The Benefit of Black and White

I don’t remember life without television. But I do remember life without color television. For years Ed Sullivan entertained me and my family with his “really big shooow” and introduced us to the latest and greatest, prettiest and wittiest — without the benefit of hue and saturation.

On Saturday night my older brother and I waited for the once-a-month Errol Flynn movie. We would feast on TV dinners — an incredible new miracle of technology — and swashbuckle our way through mashed potatoes along with Captain Blood. But the blood was never red. Fighting men lived, fought and died heroically in pools of gray.

By today’s standards of entertainment we were impoverished. But it never felt like it to us, because we didn’t know any better — that is, until Bonanza …

Bonanza spoiled everything in such a pleasant way. A show created specifically to sell color televisions, Bonanza accomplished its mission in our family — eventually.

My! What we Americans began to do with technology in the 20th century!

Our adventurous spirit helped us push through the once impenetrable shroud of gravity to float on the empty sea of space toward the moon. We built crafts that could crawl on the deepest ocean floor. We atomically sharpened our natural 20/20 vision and peered for the first time into microscopic worlds of matter. The last frontier was the world of limitations — and we were conquering it.

The world of choice was once binary. Decisions usually involved choosing between two options. Either Keds or PF Flyers. Either Coke or Pepsi. Either McDonald’s hamburgers or cheeseburgers. Which of the two would it be?

Now ironically the binary world of computerization has made possible a consumer world of exponential options. The consumer mind is psychometrically plotted and graphed. The marketplace is meticulously studied and segmented; products and packaging are intricately customized to give every person the perfect match between consumer goods and personal preference.

But what happens to moral character when people are conditioned to expect that they can have any product customized to fit exactly the nuances of their personal taste?

Never before in history has it been possible for the self to be the anvil around which options are hammered. Until 50 years ago things were the other way around. The self had to reshape and bend and adjust to fit the limited options available. A person had to be flexible — or what is often referred to as “malleable.”

You don’t like peas? Too bad. That’s what’s on your plate. Learn to like them. These lyrics were a national anthem sung in every home nightly.

Now the anthem we raise is, Who wants what? at the food court, or as we open the freezer and pull out microwavable entrées.

This is a serious problem, because it undermines the development of malleability. To be malleable is to be like clay — able to be shaped by the influence of external forces and circumstances. And when that trait is missing, there is little hope for any moral growth.

In terms of moral wealth, America is now a Third-World country. Recognizing this fact is crucial to successful discipleship. If for the sake of evangelism the church must take literacy training seriously in illiterate societies, then for the sake of discipleship it must take moral training seriously in a morally illiterate society.

As we go about the enterprise of “spreading the gospel,” our churches must also engage in remedial character development. Churches must prize, promote and instill virtues like respect, honesty and diligence in our people, because our culture no longer does. And we must begin with malleability.

We should challenge our people to resist the siren call of culture to expect businesses, institutions and organizations to satisfy our preferences. Even our older generations — mine, and especially my parents’ — which grew up in a culture of limited options and required malleability, have succumbed to the self-centered consumer habits of this culture.

We must practice and require malleability. Someone who is being stubborn about his preferences should be admonished just as surely as someone who lies. After all, how can a person be shaped by the Potter without first learning to be clay?

As for me, I’m glad I lived for a few years in a world of black-and-white TV. No doubt I am better for it. But then again, I didn’t have any choice.