Forewarning...

...This is going to be a strange post. For two reasons!
1) I just watched a few vlogbrothers videos, which always make me talk weird (I don't know if other people notice but I do!)
2) It's on a subject I don't particularly enjoy talking about, but for some reason feel compelled to write on.

Media.

It's been a theme in my life for a few days, simply because of the circumstances I've been in. The combined stress of family visiting for the weekend, senior year starting, my youth pastor leaving, 'ending' a relationship with someone I care deeply about, and a few more sensitive things has made me grumpy, irritable, sad, nauseous, and sleep-deprived. It really isn't a whole lot of fun.

So the other night I had just gotten off the phone after an emotional conversation and I knew I wasn't going to be able to sleep immediately, and I wandered into the living room thinking: "I just need some mindless TV to get my thoughts off of it." And I sat down, turned on some sitcom like How I Met Your Mother, Friends, or 8 Simple Rules, and turned off my brain for a while.

 Now I'm not usually someone who looks for ways to stop thinking. My brain is a pretty powerful processor, and with obvious exceptions, I like the conclusions it comes up with. But that night I just wanted to stop thinking about everything going on and be somewhere else mentally. A day or so later in either my Psychology or Understanding the Times class (or maybe both) the teacher talked about how everything has a worldview, whether we realize it or not. Music, movies, books, advertisements, TV shows, it all has a worldview that it was filtered through as it was created. And 99% of the time, that worldview is not the same one we hold as Christians. So what does that mean? We enforce some kind of media blackout on ourselves? Only taking in things deemed "Christian"?

No!

But we do have to be discerning. I know personally I don't often 'turn off' my brain when I'm watching TV or listening to music, but I've heard the phrase from my friends before, and the more I think about it, the more it worries me. When we turn off our minds, so to speak, we leave room for whatever we're watching/listening to/reading to plant itself on our brains. The worldview and opinions of the media become lodged in our heads, and with repition, they can get stuck there permanently.

So I guess this is just a warning, or something like that:

Keep your brains turned on.