It's about the survival of faith, family and freedom. It's about the future. He's a father of five and he's committed to preserving a legacy for the next generation. Here's Kevin Swanson. Welcome to Generations, my friends. This is Kevin Swanson. I'm executive director for Christian Home Educators, also a pastor. But the reason I'm here, day in and day out, before this microphone, I'm a father of five. My daughter Emily is in the studio with me today, and we're raising our children out here on the eastern plains of Colorado. And as a couple of fathers, we look at the world and say, hey, we've got some work to do. We've got to raise our children in the fear of God because, man, this world is out of control. We look at the world through the eyes of a biblical worldview on this program. And in the news today, this comes from Asheville, North Carolina via WorldNet Daily, a story about a pro-gay Democrat community leader who would offer a homily during worship services facilitated as Unitarian Church congregation and opening their doors to all people, quote, regardless of sexual orientation. And he's a regular columnist for the local paper, the Asheville Citizen News out there in North Carolina. Alright, this guy, this gay, pro-gay whatever Democrat, Andrew Reid, has just pled guilty to extensive child pornography offenses involving children as young as six. I don't want to get into the details here on this one, my friends. but involved real children. This is a very sick, sick man. The pervert was up for 81 years in prison, but the judge turned out to be a Democrat, worked with a plea bargain with the DA's office, who by the way was also a Democrat. They landed him a 10 to 12 month sentence in prison. Alright, they were encouraged to lighten the sentence after a number of letters of recommendation were offered by other Democrat leaders of the community to the court on his behalf. And this one's precious, Dave, you gotta hear this. This is Beth Laser, a Democrat who shared the Unitarian Universalist Church theologies with Reed and served as head of the local public access television. Okay, Beth writes this about the pervert, quote, it has been my pleasure to share Andy's commitment to ensuring that compassion and democracy are at work across our community. Dave, I have never equated compassion and democracy to child pornography in my life. This is the very first time I've ever seen it. Have you ever seen the connection? Democracy and compassion and child pornography. Incredible. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe reading this quote. Well, I think it doesn't have to make sense. If you hold all the power, I guess you can make sense out of whatever you want. I guess so. But you know, and ultimately, Dave, when you're casting off all biblical norms, what's wrong with child pornography? What's wrong with homosexuality? What's wrong with Whenever the chimpanzees are doing... Remember the atheists? We talked about the atheists and how they said we have a higher morality than all those religionists out there because we copy the chimpanzees. Who, by the way, chimpanzees also beat other chimpanzees to death. We just got a story on that from somebody else who was listening to that particular program. But Dave, when you buy into the ethics of chimpanzees, you know, it won't be long before you're molesting little chimpanzee cubs. Well, no, because those are all just social norms. They're created out of a mindset of people with an ill-founded religious bent. You know, if we would just copy the social primates, because they've obviously survived, they know what's right. We should just copy, we should seek wisdom in the primates. We really should. All right, my friends, look forward to the world of the Democrats, the atheists, the evolutionists, and everybody else who is running our society today, and they're giving this pro-gay Democrat child molester, or whatever he was, 10 to 12 months in prison. All right, in other news, Hispanics in America will be producing a majority of illegitimate children. That, according to a recent study given what we know about the much higher likelihood of social pathology among those who grow up in single-mother households, there will be far more juvenile delinquents, more welfare use, and more teen pregnancy in the future, according to this story. Evidently, the Hispanic birth rate is twice as high as the rest of the American population, and yet the increase of illegitimacy among Latinos is soaring today. It's approximately 50% of Latino births, and we've gone over this before, 37% of kids born today are born without fathers. Among the Latinos, now it is 50%, a huge increase just over the last few years. Between 2002 and 2003, an increase of 5% in that number. Now by 2050, the Latino population will have tripled, and a good many of these, at least half of them, will be illegitimate births. One in four Americans will be Hispanic by mid-century, and whites will drop from 70% of the total population by 2000 to roughly half by 2050. But it's the fertility surge among unwed Hispanics that should worry policymakers. According to this story, Hispanic women have the highest unmarried birth rate in the country. over three times that of whites and Asians. What we're looking at is the number, not the percentage here, but at this point the number of children born without fathers right now, three times that of whites and Asians and nearly one and a half times that of black women. The problem, Dave, we complain about a lot in this program. We're concerned about it. Kids born without fathers, the end result is going to be a huge increase in prison populations and other things, but a lot of it is due to the fact that the Hispanic population comes over here with evidently no faith or a very, very bad world view. They're corrupted even more. even more by the American society of existentialist