Kevin Swanson: Modern life is different than it used to be and partially because we have all this extra disposable income. Entertainment's a big deal and so we live for the weekend, and so much of life, the 112 waking hours, is not taken up by...
Daniel Craig: Every day a Friday...
Kevin Swanson: That's right. It's not taken up by work, it's taken up by filling in with all your movies and music and all your entertainment. And that's what makes it so crucial today to address this as a ministry. We've gotta talk family culture, family entertainment. When Almanzo Wilder was working the farm with his father in upstate New York in 1880, he's not listening to YouTube videos. He's not connected with Top 40 radio stations, it's a whole different world today. And as a ministry, we wanna be sure that on the one hand, we are critiquing and teaching discernment concerning modern cultural systems, but also we want to create and encourage the creation of healthy family cultures.
What does that look like? How do we interact in a modern world without giving way to entertainment addictions? How do we provide healthy forms of entertainment and culture and what does that look like? So that's a big part of this ministry and we do it with the radio programs, we do it with books like The Tattooed Jesus. We do it with various conferences and things, we work that family culture element into the family economics, into the family discipleship, and family education. That's a key component. Let's be sure we're integrating it into the entire message.
Daniel Craig: A couple of questions for you on that. I think the presupposition for us as an organization is that God's word actually does speak to media and entertainment, speak to that.
Kevin Swanson: Well, it does. Philippians 4:9, obvious, "Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are beautiful and of good report, think on these things." The word of God ties in family culture by encouraging a God centeredness and that's really the core issue when it comes to music, and feasting, and the things that the word of God recommends for us. Actually in the book of Deuteronomy, "We are to rejoice as a family, integrated as a family, rejoice in community before the Lord your God." Those are the two elements relating to entertainment and culture within the home. Be sure you're doing it in community. See, the tendency today is to...
Daniel Craig: Go individualistic.
Chad Roach: They've got their iPods.
Kevin Swanson: We get the Me Pod or all about Me Pod, the iPod plugged in, and just enter your own little existentialistic frame of mind. But you're apart from, you're pulling away from community, real relationship, family entertainment, family culture has got to be an integrated culture where we're coming together in community, we're enjoying this thing together, but we're also enjoying it before God, in the presence of God, coram Deo.
Chad Roach: And if you look at those families that rejoice together and sing together and love being together in that family culture, those are the families that last over the generations.
Kevin Swanson: They do, they do.
Daniel Craig: And I think part of this all ties back to our tagline, our mission, which is passing on the faith. Because the whole warp and the woof of a home environment is very important in passing on the faith to the next generation. In my experience, one of the things that Dad frequently said was that he wanted our home to be a haven. And so what that meant was that there was an environment in our home, which was defined by the love, the peace, and the joy of the Lord in which we wanted to be involved, we wanted to participate. It was where the kingdom of God was being manifested in our lives and that's what we wanted to be a part of. But what you see in contrast to that, where the world defines the culture of a home, that peace, that love, that joy is stolen and replaced with artificial forms that I think end up drawing young people out of the home, out of the kingdom of God, and away from the faith.
Kevin Swanson: And sadly enough, it's the Katy Perrys and the Lady Gagas and the Beatles and others, many of whom started out in the faith, they started making their albums in the church, Christian albums from the outset, but they become the great leaders for the apostasy later on, and they become the leaders for thousands and thousands of young people across the country. It shouldn't be the pop music, it shouldn't be the peer influence, it shouldn't be Katy Perry and Lady Gaga that leads our children. It should be parents and pastors. Let's get back to God's covenantal units and find out ways in which we can integrate the relationships, and fathers and mothers once again are passing on a culture to the next generation.