Wise vs. Wild Contrast #2: Counsel

Counsel

Where She gets Her Instruction

Girl-Gone-Wild: World Instructed
Girl-Gone-Wise: Word Instructed

Girl-Gone-Wild: “Her feet go down to death; her steps follow the path to Sheol; she does not ponder the path of life; her ways wander, and she does not know it.” Proverbs 5:5-6

Girl-Gone-Wise: She ponders the path of her feet;so all her ways will be sure. She does not swerve to the right or to the left; She turns her foot away from evil. Proverbs 4:26-27*

---

Imagine this.

Say I wanted to do an experiment to determine the effects of popular culture on a girl’s ideas about womanhood and male-female relationships. So I lock her up in a lab and expose her to mass media every waking moment of every day for 7 months. Her schedule looks something like this:

• Television:  8 hours
• Radio/iPod: 4 hours
• Video Games/Internet: 2 hours
• Hollywood Movie: 1.5 hours
• Women’s Magazines/Romance Novel: 1 hour
• Newspaper: ½ hour

After a full day of constant exposure, the girl goes to bed and sleeps for 7 hours. As soon as she wakes up, the bombardment resumes. Every day-17 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 7 months-it continues. I make her watch, listen to, and read all the latest and most popular entertainment and news. That’s all I allow her to do. She’s exposed to nothing else. Seven months of constant exposure.

What do you think would happen? How do you think it would affect her?

I asked my 20-year old son, Jonathan. He said, “Easy. She’d become what she was exposed to, because she wouldn’t have any other influence.”

I agree.  She would become what she was exposed to.

Here’s the shocker. This scenario isn’t hypothetical. It’s real.  It’s based on actual statistics and projections. According to research studies, the US Census Bureau estimates that in 2010, the average woman will expose herself to 3,596 hours of mass media. The only difference between the average woman and the girl in my scenario is that her exposure spreads out over 12 months instead of being crammed into seven. And she isn’t locked into a room. She has other things going on in her life, like going to school, working at a job, or caring for a family. What’s more, someone isn’t forcing the mass media down her throat. She willingly indulges.

The problem with popular media is that it constantly lies about the nature of truth, goodness, and beauty. It offers counterfeit versions of what womanhood, male-female relationships, romance, sexuality, marriage, and family are all about. It lies to a woman about who she is, what gives her significance, what she should do to be successful, and where she should spend her time and money. Mass media typically portrays sin as natural and harmless. The things God calls “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 John 2:16 nkjv) are the very things it upholds as highly desired. It twists truth. It calls evil good and good evil, puts darkness for light and light for darkness, puts bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. (Isaiah 5:20) It promotes sin and mocks godliness.

The average woman will expose herself to 3,596 hours of this type of falsehood next year. That works out to almost 10 hours a day! Yes, I know that sometimes the radio and TV are only on in the background, but can you imagine? For the better part of each day, women feed themselves a constant diet of the world’s ideas about how they should think and behave. What’s even more startling, is to think that this input is on-going. The ingestion of mass media starts at a very young age, and continues year after year throughout a woman’s life.

TV alone accounts for almost 5 hours each day (33 hours/week, or almost 2 ½ months of 24-7 TV-watching per year). In a 65-year life, a woman will have spent 13 non-stop years glued to the tube.  Add that to the rest of her mass media exposure and subtract the time she spends sleeping, and that number rises to an astonishing number. Just think. If your daily intake of TV, internet, radio and women’s magazines is about “average”, you will spend 40 solid years of your life ingesting mass media. Do you think you could possibly remain uninfluenced by its counsel?

Where a woman gets “counsel” on how to live is the second point of contrast between a Girl-Gone-Wild and a Girl-Gone-Wise. A Wild Woman doesn’t ponder the way of life. She gets her instruction from the world. A Wise Woman ponders God’s way. She gets her instruction from the Word.

A Girl-Gone-Wise does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, stand on the path of sinners, or sit under the tutelage of those who scoff at God. Instead, she delights in the Lord’s instruction, and constantly meditates on His counsel.  “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.” (Psalm 1:1-2)

What do you spend your time pondering? Are you a Girl-Gone-WIse or a Girl-Gone-Wild?

© Mary A. Kassian

---

This is a pre-publication excerpt from “Girls Gone Wise in a World gone Wild,” © Mary A. Kassian to be published by Moody Publishers in 2010. All rights reserved. You are welcome to link to this post, but please do not copy and/or reproduce this copyrighted material without express written permission of Moody Publishing.

Tags: Girls Gone Wise

Category: Blog, Disciplines