In this week’s Taste and See article, John Piper addresses the question of why he’s not had a TV in over 40 years.  Here are a few of the highlights:

I think relevance in preaching hangs very little on watching movies, and I think that much exposure to sensuality, banality, and God-absent entertainment does more to deaden our capacities for joy in Jesus than it does to make us spiritually powerful in the lives of the living dead….

I have a high tolerance for violence, high tolerance for bad language, and zero tolerance for nudity. There is a reason for these differences. The violence is make-believe. They don’t really mean those bad words. But that lady is really naked, and I am really watching. And somewhere she has a brokenhearted father…

It’s the unremitting triviality that makes television so deadly. What we desperately need is help to enlarge our capacities to be moved by the immeasurable glories of Christ. Television takes us almost constantly in the opposite direction, lowering, shrinking, and deadening our capacities for worshiping Christ.

One more smaller concern with TV (besides its addictive tendencies, trivialization of life, and deadening effects): It takes time. I have so many things I want to accomplish in this one short life.Don’t waste your life is not a catchphrase for me; it’s a cliff I walk beside every day with trembling.

Read the whole thing here—“Why I Don’t Have a Television and Rarely Go to the Movies”

I addressed some related thoughts a few posts ago in, “10 Reasons Why You Could Do Without Cable TV.”