need to help. If you want to know more about this... come to Youth Group on April 26, 4:00-5:30pm. We'll have some fun, eat some food, and figure out what to do about the direction our media has taken.