Monsignor Dale has been preaching that Christians must engage the culture. Too many Christians have retreated from society and created their own subculture. That is so appalling, I don’t even want to get into that. But I do want to write this journal entry to help sort out my thoughts about the media.

Basically, I’ve had an intense relationship with the media for four years:

  1. Television. I’ve been on two reality shows on MTV, where I witnessed the mind-boggling influence the media has on young people. It is a terror how much influence has been entrusted to me.
  2. Radio. I spend an hour each morning listening to liberal NPR and conservative AM talk radio. I see how both camps go about rallying their troops. Their listeners are die-hard.;
  3. Internet. The Internet is where anybody can become an authority on anything. Somehow, “blog” is the name given to a regularity-updated person website. Overnight, millions of bloggers become political pundits and undermine the news industry. Teenagers spend more time on the Internet than they do watching TV. As a one-man show, I real-in a solid 20,000 people a day through all of my sites. How crazy is that?;
  4. Print. Print doesn’t get the hype that the others do, but it’s still a force to be reckoned with. Magazines and newspapers are everywhere. (They follow you to the toilet.) I’ve been in more papers than I can count. I’ve been misquoted half of the time, yet people still believe I said that.

So if Christians are going to engage this culture, it will have to include the media. After all, it is through the media and the business world that most Americans shape their beliefs. I don’t have know exactly how this is going to work out. I just know it has to happen.