MEDIA
Nathan Attwood
Pastor, Marianna First United Methodist Church
"Blessed are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers, but their delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law they meditate day and night. They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither, in all they do they prosper." Psalm 1:1-2.
The Bible often compares righteous people to trees. In Isaiah, righteous people who demonstrate stability due to their unwavering trust in God are called, "oaks of righteousness." God is a dependable God, and those who live in relationship with God become dependable due to their connection to a God who is steadfast and sure.
I recently heard a very good sermon on Psalm 1 from a seminarian who argued that the tree described in the Psalm couldn't be anyone but Jesus. He said that only Jesus is righteous, only Jesus avoided allowing his life to be persuaded by sinners, only Jesus had a life that truly bore good fruit consistently. He was right, of course, to say that only Jesus is completely righteous. But Psalm 1 is clearly teaching the reader how to become more like a fruitful tree. If we aren't particularly good and wise people, how can we become an oak of righteousness?
The Psalm doesn't ascribe any value to the tree in and of itself. The tree of righteousness demonstrates vitality, consistency, and fruitfulness because of where it is planted. Because the tree is planted near a stream of living water, the living water flows through it consistently and gives it life and vitality in all seasons. The stream of water is constant meditation upon God's law.
I was thinking about this Psalm while I was looking at my lawn recently. I have a place in my lawn where the pool pump discharged chemical-laden overflow and killed the grass. There wasn't anything better or worse about the grass that died than the grass next to it that lived. The difference was in the grass that soaked up healthy rainwater and the grass that was planted in poison. This year had a very rainy season followed by a very dry season and more recently we received some rain again. I've watched the health of my lawn change dramatically with these shifts of precipitation. The grass is the grass--it's not better or worse grass when it turns green than when it turns brown. The difference is what it soaks up and what flows through it.
Specifically, the writer of Psalm 1 teaches that a person whose mind is planted in the law of the Lord is like the fruitful tree. The Psalm teaches that the person who lives a fruitful life does so because he avoids planting his mindset in the noise of foolish people. The righteous person is like a tree, the wicked person is like withering grass. They aren't constitutionally that different from each other. The difference is what their mind is planted in and what is flowing through them.
We have a term we use all the time without truly considering what it means. The word is "media." When we think of "media" we tend to think of TV news, newspapers, other news outlets. "Media" is a plural word. It is the plural of "medium." A medium is a thing through which something flows, a conduit. If a person had something to express, something to say, for example, the person wanted to tell the world that the Caverns State Park was the best in Florida, the person could choose a medium through which to communicate this idea. Perhaps the medium would be a book, or a Facebook post, or a magazine article, or a documentary, or a song, or a newspaper article. If a person chose to use several different forms to communicate how wonderful the Caverns is, we might say the person celebrated the Caverns through multiple "media."
In popular usage, we have begun to use the term "media" as a disparaging way of saying that the people who tell the news from a different point of view than ours are crooked propagandists. This may or may not be true. I have my opinions but they are outside the point of this column.
The point I'm trying to make is that a medium is just a medium, a conduit of something, not good or bad in itself. But what flows through these conduits is the difference between life and death of the spirit.
Christians need to ask themselves, "Is my mind continually rooted in the words of scripture?" We need to ask ourselves the hard questions about whether we are deeply and continually drawing from the pure waters of the writings of scripture and the heart of God on display in the life and teachings of Jesus. Are our souls being shaped through prayer, faith conversations with Christian brothers and sisters, regular public worship with a community and fellow Christ-followers?
We are not better than anyone else, in and of ourselves. If our minds are rooted in social media, television, movies, popular music, books, magazines, and yes, even newspapers, we have limited our imaginations from the things that give life to our hearts and minds. What I'm saying is not just about the media that other people consume. It applies to the media all of us consume.
Social media, in particular, feeds the soul like M&Ms. It gives one small, sweet, nutritionless, empty hit after another. We are becoming a culture of spiritually wilted people because we are living on spiritual candy.
That spot where to pool water dumped out in my lawn--I water it more than any other patch of grass on my place. I want to soak away the poison and get the good grass growing again. Our minds are bombarded with empty stuff and poisonous stuff. If ever a people needed to soak their minds in the healing, holy words of God through scripture, worship, prayer, and holy conversation, we are those people.