teaching and humanist thinking, you know, the me generation thinking and the end result is going to be devastation for Hispanics in America! Take warning! Well, Dave, certainly they're not buying into a biblical worldview. They're taking the humanist worldview hook, line, and sinker. They're saying, it's all about me and I can get pregnant, and who cares? And the boys running around fornicating with the little girls out there and getting them pregnant, they could care less about what God's law has to say. And the end result, Dave, is going to be catastrophe to our society. I think unlike anything we've seen in the 6,000 years of human history before us, we are going to see a breakdown of society that you have never experienced, my friends. coming from a huge illegitimacy rate. And Dave, here's one more story before we make a break, and I think this story is where we're going to go today. A new Italian study found that couples who have a television set in their bedroom share half the intimacy as those who don't. So you get a TV in your room, you're not going to have a great intimate relationship with your wife. The study also found that certain programs are far more likely to impede intimacy between husbands and wives, and violent films apparently Top of the list. But just in a moment, folks, we want to talk about what God has to say about relationships. What God has to say about intimate relationships. What God has to say about family relationships. And my friends, you live in a world that has basically sucked relationship completely out of the picture. And it's a world without God. It's a world without God's standards. It's a world without God's standards on intimacy and sex. And in just a moment, how the rise of the electronic age puts relationships on ice. That next on Generations. My name is Kevin Swanson. Back on Generations, my friends, this is Kevin Swanson with you today. Dave Buhner also in studio with me. And today we want to look at the electronic age and the impact it's making on relationships. I commented on the new Italian study just before the break where it found that couples who have a television set in the bedroom share half the intimacy of those who don't. And, you know, electronic media is beginning to rule our lives. It's beginning to displace relationship. And imagine the most intimate of relationships, the marriage relationship itself, is more and more being eroded by this electronic beast in the middle of the living room or the bedroom. Now, Dave, I never thought of how pervasive the electronic revolution was until this last Thanksgiving sale, this post-Thanksgiving, they call it the Black Friday sale, and I open up the newspaper and every other page is filled with the electronic stuff. The front page of Walmart, the front page of the Sears ad, etc., etc. It's all about television. It's all the electronic stuff. And, of course, that's where all the sales are occurring. And sales were up, I think, what, 4 or 5 percent over last year, this year. And most of it, according to what we're seeing, it was electronic sales. And they had this picture of some African immigrant in the Rocky Mountain News hauling out a huge, big screen, high definition TV set on Black Friday, and I thought to myself, it is cross-cultural, it is happening everywhere, everybody's getting their electronic media, and indeed folks, that is probably one of the most significant changes in the modern world over the last 50 years. In 1950, only 9% of U.S. households owned a television set. Today, it's 98.2% of households. And today, most viewers have access to an average of 202 channels. So there's a lot of channel surfing happening all over right now. The average U.S. household owns 26 consumer electronic products, up from 25 in 2005. So they got one more since last year. And they spend an average of $1,200 on such products. every single year. Average of $1,200. So that's a pretty big screen television set or something else. The five most owned products are television sets. VCRs, 87% have VCRs. I guess DVDs would be in there somewhere. Cordless phones and DVD players are now at 81%. The top five growth areas for electronic products, mp3 players, digital cameras, car video systems, in-dash CD players, and notebook PCs. MP3 player is at the very, very top, most of those being iPods, and hey, let's just call these MiPods, Dave, because the MiPod is really that existentialist experience that comes, that very personal experience, that me and my little machine experience that happens when you stick those earphones into your ear. We don't listen to music together as Ma and Pa Ingalls used to do around the fireplace every night. Remember how Pa would play his violin and the little girls would dance around the living room? That sort of thing doesn't happen anymore. They never had me over. Yeah, they didn't. That was a little before your time. But now it's the me experience, man. It's me and my music. Entertainment is far more individualistic than it ever was. It doesn't happen in community anymore. It happens with just me, myself, and I. I am alone in my imaginary universe, and man, am I enjoying my experience. But Dave, this is pure existentialism. And I'm talking about John Paul Sartre. You remember the philosopher of the 1940s and 50s. This guy said, hell is other people, and you know, if you've got the hell is other people mentality, Dave, you're not going to want to be with other people very much. You're going to want to be in your parallel universe, plugged in to your music, plugged in to the characters on your television screen, or interacting with your characters on the web. With your IM and all the other things, you're going to have all these relationships, electronic relationships with people that are unreal to you. These are not real people. These are fake people, fake personalities. But you will engage those relationships