Seeking Missionary Sponsorship: Anti-Media Apologetics Parable

We, the Bible believers of America, have acknowledged and preached on the fact that America is now the missionfield. While we are to go into all the world and make disciples of all nations; this missionary is called to reach the American next door currently neglected by today’s church.

We cannot reach Americans within a stone’s throw because the thing preventing them from hearing us is not distance, nor overt threat of persecution. No, here in the nation God gave us as His exceptional city upon a hill, Satan has attacked us Americans in a much more crafty way. That way, I have observed as a former member of the FakeNews and one who was trained to report FakeNews by very well-meaning Christians, is the Principality of Media.

I know, it sounds to most of you millennials like something out of Lord of the Rings.

But the Bible says we battle not against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities. What I am not suggesting here is that Christians engage in unlawful violence against the people Satan has so seduced. The Principality of Media is not one person or group of people. And despite what many of you may think, I think it’s a vast overreach to blame the media on “The Jews.” Yes, the media is largely operated by Jewish people. But as Chuck Colson pointed out in How Now Shall We Live, the original advertisers and media makers were predominantly Christians who perverted the Gospel of salvation, substituting salvation with products. As for Islam, it is merely, as C.S. Lewis pointed out, a highly imaginative cult of Christianity.

The media; first the telegraph-driven Newspapers; then television, and now “Smart Phones,” have waged a war on your mind and mine. Did you know our vocabularies are 60% smaller than they were in the Post-War era, when children spent time reading and socializing with their families and each other? When face-time meant actual face-time?

My grandmother used to have a shrine to “The Virgin Mother.” She would kneel before the statue, and pray to it, illuminating an electric candle before it. This is not unlike the ritual many other Catholics underwent, believing that sprinkling water blessed by a priest possessed healing qualities. This, of course is not a part of my Biblical beliefs. I think the “holy water” was just water; and the statue, really, an idol.

But today, all of us worship before an idol so ubiquitous, so mind-transcending, that we use it without thinking. It influences our behavior and the way we see the world. It makes pretense of objectivity, of helping us. And it is an instant cure for any momentary boredom that, absent the devices, we might ponder the things our American forefathers used to ponder, the things that developed their patience and character in the still of a night without television. And out of those dark, moments between them and God alone, were birthed some of the greatest writings, the greatest art we know today. It’s been a long time since a great thinker like Thomas Jefferson or George Washington came along, hasn’t it.

Do you know your vocabulary is one of the telltale indicators of your IQ? Therefore, America is objectively dumber than its predecessors of the Post World-War II era. Reading, of course, isn’t just knowing words. It’s the persistence, the critical thinking, the attention span, the capacity for keeping on trudging through texts that don’t make sense at first. Our American forefathers had that.

When was the last time you encountered a millennial who “can’t read the Bible.” Let’s face it, it’s not for want of dumbed-down translations. There are some so-called “translations” written at a painstakingly simple level. Is the problem that we can’t read the Bible, or is the problem that something we can’t explain is distracting us?

Is it possible that there is a coordinated effort to divide our attention, in a way that did not exist back in that glorious post-war era that the media doesn’t want you to remember, and ever seeks to demonize in the alleged “dark ages” before – you guessed it – media.

It is my contention that, whereas the downfall of the American church, and with it American decency, the American family, and the traditional, Constitutional American reliance upon Jesus Christ, coincided with the advent of increasingly intrusive media influence upon the American populace (and especially her judiciary, which is the least accountable of government branches) – the Fourth Estate has usurped the God-given authority of the pastorate to speak into Americans’ lives on all matters of spiritual significance. And furthermore, it has done so in such a way that pastors are largely not consciously aware of. Thus, it is ultimately the Principality of Media which has robbed America of her blessings.

Each generation since the Greatest Generation has gotten progressively more weak-minded, more weak-bodied, more chemically dependent, and more volatile. I do not believe that the epidemic of chemical substances is nearly as pervasive as the national addiction to her media, whose mores we unwittingly adopt, though we know not why, and which so many of us feel so helplessly terrorized against speaking out against – most of all the pastor in the pulpit.

