Saturn Eating His Children

Roman mythology abounds with gods and goddesses made in the image and likeness of man, giving the world a treasure trove of stories of vicious divinites, capable of sins ranging from the peccadillo to the heinous.

The ancient stories say that Saturn leads his brothers and sisters in a revolt against their father and he becomes king of the gods. He marries Rhea and they have six children. Enter the heinous. Because of a prediction that one day one of his children will dethrone him, Saturn eats each of his newborns until the last one, the one Rhea protects.

The story of Saturn's eating his children has become the subject of both art and literature as great painters depict the gruesome scene.

In Greek mythology, Saturn is Chronos, the god who eats his children. And, thereby hangs a tale.

Michael Medved, radio talk show host and movie critic, recently spoke at a university gathering in San Diego. Although he never mentioned Chronos eating his children, that's what his speech was about.

Medved is a worried man and (to paraphrase The Kingston Trio) it takes a worried man to give a worried speech. He's worried about the three pillars of society. He says that the three pillars of society are patience and perspective, optimism, and family and community. Michael Medved is worried that these pillars are being undermined.

A great termite has been eating away at these pillars. The termite has been doing this for some time, but now it's accelerating the gnawing. Here's the problem (which Medved calls "pathetic"): the average American watches television for a record 29 hours and 4 minutes per week. It is the termite of television that is gnawing away at our patience and perspective, our optimism, and our community.

The Great Termite exists to eat away 24 hours per day at our patience and perspective. Its ads make us and our children feel as if we have to have that toy, that television, that game now. Those who make the commercials use the Great Termite to make sure that no American delays his gratification for any reason (financial or otherwise). As the Great Termite gnaws, it will not allow us one good reason to delay the pleasure of consuming immediately.

The Great Termite has been successful. As the American male rules from his lounge chair, the Termite has given him his scepter-the remote. (The powers that be designed it to look like a scepter. They could have just as easily made it circular.) The remote has so taken charge of things that the American male watches one channel for an average of 18 minutes. After that, it's click . . .click . . .click as he rocks, not around the clock, but around the dial. He is, most of the time, incapable of seeing anything through to its conclusion. The remote control is the co-conspirator of the Great Termite.

Fifty years ago, the average television shot lasted from 90 to 120 seconds. Today they hold the average shot for 5 seconds. The Great Termite is constantly on the move.

A pastor once encouraged his congregation to go on a fast, not of food, but of television news for one week. His congregation said exactly what Medved said: that week they found themselves more optimistic, not so strangely and vaguely depressed as usual.

"If it bleeds, it leads." So goes the credo of television news for its beginning news stories. Television news and programs parade the dysfunctional. The families in the news are dysfunctional as are those in the programs. There is an endless round of conflict. [On a parallel note, in most of Spielberg's movies, something is very wrong with the families of the main character(s), homes are broken, fathers are mean and sometimes gone, mothers are irrelevant, out-of-touch nuts.] This constant parade presents a skewed picture of family life that the viewer perceives as normal. The Great Termite creates a negativity about life, whereas Christianity is always optimistic-the gospels end with the Resurrection; the Bible ends with the Second Coming of Christ and God's bringing man to fulfill his destiny.

A recent case in point is the Scott Peterson case and trial. There is no rationale for our having to know all the details of the case. Why does the Great Termite deem it important that we know the gruesome and the most mundane items about Scott Peterson? What possible difference does it make in our lives other than to skew our view of what's important?
Twenty-nine hours and four minutes a week of the dysfunctional produces an "all is lost" mentality that ignores that 50% of marriages don't end in divorce (an often repeated myth even in Christian circles), that millions of fathers come home, kiss their kids goodnight, read them a story, and each Sunday take them to Sunday school, rather than shooting them. But the Great Termites is eating away, dispensing its residue of vague negativism about life.

Because of television, people know more about Bart Simpson than they do their next door neighbor or the person who sits in the next pew in church. Because of television, as the author said, "We bowl alone," whereas we used to bowl in leagues. Because of television, we know more about a "Desperate Housewife" (more dysfunctionality) than we do the real live family across the street. As the termite eats, it leaves a residue of isolation. Twenty-nine hours and four minutes in front of the Great Termite won't let us build relationships.

Chronos eating his children? The story behind the story is this: Chronos is the Greek word for "time." And the story behind the myth is that at birth, Chronos starts eating away at life. It is relentless. We only have so much of it; God tell us to redeem it. And yet, the Great Termite enters and Chronos begins to feast on our time (116 hours per month).

What would you do with 116 extra hours a month? Read? Learn to play an instrument? Become a better Sunday school teacher? Throw yourself into a discipleship group? Further your education? Start an exercise program? Enjoy life (cf. I Tim. 6:17 and the book of Ecclesiastes)?

But what if a person scheduled 30 minutes less of television per day or per week? That's four new hours a month for enjoyment of real life.

However, this is not a legalistic, "grin and bear it." That's not the spiritual life. The Bible shows us what's of real value, a pearl of great price. Having seen what's valuable, it's not "give things up and gripe about it;" it's that so much of what we thought was valuable, we now see to be worthless, so we leave the worthless for the worthwhile and we enjoy doing so. There's a difference between "I resolve to grit my teeth and. . ." and saying, "I truly want to . . ." because I've seen what's valuable and I want to enjoy the valuable and jettison the valueless.

Chronos is there. We can redeem him. The Great Termite is there. We can control it. But we can only do it if we've had a vision of and long for the valuable; otherwise it'll last only as long as a last year's soon-vaporized January 1st resolution. The Great Termite will only succumb to the one who's experienced the valuable; it drops away like an old leaf, supplanted by a new and growing green one.

Dr. Mike Halsey, Pastor

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