rather than engaging in real-time relationships. Well, I think one of the advantages of the I Mean Mean Mind pod is that it's sort of like being on an elevator, that you don't really have to acknowledge the other people around you. They're there, but you don't have to speak to them, you don't have to talk to them. It's like getting on the subway and it's very crowded. You can go into your own little world. You don't have to interact with the unwashed mass of people around you. And you can be into your own thoughts, into your own self, into your own music. After all, It's yours. It's a parallel universe. It is. And Dave, you can be living in the same house, yes, as you said, in the same elevator, on the same subway with other people, but you don't have relationships with those people. You can be in a city and be very lonely. You can be in a crowd and be very lonely, but there you are, you and your imaginary relationship with your imaginary stars and your imaginary music and your imaginary stories through the VCR or the DVD player. Now, why do people want to live in the pretend world? This keeps coming back to me again and again, Dave. Why do people want to live in this pretend world? Now, of course, the real world involves real people, and I think it also involves real relationships, and it does remind us of a real relationship with a real personal God who is an eternally personal God who has been in an eternal relationship with himself and desires relationship with his people whom he has created. I think people are reacting against this world with real relationships. And this world also deals with real sin and real consequences and a real God and the real possibility of eternal judgment. I don't think people like that reality, Dave. I mean, this is what reality is. I think people want to react against that. Well, I think philosophically you're exactly right that there is a metaphysic, what is real and what is unreal, that is undergirding all of this. And psychologists tell you that if you can vividly imagine something, it becomes real to you. Well, as we engage ourselves in stories, if we read fiction, if we listen to music, we transport ourselves mentally to a different reality, a reality of our own making. We can be as God. And the other problem, not only do you have this problem with dealing with the real God in the real world, but you also have this problem of dealing with real people. And Dave, you know, it's much easier to be there with you and your iPod in your imaginary universe and suddenly somebody bumps into you and you've got to deal with them. That's when things start getting really, really sticky. You know, when you've got to deal with real people, it takes a lot of real effort. Why would a man enjoy watching a television program more than he would delight in the wife of his youth? I'm getting back now to this Italian study. Okay, there the guy is sitting in his bed. He's saying, okay, I could A, delight in the wife of my youth, and I'm referring to the proverb here, right Dave? B, watch this stupid television program. Okay, so A, the wife of my youth, B, stupid television program. Dave, why does he go with B? He goes with B because the stupid television program is better lit, has better music, creates a more enjoyable reality. The woman that he's watching is probably fake, but put together a little bit nicer visually, and he gets to participate vicariously with this other experience. Well, you know, if he has a relationship with his wife, eventually there's going to be conflict, and where there's conflict, there's going to be pain. And who wants pain? Pretty soon you're going to be confessing sin and maybe arguing. That's really, really messy. And when you say goodbye to your wife, there's all these things you have to do. You have to kiss her, you have to reaffirm it. You turn off your television set, you're done. What you're saying is your relationship with your wife is a lot more complicated. There's a lot more involved. Hey, with the television set, it's just click, click, click, and you're there. But with your wife, it's not so much click, click, click. It's, yeah, it's loving her. It's taking care of her. It's understanding her needs. It's not just, you know, sitting in bed and just turning her on. It's all the way through the day, loving her, watching out for her needs, maybe even resolving a little conflict with her. Does that ever come up in your home, Dave? Just a little conflict. Got to deal with the conflict before you have some lovey-dovey times together. Yeah, Kevin, I don't know about you, but my wife did not come with a remote control. And the payments are far higher than it would be for cable TV. So, you know, there is some complications there. Okay, now let's look at the downside on the television program. You say that most guys are going to pick B because it's a lot less complicated. But Dave, isn't the television set kind of a cold and dry relationship? I mean it's more convenient, it doesn't require a lot of work, but Man Alive, you talk about cold and dry. At the end of the day, are you really fulfilled? Is there really that much fulfillment in this world without relationships? I can't imagine it is. I think there are a lot of unfulfilled people out there listening right now. I think there are people right now listening to this program saying, Man Alive, I have been so plugged into television, movies, and my iPod, I do not have really fulfilling, sustaining relationships in my life. If they were fulfilled, would they need 200 channels? Come on! Of course, they've got to keep adding more and more and more, because they're not fulfilled. They're only titillated. Well, it may be pacifying, though. I think television media is somewhat pacifying, a little bit deadening. And now people are more out of contact than they've ever been with reality. But they sort of are able to live