What’s going on in the world today? I mean, look around. Do you feel it? There seems to be this general condition of busyness under pinned by an air of discontentment and disconnectedness. We have been lured into this mindset of go, go, go, and more, more, more. And it leads to a sense that we are never finished – we never get everything done, we can never catch up. And we become resolved to thinking that things are just never really going to get any better. But better, compared to what though? Have we completely lost perspective? This matrix minded lifestyle is constantly offered up as normal here in the western world. And people have become complacent and disengaged. So what’s the problem? We have lost touch with authentic truth. Why? We are being manipulated. We are being sold a bag lies, and we are buying it up like there’s no tomorrow.
For me, personally, one of the more important pieces of scripture in the Bible’s new testament is, “to be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” If it was important enough to suggest that we are to be transformed, by the renewing, refreshing, reorienting of our thoughts – i.e., changing what goes into our brains – then it stands to reason that the best way for our adversaries to alter what we believe in is to influence what we consume.
An article published at phys.org in November 2013 reported an alarming statistic. “A new study by a researcher at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego, says that by 2015, the sum of media asked for and delivered to consumers on mobile devices and to their homes would take more than 15 hours a day to see or hear. That volume is equal to 6.9 million-million gigabytes of information, or a daily consumption of nine DVDs worth of data per person, per day.”
A Retired military soldier, named Colonel Dan, once a staff member of General Norman Schwarzkopf’s intelligence team, said this about truth; “Most people absorb what they know about life from the major media centers these days. The media paints the picture for all to see. If that picture is constantly distorted, lies become accepted as truth, i.e. tell enough lies repeatedly and soon those lies are accepted as fact. Spin and concoct, distort and influence using the public platforms such as television, radio, and print, (and Social Media) and you can influence, sway and control the mind of the vast majority of its population in any area you choose. This subversive influence includes pitting one group against another in order to foment internal discord as well as ridiculing, discrediting and challenging moral principles and national values in order to destroy any hint of a strong spiritual foundation or allegiance to a unique national culture. This is a much easier task if many in your target audience have become lazy, ill-educated, ill-informed, unthinking, and apathetic.”
Are you connecting with me here? What are we putting into our brains? We have a society that spends billions of dollars on diet programs, weight loss supplements, and meal modifications – yet we belly brain up to the television and radio dial without any regard for the mental cancer causing substances flowing into our minds. We have no filters when it comes to that stuff. Even when we know it’s not true, we still sit for hours munching on mindless media like a bag of Doritos.
“Guard you heart above all else,” the Proverb says, “for it is the wellspring of life.” Years ago, computer programmers coined the phrase, garbage in garbage out. None of us would knowingly choose to literally eat garbage, would we? So why then is it okay to pour it into our brains. It is one of the greatest battle fronts we face today. Because we are so easily lured by the desire to be entertained, and emotionally preoccupied, we don’t even want to turn it off. But we must. At the very least, we must calibrate the filter from which we allow this junk to come through. For us to ever be who we are supposed to be, we are going to have to uncouple ourselves from what the world is trying to make us into.
Here’s an idea. Try turning off the mindless media for a few days. Start with three days, then five, then a whole week. You will be astounded at the amount of available time you recover. To the point, you will likely feel board for lack of something to do. That is how dependent we have become on data. You’ll have more time to get outside, read a fulfilling book, play with your kids, dig in the dirt, exercise, and even get more rest. You have nothing to lose, and everything to gain.
Greg Tutwiler, CCLC / www.FreedomLiving.org
Daily Life Journey 