Killology 101

Education about media and violence does make a difference. I was on a radio call-in show in San Antonio, Texas. A woman called and said, "I would never have had the courage to do this two years ago. But let me tell you what happened. You tell me if I was right.

"My 13-year-old boy spent the night with a neighbor boy. After that night, he started having nightmares. I got him to admit what the nightmares were about. While he was at the neighbor's house, they watched splatter movies all night: people cutting people up with chainsaws and stuff like that.

"Every parent in America desperately needs to be warned of the impact of TV and other violent media on children. But the TV networks--our key means of public education in America--are stonewalling."

"I called the neighbors and told them, 'Listen: you are sick people. I wouldn't feel any different about you if you had given my son pornography or alcohol. And I'm not going to have anything further to do with you or your son--and neither is anybody else in this neighborhood, if I have anything to do with it--until you stop what you're doing.' "

That's powerful. That's censure, not censorship. We ought to have the moral courage to censure people who think that violence is legitimate entertainment.

One of the most effective ways for Christians to be salt and light is by simply confronting the culture of violence as entertainment. A friend of mine, a retired army officer who teaches at a nearby middle school, uses the movie Gettysburg to teach his students about the Civil War. A scene in that movie very dramatically depicts the tragedy of Pickett's Charge. As the Confederate troops charge into the Union lines, the cannons fire into their masses at point-blank range, and there is nothing but a red mist that comes up from the smoke and flames. He told me that when he first showed this heart-wrenching, tragic scene to his students, they laughed.

He began to confront this behavior ahead of time by saying: "In the past, students have laughed at this scene, and I want to tell you that this is completely unacceptable behavior. This movie depicts a tragedy in American history, a tragedy that happened to our ancestors, and I will not tolerate any laughing." From then on, when he played that scene to his students, over the years, he says there was no laughter. Instead, many of them wept.