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Hiding Under the Bed

How powerful, how influential, are movies, television, and videos in all their different forms? I want to tell you a story about two of my earliest childhood recollections, I mean literally this has to be my earliest recollection as just a wee little boy, not much more than a toddler.

What I remember was living in a house as just a tiny little boy, before we moved to the ranch in Lemhi, there in Dubois, Idaho. I wasn’t even four years old. My folks would sit down at night and watch the television. There was a show on the old black and white grainy television that my parents used to watch. The show was dark and creepy with swamps, fog, monsters, screaming people, and the eeriest music I had ever heard. That show, when it came on, it terrified me. Every time it came on, I would run to the other side of the house, as far away from the awful sounds as I could get and crawl under my parent’s bed and put my hands over my ears. I cannot describe how much that show terrified me. By today’s cinematic standards I’m sure that show was as lame a three-legged pup, and it was pretty amateurish. In my little boy’s heart those images, and those events being depicted on screen, and those monsters were real, and I was next on the monster’s menu. They were going to drag me into the swamp and eat me! That was my memory.

Not too many years later, my mother was watching a daytime soap opera. I don’t remember which one. I sat there watching this thing. I saw, on the television, two adults, a man and a woman, in some kind of argument or difficult discussion. The man stood up and walked away and the woman suddenly grabbed a pair of scissors and stabbed the man in the back. I had never seen such a thing; the scene and the music were vivid. It was terrible. I was so scared. I was so scarred. I knew nothing about award-winning performances. All I understood is that I watched that man get murdered before my very eyes. It was real and it was terrifying to me. Here I am sixty years later, and I can still see it.

The Lord said, “The light of the body is the eye.” Those shows filled me with darkness and terror so acute that I can still see it, and I can still feel it. The temple is the holiest place on earth, the holiest edifice on earth. We are to be the temple or edifice of the Holy Ghost. The word edify comes from the same root as edifice meaning to build or raise up. Are we being built up by what we watch or demolished? How far into eternity will we have to get to forget all the inappropriate shows and images we have watched. Just because something is entertaining does not mean it is edifying. Perhaps we would do better if our standard was edification rather than entertainment.