like the living dead, because they kind of move from thing to thing. They're not fulfilled, but they're somewhat pacified. And the bottom line, my friends, is that television is no way to live your life. The media is no way to live your life. Sometimes I think we also get addicted to the information, the email and electronic exchange. Why in the world do you want to surf 100 websites in 15 minutes? Do we really need to know all this? Do we really desire to be on top of everything? Do we really need to hear all of the interesting news stories, the novelty stories, the diversionary stories about the latest alligator attack or Mel Gibson's recent drunken rampage? We really need to get on top of all of this, and Dave, the temptation to always be going back to the media, going back to the net, going back to the television set, I think is an addictive thing to a lot of folks, and the end result is we're not experiencing life the way God wants us to experience it. No, because life comes to you in bigger chunks. It doesn't come to you in a 30-minute sitcom. It doesn't come to you in a two-hour movie. It doesn't come in a 15-hour surfing session. A relationship with your wife comes to you day and night for years and years and years. And you can't escape the relationship. You can't escape the media. And I think that's part of the lure here, is just being able to get away. And we attempt to get away from our relationships. And that's where it becomes truly destructive. And I'm not saying, and Dave, I don't think you're saying this, that media is effectively and inherently bad or wrong. It's not wrong to go on the web and get your email and be communicating with people. In fact, some of us are communicating with our relatives more than we ever have before, thanks to email. So it's not wrong to be doing these things. But here's the problem. We're not really cultivating real, live relationships. The average family spends less than 20 minutes together on any given day, and the average children spend 43 minutes per week in conversations with their family. What is that? About six minutes a day. 43 minutes a week is six minutes a day in conversation with their families and 12 hours a week watching television. So you have 43 minutes in conversation, 12 hours a week watching television. This is a far cry from Almanzo, a farmer boy with his father back in 1880, plowing the fields for six to eight hours a day working with his dad. Then they sat around the fireplace for three to four hours Every evening, Dave, we've come a long way. We have destroyed relationships in the modern world. Well, and what's worse is that six minutes that children are conversing with their parents, four of those minutes are talking about what they're going to watch on TV. Yeah, yeah. The relationship between mother and father and the relationship between parents and children is nowhere near where it used to be. My friends, we have got to just stop communicating with our children just through email and phone lines. and by the way you can get the cell phone family package deal where you can connect with each other for 1.6 minutes every day It's time to turn off the television set. It's time to push yourself away from the computer set. It's time to engage in real life relationships with your family. And Dave, I'm talking to myself here as well, because I know that I am hitting that computer a little more often than I ought to. God is convicting my heart on this thing, where I have been wanting to check my email every 10 minutes or every half an hour, and I'm not spending time connecting with my family as I ought to. And let me give you a list of practical things to do instead of picking up the universal remote when you get home from work. These are way more important than even checking Kevin Swanson's blog, although that's important. Here we go. Hug your children. Hug your children. Kiss your wife. Spend some time talking to your family. Read the Bible to your family. I'm not talking about an electronic Bible. I'm talking about a real life Bible. Open the Bible and read the Bible to your family. Have dinner together. Sit down and have dinner. Make a point of it. We're going to have dinner together and we're going to start doing it at 6 o'clock every day or 6.30 or somewhere between 6 and 8. We are going to have dinner together. Read your Bible before you check your stocks in the morning. Alright? So is electronic media more important than your relationship with God? Go for a walk with your family. By the way, Dave, the most amazing thing happened on our Thanksgiving walk. Just Thanksgiving day, what, a week or two ago, we're taking a walk around the neighborhood. For the first time in 11 years, we actually met another family walking together in this neighborhood. A family walking together. For the first time in 11 years, we met another family walking together. Incredible. Play a game with each other. Invite somebody over for dinner and keep off your electronic media. Get it off and don't even answer the phones. Gather around the piano and sing hymns and psalms for 30 minutes. Sit on the front porch and talk about God's creation with your kids for 10 minutes. These are things that you can do in lieu of the electronic media. And I will guarantee you, as you do these sorts of things, your life will be way more fulfilled than what you get when you run down to Best Buy and get one more $1,200 high-definition TV set. Ladies and gentlemen, God's way of living is so much better than ours. Do what God tells you to do in his word and life will be so much better if you emphasize those things. Ladies and gentlemen, you can interact with our program by emailing me at host at kevinswanson.com and you can hear the program anytime, anywhere in the world at kevinswanson.com. This is Kevin Swanson inviting you back again next time as we lay down a vision for the next generation