TV :: No More
I don’t like TV. I never really have. Nevertheless, having a television creates one more opportunity to waste time, so Felicia and I decided to take action. So now our TV, VCR, DVD player, and Playstation are all in the closet, and they aren’t coming out for at least 1 year. My guess is that by then, we’ll love not having it so much that we just continue on without it.
We only had a few channels. I watched TBN every once and a while to see what was new in the health, wealth, and prosperity wolves, and caught some local news here and there. Whenever it was on, we were either watching a movie (too much time spent on that), or playing Guitar Hero (I’m really good, but again, too much time wasted). I’m not heartbroken. In fact, I have great joy in the matter.
The silence is beautiful. I anticipate a lot more reading around the house.
“TV still reigns as the great life-waster. The main problem with TV is not how much smut is available, though that is a problem. Just the ads are enough to sow fertile seeds of greed and lust, no matter what program you’re watching. The greater problem is banality. A mind fed daily on TV diminishes. Your mind was made to know and love God. Its facility for this great calling is ruined by excessive TV. The content is so trivial and so shallow that the capacity of the mind to think worthy thoughts withers, and the capacity of the heart to feel deep emotions shrivels.”
~ John Piper (Don’t Waste Your Life, 120)



i agree. tv feeds you with things tv people think you like. it hinders you from thinking for yourself.
We removed the TV for one year a few years ago, more as a financial move than anything. I think I went through more withdrawal symptoms than the children, having grown up with TV watching every night. We found ourselves reading and playing games together as a family, a nice benefit for us. I can’t remember the reason now, but we went back to TV after the year was up. It’s now returned to being a great time waster in our evenings, again, mine mostly. It’s probably past time for us to take ours out, also.