Ruth's Talk on Media and Entertainment

Ruth gave a talk in church today. She did such an excellent job, I had to post it here. I am most impressed because she did not get any help from John or I. The only part that I helped her with was showing her how to do a key word search on lds.org.

Hello my name is Ruth Robertson, and I’m fourteen. My talk is on Media and
Entertainment. 

In our world today our access to technology seems almost unlimited. We
have cell phones, iPads, touch screens, kindles, laptops, iPods, and so much more. If we
need to have a question answered, we can just google it. This technology can have many
great uses that can help us from day to day life, but it can also help tear us apart from
the gospel and our father in heaven. 

A quote from the For the Strength of Youth says, “Choose wisely when using media because whatever you read, listen to, or look at has an effect on you.” This is very true, though some people may say that ‘it won’t affect me’ or ‘it’s only one tv show or one song, and I can tune it out’ You can try, but it will affect you. 

Though it’s many good a harmless uses, the day to day media is corrupted. It attacks the family, it portrays violence and immorality as normal everyday things, and even as the new cool thing. It is one of Satan’s ways to attack us. In the October 2012 conference Elder Quentin L Cook stated, “One prominent writer recently said, “Everyone knows the culture is poisonous, and nobody expects that to change.” 

The constant portrayal of violence and immorality in music, entertainment, art, and other media in our day-to-day culture is unprecedented. This was dramatically described by a highly respected Baptist theologian when he stated, “The spiritual immune system of an entire civilization has
been wounded” 

Not too long ago there was this one singer whose songs were almost always clean, and for Christmas I asked to get one of their new albums. Being cautious my dad looked up the lyrics to the songs on that cd and told me what over half of their new songs were saying. I was shocked and saddened by how immoral and disgusting some of their new songs now were. 

In October 2003 M Russell Ballard said this about today’s music, “We must be concerned with the violent and sexually charged lyrics of much of today’s popular music and the relatively new “art form” of the music video.” He also had to say this about our media of today, “It attacks religion. It undermines the family. It turns virtue into vice and vice into virtue. It assaults the senses and batters the soul with messages and images that are neither virtuous, nor lovely, nor of good report, nor praiseworthy.” 

We should search for the lovely, praiseworthy and that of good report, it only takes one bad song or one immoral tv show to drive the spirit away from us. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ Amen.