I can't explain it. Night after night, I see Him or hear Him speaking to me. It makes me upset. I try to ignore it but it won't go away. No, I'm not going insane (but I probably will); I'm referring to TV shows that preach to me. Maybe I'm just sensitive to the issue, but I swear there is at least one Jesus / religion reference per show or else the whole show revolves around the issue. Oh, and I want to add to the obvious that I'm not on the "Jesus Channel." I'm talking about network, prime time television.

Is this a growing trend? Is this in response to Capitol Hill telling Hollywood to clean up its act? Isn't it enough we have award winners thanking their God in their acceptance speeches? (How come you never hear actors or musicians say, "Well we worked really, really hard on our project. Thank God the judges gave the award to someone else."?) Isn't enough that we have to hear it in our nightly news, someone thanking their God for sparing their life? Now they have to get preachy in Prime Time?

I suppose we should have seen it coming. To hear the Christians talk, television morality has been slipping into a mired swamp of violence, sex, and drugs. Maybe it started on "soap operas," daytime TV, when the network said, "We can show lust and murder because the children are in school." Then it insidiously crept into the evening shows… cute little sitcoms with dirty little innuendo, police shows where the criminal is gunned down, TV movies about cheating spouses and divorce. Now there are talk shows parading scum and lowlifes before us, court TV flaunting divorce and litigation, news programs dragging every dirty secret out of the darkest closets. On almost every show, at any given hour, you will find "inappropriate" behavior.

But does TV really affect us? Are we more likely to get a divorce, have casual sex, or kill someone just because we saw it on TV? Of course we're not. But the Christians say we are. Why is that? Let me speculate. Could it be that when we take God out of TV, people forget about the church? If people forget the church, they won't follow the church. If people don't follow the church, then they are no longer under the servitude of the church. If they are no longer slaves of the church, then they don't pay the church. And if the church doesn't get paid, the church will cease to be!

Is the plot to take over network and cable TV really that insidious? It is possible; the goal of Christianity is to have all people either under the servitude of Jesus or under the ground. (Luke 19:27. Look it up sometime if you're not familiar with it, it's a hoot.) Christians will use the media like any other technological tool to achieve that goal, and then turn around and say the media is against them so the masses can't see who's pulling the strings (pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!). We know this is true by the fact that we don't have "The Atheist Hour" airing on Sunday morning.

Let me take this in another direction. Let's say the church is not directly influencing television. Let's assume the writers, directors, and actors are working together to bring morality back to television themselves. Then we have to ask, why Christianity? If Aesop could relate morality in 500 BCE without Jesus, surely we could in 21st century America. Perhaps leaning on the crutches of religion has impaired society, so that they cannot equate morality without a God. Maybe they don't know there can be morality with out God. Maybe we should teach them.

Wouldn't it be simpler to tone down the sex and violence? Can't we educate the public instead of preaching, or has America been "dumbed down" too much? Maybe, we should just get off our asses and stop watching TV.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to read a book.