WOULD JESUS HAVE USED TV?

We might presume at the outset that Jesus would have used whatever media would be available in his proclamation of the kingdom of God, but it might not be so. As Isaiah saw the Messiah in the dim future, “He will not cry or lift up his voice or make it heard in the street,” which would at least refer to the unique and humble aspect of his method. He did not talk, think, or behave like ordinary man, and he employed “what is low and despised” so as to set at naught the wisdom of man. It may be, therefore, that he would have passed up an opportunity to go on national TV at prime time in order to present his message to all of Israel in a glorious burst of instant communication.

Malcolm Muggeridge, one time editor of London’s Punch and a noted lecturer who is now witnessing for the Christ he once rejected, is persuaded that Jesus would not have used TV had it been available to him. In fact, in a lecture in John Stott’s All-Saints Church in London recently, he suggested that if Jesus had been offered the use of TV it would have been “the fourth temptation” and that it would have been resisted like the other three temptations. He imagines how the fourth temptation would have come about. Some rich Roman tycoon, an impresario of the games, in passing through Galilee, happens to hear Jesus teaching a crowd of people. The extravagance of Jesus’ words holds his attention: how God’s love falls with abandon on the just and unjust alike, how we are to love our enemies and do good to those who harm us, how if an eye offends it must be plucked out and if a limb it must be amputated. If such verbal prodigality holds his attention, the tycoon reasons, why would it not have a similar impact upon the general public. He sees Jesus a potential TV star, even a superstar.

So the tycoon goes to work to “properly present” Jesus. He has his representatives in Jerusalem to “puff’ Jesus. Back in Rome he has his associates prepare the proper setting, with fountains playing, a lush atmosphere, organ music, good chorus line (perhaps from Delphi), some big names from the games—gladiators in full rig, priests and priestesses from the Aphrodite Temple. Jesus would need a special hairdo and robe for the act, and a beard trim. For safety’s sake his words would be put on autocue. But the tycoon wondered if Jesus could read. Well, it doesn’t matter, he figured, for the show would have to be mimed anyhow, and because of the language difficulty they’d have to use lipsinc. The tycoon also suggested that his associates bring some of Jesus’ followers to Rome also, especially the Baptist, a very picturesque guy with a great tangled beard and dressed in a camel’s hair shirt with a leather girdle around him. He was then in prison, but the tycoon was sure he’d be able to get the Procurator Pontius something-or-other — to free him for the occasion. He’d be great on the set in his desert get up.

But would Jesus do it? The tycoon is amused at himself for even asking the question. Of course he would do it, for anyone would jump at such a chance. After all, it would enable him to reach the whole of the Roman Empire rather than that rag, tag and bobtail bunch following him around Galilee. In propositioning Jesus the tycoon would explain that there would be no intrusion of unsuitable commercials, just a very reputable sponsor, such as the highly-respected Lucifer, Inc. No more than ‘This program comes to you by the courtesy of Lucifer, Inc.” at the beginning and end of the act. Why, this will put Jesus on the map and launch him off on a tremendous career as a worldwide evangelist, thought the tycoon, and it would spread his teaching throughout the civilized world and beyond. He’d be crazy to turn it down, he insisted.

But Jesus was crazy. He did turn it down, just as he did the other temptations. He did not turn the stones into bread and thereby abolish hunger lest they should think that man can live by bread alone. He did not jump from the top of the Temple without coming to any harm, thereby becoming a celebrity and attracting the world’s attention to what he had to say. He turned down the offer of the kingdoms of this world from the hands of the Devil, even though it would have given him the political power to set up a kingdom of heaven, perhaps a super welfare state. So why should he yield to the fourth temptation of going on TV and thus move from real world to a world of fantasy? Jesus was concerned with truth and reality, the tycoon with fantasy and Images.

Jesus had his own scenario and it did not need the power and wisdom of the world’s media. That scenario took him across Galilee and Judea, all the way to the cross. The effect of his life, death and resurrection not only reached the whole of the Roman Empire but civilizations that were not yet born, while the Roman Empire, with all its effective media, soon crumbled. Throughout the ages the greatest artists, poets, musicians and men of letters have sought to celebrate that scenario, majestic cathedrals have been built to enshrine it, and religious orders have been founded to serve it — and yet that drama unfolded without all the techniques of “the wisdom of this world.”

We, on the other hand, with all our fantastic technology of communication whereby words and even pictures are transmitted faster than sound, do not really have that much to say or that much to show. Our communication is more of an exercise in fantasy than in truth. Our world is “the theatre of the absurd” and it says something for God’s sense of humor that we are allowed to continue playing our games. It may break the heart of an editor of Punch when he tries to be funny about a world that is incorrigibly funnier than anything he can invent. Our technology has a built-in reductio ad absurdum, whereas the Word that became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth, in the most literal sense, speaks for itself.

And so, in his Christ and the Media, the inimitable Muggeridge tells us that our Lord would not have used TV had it been available to him. Following the lecture he was asked if we, his disciples, should make use of TV, that it isn’t all that important whether Jesus would have used it or not. Muggeridge is impressed with the way Jesus and his envoys spread the message, mostly one on one, and he doesn’t think we need TV, which to him is both artificial and fantastic.

Even though he was a TV media man himself, he has now as a Christian resolved not to watch it anymore. He has in fact put it out of his home, and he is constantly warning Christians (even on TV!) against its evil influences. He is not saying simply that TV needs to be cleaned up and improved, for he is convinced that this cannot be done. By its very nature TV is fantasy, projecting an unreal world that is inimical to the reality that is in Christ. Even the news is “programed” for the unreal world that it portrays. That Christians will watch TV when they could be reading substantial material is to him tragic.

I am writing this essay while in St. Joseph, MO, where I am presenting studies at Central Christian Church. Having Muggeridge’s thesis on my mind, I told a sister about it who teaches a class of youngsters each Sunday. She told me about this boy who had seen a lady on TV change into costume after costume, simply by twirling herself round and round. Before the little boy’s eyes this lady blossomed out in one beautiful dress after another, just by twirling like a ballet dancer. He was convinced he could do this, and he stood before the class and began to twirl, supposing that his world of fancy, created by TV, would become a real world. This incident disturbed me, leaving me to wonder what we might be doing to our kids through TV, and to ourselves, and I am not referring only to violence. Maybe Muggeridge is right, that we are bringing into our very homes a device that projects fantasy into a world with which we must cope in truth and reality. Marriage, family life, sex, work, values, even the news, are fantasized. And Muggeridge notes that by the time that child has lived his life he has spent eight years of it before the TV set!

“Teach us to number our days

That we might apply our hearts to wisdom.” — the Editor

 

In the works of man, as in those of nature, it is really the motives which chiefly merit attention. —Goethe