We acknowledge that we are the mission field here in America, but we haven’t fully realized why. Most churches have, out of pure cowardice – yes, cowardice, thrown their hands up in the air and blamed America’s reverse-evangelization upon some inevitable “end-times” theology. Worse, I’ve heard so many pastors condemn the “Moral Majority Movement” and the “Christian Right” like Dr. James Dobson who, though they may not have had the media experience to understand just how vicious it is, fought as hard and as smartly as anyone did. And yet, they could only put out so many fires.

Christian, we must today go after the arsonist, who even at this moment, is besmirching a good judge somewhere in America, whispering a falsehood about a well-intentioned Christian, and doing all of this with the aim of ripping your attention away from your Bible study, your astrophysics study, your cancer cure, whatever God has given you to work on as the bright light and salt God has called you to be. This arsonist is making the name of Allah famous; blaming “religion,” blaming God, when things go wrong – blaming us, attempting to make fools of all of us, the nation that allows their very libelous media broadcast towers to keep on churning out all manner of pornography, of falsehoods, and overall ridicule of US, THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

The Principality of Media has waged a largely successful war upon the mind, and the soul, which are, despite various Hollywood stories which the media has told, one and the same. C.S. Lewis said each decision we make in each moment brings us one step closer to hell or one step closer to heaven. If you struggle with “Attention Deficit With Hyperactivity” disorder which gets in the way of your Bible reading, there is a reason that your brain, designed by God, is trying to channel your attention elsewhere. You won’t ever figure out what that is, however, if you allow yourself to be in the media-suggested habit of letting your mind be pulled from one ringtone to the next; one commercial to the next; one sensational news story to the next.

Breaking America’s media-imposed suggestibility, its habit of constant mind-darting in order to restore America’s natural attention span to the likes of Abraham Lincoln’s attention span requires a very strong act of will that can be no less than mentally excruciating.

There’s so much talk of “triggering” these days. But what any dime psychologist will tell you is that in order for someone to be triggered, he must first be conditioned.

Regardless of the fact that media cannot physically hurt you – at least not in the immediate way of, say, a robber with a hypodermic needle filled with a sedative might hurt you – through clever manipulation, I believe the media has successfully induced and orchestrated an attack on God’s people; its motive is simply survival. When Godly men and women live in fellowship rooted in God’s word, we are impervious to the sensational attention-grabbing trivia on the nightly news – as well as Hollywood’s latest uninspired gimmick.

Rather than preach against the cult of media, the principality of media, however, we have increasingly seen churches seek to imitate it with all manner of showbusiness distraction – without calling attention to the fact that the church is employing gimmicks. Thus, many churches have trained congregations to be entertained in church. The problem with such entertainment is that, in the act of entertaining a congregation with show-stopping shenanigans, by example, the church actually misrepresents worship as an entertaining experience. Thus, regardless of whether in the sermon and lyrics God is praised, the congregation is thus trained, and further conditioned, to be similarly evangelized by the entertainment which their cell phones, smart televisions, and the like will be inundating them with for the rest of the week.

Even the effort of reading this newsletter, this plea for missions help, is likely too much for millennials, who emotionally are triggered that anyone dare say anything about their favorite streaming Netflix show.

With this in mind, I’ve developed the blueprint for a resource to break millennials and Gen-Z out of its media-induced trance. What trance am I talking about? It’s that vague sense we all have, perhaps most expertly exploited by the movie, The Matrix, that the wool is somehow being pulled over our eyes by a force beyond our understanding. It’s that millennial who always feels that strange compulsion to apologize for his tangent, confessing compulsively, “that’s just my ADD.” It’s that vague sense that Christians have but are too afraid to admit that somehow, that Ritalin or Adderall, which gets and less potent with every hit (it’s in the same class of stimulants as highly controlled amphetamines, is somehow a Band-Aid rather than an actual solution to the real problem lurking within.

