As a family, we want to encourage our kids to be readers – and ourselves! So, we went for a full bookshelf to house our growing collection of books. Here’s a fuller explanation of why we decided to remove our tv and replace it with books…
A few weeks ago, my wife decided to take the TV off the wall. And we decided to replace it with a semi-DIY bookshelf hack. She’s been inspired to encourage our kids to be lovers of reading and to love learning. At first I was a little nervous about what I would do without TV, but once my wife decides something I usually can get on board. In this case I had been debating whether I could do it for months while my wife was habitually considering it and often mentioned the idea. And then she did fully commit. To her this is a promotion of books in our house all over mind numbing TV. It is an opportunity to explore deeper meaning and deeper truths that come from books rather than scratching the surface as we do in our current culture with oversaturation with digital and tv media consumption. She wants our kids to be critical thinkers and lovers of learning.
After some time with no tv in the living room, I have mentally taken this a step further in my reasoning and thought process about why we are doing this. Before I explain what I mean, I need to first explain the benefits I have noticed after we made this change. I am first of all noticing the significant improvement in my and my kids mental sanity. My kids don’t ask for tv and my wife isn’t complaining about them asking for it. We talk a lot more, my kids are verbally responsive in many ways more than they were before. We’ve even enacted a few opportunities to watch some together in our bedroom, where we have the only tv left in our house. And we’re watching things I never would have imagined they would enjoy, like old musicals. We of course do watch the occasional sports game too. But I have noticed, as it is with tv, it is the same with reading books. If you have good books laying around and the ones that are not as good are laying around, the kids will pick the easier, more self-gratifying stories to get wrapped up into. This removal of tv has added not just to our mental health but has also increased our kids curiosity in more ways than one. It has also not become a default thing for my wife and I to consider once our kids are in bed and asleep. Instead, we read or talk where we used to just vegetate on a tv show. So all of these things have added to, and even increased the intensity of my desire to continue doing this. I now find myself saying, what else can we cut out? Because I am finding when we cut something that is a-moral but sucking our time and leaving us with less space to create and be more engaged with each other, the better and more rich our lives are.
So, back to my ‘why’ a bit more. When I consider the state of our culture and our country, I often think of how we, how I, can fight against the incessant attack on our kids and our adult minds? We so easily get caught up in the stories that are portrayed to us and it leaves no emotional capacity to handle our own story or the stories of those people we interact with every day. I find myself more aware of those around me and also empathize with them more. In other words, I see their dignity and worth more, directly because my mind is not being numbed so regularly by media and tv.
When we remove many of the intake of these stories that are, most of them, unnecessary at best, we are able to think more clearly. We can also experience what it is like again to ‘get lost’ in our thoughts because our thoughts are not being sabotaged and redirected. To choose tv over each other is us choosing to be mind numbed to what really matters. In many ways, this is how the media controls us. It is through willful mind-control. How do I know this? Do you know that the founders and executives of Google and Facebook send their kids to a school without any digital devices? Did you know that they pretty much refuse these kinds of things for their kids? Why would they do that? Because they know the damage they have to their minds ability to think and learn and grow.
The first thing I think of as a way to fight against this and what might be possible if we removed tv’s recurring habits from our lives, and made them the exception, is the critical part of our faith, which is sharing the good news, verbally, with the people we come across with. But secondly, I think of discipleship of my kids. How can I fight for my kids, for our kids? Fight for Christian values being free and a part of freedom of speech and fight for our right to parent our kids according to our belief systems and Christian values which I happen to believe are the only way to the good life and our only way to truly living for God and other people? If we are not ready and engaged in our own lives, then how can we be ready to be an advocate of the Father when He calls us to be vocal about our faith? Is that not a better story to be engaged in? Rather than the ones that are on tv? The discipleship of our kids through their education is the best training for them from an early age.
It is easy to downplay this in our minds. Lighten up Scott! But, if you aren’t seeing the mental deceptiveness of those who want to control our time spent on social media, that is only the really obvious parts of this. That is only scratching the surface. You can experience more freedom when you have mental space, that we don’t give ourselves the luxury of experiencing anymore.
For me, I have to remind myself the best way to fight. If you are upset, pray, and then act by encouraging yourself or your kids to do hard things. To think a little more deeply. To sit with God longer. This is a well fought battle. When I built this bookshelf, I showed my son a few things about tools. I watched them play outside while I worked. They saw me sweat in order to bring something to life, to create something good. That makes me glad. And now we get to celebrate good books with it. So it will live on. That good things, like bookshelves and reading, can come to life if you work for it. And they don’t come by sitting and staring at a screen. This is how we model not just our love for Jesus, but our love for learning. And learning is…after all, one important aspect of discipleship.