The eye is the lamp of the body. So, of your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light; but if you eye is not sound, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!
Matthew 6:22-23
The following is a version of the story of the frog in the boiling water from Daniel Quinn’s The Story of B:
If you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will of course frantically try to clamber out. But if you place it gently in a pot of tepid water and turn the heat on low, it will float there quite placidly. As the water gradually heats up, the frog will sink into a tranquil stupor, exactly like one of us in a hot bath, and before long, with a smile on its face, it will unresistingly allow itself to be boiled to death.
In many ways, this is a metaphor for our society. In 1939, when Clark Gable said “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” it broke censorship rules about what appropriate language was in a movie. But it was accepted. Over the past now 85 years, society has accepted and normalized all kinds of verbal and sexual vulgarity in movies and television shows. It’s become so normalized that if a person objects to the violent and explicit content, they are seen as not normal.
Fifty years ago, when someone wanted to look at pornography, they had to go down to the corner store, buy two magazines, one which had the inappropriate material, and another to wrap around it so no one would know one was viewing explicit content. Now, it’s a click away on the phone, and people can view sinful material right in front of other people and they wouldn’t know it. After all, who knows what one is looking at on a phone at any given time—an email? ESPN? an xxx site?
A stroll through the mall or a drive down the highway will cause us to view inappropriate billboards and advertisements, whether we want to or not—they are just part of the landscape. And this is all normalized. Pornography is a serious problem in our society. Lots of people are addicted to it. It is messing up marriages. It is messing up the minds of our young people before they even get into dating and marriage. If you are addicted to pornography, please get help, talk about it with someone, don’t wait until a relationship is boiling to death.
We discussed many times how the ratio of encouragement to discouragement needs to be 5:1 in order for someone to be in balance. That ratio probably holds true for many other kinds of positive to negative things, including images. We need to look at many positive images to counteract the effects of the negative ones. We need to be seeing at least fives times as many wholesome images as offensive ones.
Most of us have some beautiful images on ready recall in our minds—it might be images of the ocean, or nature, or a place like summer camp, or the house you grew up in, or your church, etc. We have images of people smiling and laughing, pleasant memories of our lives. It is important to bring these images to mind often, as they provide serenity in our minds. We should each have images of Christ burned into our minds as well. I can close my eyes and see Christ on the cross behind the altar of the church, and on the icon screen. In stressful moments, such as when having a medical test, I close my eyes and meditate on those images that are on ready recall in my mind and I find peace.
One of our many problems is that the things we are taking in with our eyes are often unhealthy. Same thing with our ears—many people listen to music with unhealthy, explicit lyrics, or lyrics that promote anger and violence. When we combine unhealthy sights and sounds, we end up producing unhealthy words with our mouths and actions with our hands, because our brains are being driven by unhealthy things.
Even the healthy things on our screens become problematic because we are becoming addicted to our screens, and our attention spans are getting shorter. How many people have had the experience of talking to someone, and that person receives a text message, starts texting, and your are cut off and completely ignored mid-sentence. That happens to me, and unfortunately, sometimes I do it to others. It is normalized, but it shouldn’t be.
Jesus says that the eye is the lamp of the body, that if our eyes are sound, the rest of our bodies will be as well. However, if our eyes are filled with darkness because they take in darkness, then the rest of our bodies will be filled with darkness. If ninety percent of our sensory experience comes through our eyes, then we must be vigilant and guard what we are seeing with our eyes. And we must be intentional of seeing images of holiness and wholesomeness around us because we unintentionally (and of course intentionally) see images of brokenness, violence and inappropriate material all around us, whether we want to or not. One of the beautiful reasons to have icons around us is that they are images of holiness. Having a small icon of Christ on our desks, or on our computers will help us remember that we are images of holiness and also remind us to not look at inappropriate material on our computers.
The solution for the frog in the water was simply to jump out. The solution for us is to make sure we not normalizing things that we know God would not approve of, or worse yet, thing God would be okay with them.
Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to Thy name give glory, for the sake of Thy steadfast love and Thy faithfulness! Why should the nations say, “Where is their God?” Our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases. Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hand. They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not hear; noses, but do not smell. They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk; and they do not make a sound in their throat. Those who make them are like them; so are all who trust in them. O Israel, trust in the Lord! He is their help and their shield. O house of Aaron, put your trust in the Lord! He is their help and their shield. You who fear the Lord, trust in the Lord! He is their help and their shield. The Lord has been mindful of us; He will bless us; He will bless the house of Israel; He will bless the house of Aaron; He will bless those who fear the Lord, both small and great. May the Lord give you increase, you and your children! May you be blessed by the Lord, who made heaven and earth! The heavens are the Lord’s heavens, but the earth He has given to the sons of men. The dead do not praise the Lord, nor do any that go down into silence. But we will bless the Lord from this time forth and forevermore. Praise the Lord! Psalm 115
Fill your eyes with images of goodness and holiness!