This is not a new academic or religious concept; I am merely ascribing the words that I believe media has attempted to censor out of our vocabulary. What does a nation call a psychosis, or acknowledge it, if it does not know it is thus afflicted? Mr. Fred Rodgers of the popular Public Television children’s program tried to describe the problem but never fully articulated it. His principal training was in Presbyterian Media Ministry. Dr. James, in Dobson and Focus on the Family continue to react emotionally, in the form of knee-jerk supporter emails. The latest I got from them is that lawmakers are now supporting infanticide outside the womb. But the fact that they’re so surprised, and are counting on their donors to be so incredibly surprised by this news, shows that they do not grasp the central driving agent in the downfall of the Church, and thus America, and thus the gift of Western Civilization.

This driving force is, of course, the media. Devices just like the one you’re reading this on right now. For many of us, the device even has a symbol of the bitten apple, a symbol of one of Satan’s greatest victories over man. Few of us carry crosses – why a symbol of Satan?

And yet, millennials, reared on the likes of Sesame Street, SpongeBob, and BluesClues, constant over-stimulation, cannot get through an article even as simple as this. How, then to reach them? That’s where I get to the methodology of the parable.

The chief concern, of course is to avoid being hypocritical and providing just another piece of entertainment. And so soup to nuts, the premise of this riveting drama is constructed in order to call attention to the effects of an unnatural, Satanic principality upon an unsuspecting, media-trained people.

I’m asking your help in advancing the cause of the brotherhood of Christ by way of cutting off one of the chief spiritual poisons I have witnessed infiltrating the soul of the believer today. I have longsuffered nearly to the point of death in the Land of the Free in order to develop not only this epistemology of just how deep the proverbial rabbit hole goes. It’s a parable of hope rooted solidly on media theory, but designed with the intrigue of a C.S. Lewis allegory; again all rooted strongly in the natural law, as a backdrop for the feeble lies of “salvation through technology” that I believe the media ultimately amounts to in its quest to usurp the authority of the church for profit.

So I long suffered to develop, based on solid, actual Christian academic, philosophy and theology. But not only that, I have also labored to master the arts of both drama and music in order to craft a parable, Jesus’s chosen artform. Because remember, Millennials don’t have the attention span to study. They need to be coaxed toward that discipline, and it is a discipline. And so I’ve written them the Disney-esque bedtime story they crave – the “spiritual milk” if you will, as opposed to mature-believer meat. But the meat is here as well, in my writings. In this way the apologetics, as I practice them, are not only the traditional method of debate; this mission, which I long-suffered to study and practice in from within enemy territory and without, also goes out of its way to speak the language of our mission-field: the 60% lower-IQ millennial of today. Most of us millennials aren’t even ashamed to admit it. Binge, anyone? Remember when binging was a bad thing? But I digress on yet another millennial tangent. Chock it out to my ADD. So random! Okay. Moving on…

I’m asking for your sponsorship of my anti-media apologetics ministry. I believe in my heart God will use it to rescue the American church from its own state of media-induced sodomy and all manner of distraction from the most holy Word of God – and the ability to engage in all things profitable, good and holy in general.

When you go to Africa, one problem you must contend with in ministering is – well – getting the population to stop committing that perverse, addictive ritual they do rooted in a false belief that sexual relations with infants will cure their AIDS.

If you were a missionary from outside America looking in, and you thought we were crazy like most of the world does for abandoning the very things that make us human – including our desire to care for our own children (the women, in a demonic turn of events, who are biologically wired to nurture young ones, suddenly desire to kill them!).

If you were a missionary from the outside looking in at America’s cult of television, of sodomy, and all manner of evil, I think the first thing you’d do is pull the plug of that device we willfully submit our attention to, that satanic voice whispering in newfangled terms like “gay rights” ad nauseum until we finally not only believe them, but fear for our lives if we even dare think of protesting them.

Thank you for serving the Lord, and please join me through your prayers and support of this anti-media apologetics parable ministry God has placed such a clear calling on my heart for.

Let’s be at God’s work diligently. Our time here is brief. I don’t know about you but I want to hear, “Well Done, Good and Faithful Servant.” What motivates you?

From the “Hub of the Universe,”

Yours in Christ
Peter