I recently purchased a book titled "Amusements for Christians - Right or Wrong?" written by John Rice in 1955. John Rice did not condem television as harshly as other activities such as Hollywood movies, dancing, or card playing. But I wondered to myself, what would John Rice say today (1996) about watching television. Thus, I will attempt to answer that question based primarily on his 1955 book "Amusements for Christians - Right or Wrong?"
I heard a sermon in the summer of 1995 by an Independent Baptist preacher dealing with the issue of watching television. He basically said that it was a sin to watch many of the programs that are available to watch. He said that we must guard what we watch, but did not strongly advise against watching television.
Before we can evaluate what John Rice would say about televison today, we need to find what reasons he used to determine if an amusement is wrong. Here are a few quotes from his book.
"The dance is unquestionably harmful and wrong, whether in a nice private home, in a night club, or anywhere else, because the dance encourages familiarity and petting and arouses lust. Christians certainly should not go to dances." pages 7-8 "The Hollywood movies are not for Christians. There is so much murder, crime, and lust that I am thoroughly convinced Christans ought never to go to a regular commercial picture show." pages 7-8 "Particularly the movies are a temptation in sex matters and lower the standards of normal Christian people. No one can reliably pick good movies, and anyway, one who attends the movies is putting his money behind a vile business, run by wicked people, and will be responsible for anybody else who is influenced to attend the movies by his example." page 12
In the above quotes I see several reasons for determining if an amusement is wrong. I see the following.
Further on in the book, John Rice deals with the issue of skating. John states that to determine if skating is wrong, we must look further into the environment.
"Or if several get together and skate, under good environment,
no bad company, no indecency or bad language or necking, I still
see no harm in skating." page 25
To my original list of reasons to determing if an amusement is wrong, I'll add the possible problems with skating. The final list would then be the one listed below.
At this point I think I have found more than a sufficient amount of items to make our decision. As a matter of fact, all of the above are strong characteristics of what we see on television today. There are still some shows on television that do not have the characteristics mentioned above. I will list a few that I have seen.
To get to our goal of determine what John Rice would say about television today, we must look at John Rice's position on television in 1955, and see if it is still valid. Let me quote what I feel is a good summary statement.
"there are several advantages of the television over the movies. For one thing, one can tune out any program that is not acceptable, but after he goes to a movie and buys a ticket, he cannot change the program...A Christian family can very strictly supervise the television just as it ought to supervise the radio, and just as it ought to supervise the reading" page 17
It is clear to me, that the above statement is still valid. We could make the above statement concerning just about anything. Most of the programs I have seen today, would have to be judged off limits for Christians, based on five of John Rice's principals cited above. For me, the "not being certain of what will be seen" is a major issue. Even a "good" show has the potential of having situations, and bad commercials that catch you with your guard down.
I was listening to a tape by Dr. Jack Hyles titled "Knocked down, but not knocked out", July 15, 1977 delivered at Winona Lake, Indiana. Here is an excerpt from the tape. 795K bytes .WAV file (73 seconds)
"Dr. John Rice and Dr. Bob Jones Sr. years ago in Texas, 20 years ago, were on the same platform. Dr. Rice, Dr. Roleoff, and Dr. Bob Jones Sr. ... Dr. Rice was sitting here. Dr. Bob Jones Sr. was sitting here, and I was sitting in the middle of them. Dr. Roleoff was preaching. And Lester was preaching his usual sermon, he only has one sermon, and it is entitled "Whats wrong with television" He was preaching his sermon, he has different titles, but the same subject. He titled it that day, that great sermon that will go down in history, it was called "And the Mule Walked On", that was the title of his sermon. "And the Mule Walked On". Oh, he was tearing up television "Oh! Nobody ought to have a television!, "Nobody ought to look at a television! Ought to tear them all up! Ought to kick them all out! Noboday ought to set his eyes.." and he preached on television. And right in the middle of the heat of the sermon, Ole Dr. Bob Sr. leaned over across me and punched Dr. Rice on the Knee and said "Brother John", and Dr. Rice said "Yes", he said brother John "I don't care what he says, I still like I Love Lucy, don't you?"---Are not you glad the great people have their weaknesss too.
In Summary, due to the difficulty of finding a television show that brings glory to God, I think John Rice would avoid all.