Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

The Stockholm Syndrome

by Dave Wilkinson

1 John 2:15-17

January 24, 1999

A twenty one year veteran of the FBI, a trained hostage negotiator, writes: "The term 'Stockholm Syndrome' first occurred in 1973 at an attempted bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden. A man tried to rob a bank, and the police caught him inside. He took three female hostages and one male hostage and held them for 131 hours, during which time he terrorized them. He fired his assault weapon at them. He threatened to kill them on numerous occasions. He put nooses around their necks and threatened to hang them. When he finally surrendered, something very unusual happened. We expected the hostages to be antagonistic toward the hostage taker. But instead they said they feared the police more than the hostage taker. They also said they didn't hate the hostage taker. They refused to testify against him. One of the ladies became engaged to the hostage taker, and as far as I know, she's still engaged to him.

"The FBI analyzed thousands of hostage situations since that time. We found this happens very frequently. So we asked psychologists, "what happened? What causes this?" They said in hostage situations, with a high level of life-threatening stress, people's ego-defensive mechanisms come into play. There is denial of what is happening and regression to a different emotional state. The hostage will eventually begin to transfer his hatred -- "this guy doesn't really want to hurt me" -- and begins to hate the police.

And something else very important begins to happen; a love relationship begins to take place. And this love relationship is like what happens between a young child and a mother. The mother is protecting the child from the terrifying world and providing all its needs."

This Stockholm syndrome is a good analogy of our potential relationship to the world. We can be enslaved and actually fall in love with what enslaves us. We can begin to fear the one who would liberate us -- Jesus Christ -- as one who would interfere with our comfortable prison.

When Paul was in prison the first time, he wrote several books. He mentioned that one of the men helping him was Demas. He sent greetings from Demas to all his friends. Then Paul was released form prison, and we assume Demas and the others were part of his team as they traveled.

In his second imprisonment from Rome, Paul wrote several books as well, the last of which was his letter to Timothy. In the last chapter of 2 Timothy -- the last paragraph that Paul ever wrote as far as we know --there is one tragic sentence: "Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world." Taken captive. Taken hostage.

How are people deceived and enslaved? John says, "the things that are in the world are these: "The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life." "I want it. It looks good. It will make me a more complete person." We're immersed in an affluent, materialistic, secular society. Too late we realize, "this is going to kill me."

We badly need to be told who we are so we will know how we are to live. God's word tells us clearly who we are. And more than any other time, we need to learn to be clear biblical thinkers. Because, more than any other time in history, other voices have powerful sway in shaping our self-definition and our actions.

This new hostage taking power has been created by our modern media. The modern media has tremendous power to shape both what we think about and the way we think about it. It influences both our focus and the way we focus. Paul writes that we are to be "transformed by the renewal of our minds." That is key. But modern media -- especially the visual media -- have tremendous, subtle power to shape our minds along very different lines.

For example, do you remember the Sam Peckinpah film, "The Getaway" -- the version with Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw. They are bank robbers on the run. McQueen sees an officer checking out his car in a small Texas town. So he walks into a hardware store, buys a shotgun and shells, walks out, forces the policeman to the sidewalk, and then, in exquisite Peckinpah slow motion, blows away the patrol car with the shot gun. And I cheered him on. Why? Because I was on his side. I had been cleverly manipulated by the director to cheer for behavior that was opposite to my own deeply held beliefs.

The media can make us very dissatisfied with what is real and actual and of genuine, enduring value just because it’s not photogenic or exciting.

According to the movies, car chases happen all the time -- especially in Paris and in San Francisco, I have never been to Paris but I have driven up and down those hills in San Francisco many times. And I have to confess that the excitement level in my life is so low that I have never been involved in a car chase there. Real life just has a hard time measuring up to the visual images in the media.

Annie Dillard writes in The Writing Life: "An intriguing experiment shows that a male butterfly will ignore a living female butterfly of his own species in favor of a painted cardboard one, if the cardboard one is big. If the cardboard one is bigger than he is, bigger than any female butterfly ever could be. He jumps the piece of cardboard. Over and over again, he jumps the piece of cardboard. Nearby, the real, living female butterfly opens and closes her wings in vain.

Dillard writes: "Films and television stimulate the body's senses too, in big ways. A nine-foot handsome face, and its three-foot-wide smile, are irresistible. Look at the long legs on that man, high as a wall, and coming straight toward you. The music builds. The moving, lighted screen fills your brain. You do not like filmed car chases? See if you can turn away. Try not to watch. Even knowing you are manipulated, you are still as helpless as the male butterfly drawn to painted cardboard."

We need to be aware what we are taking in to our minds and allowing in our homes. The Bible says that we are to "test the spirits to see whether they are of God." But these spirits of our media age are very subtle and very powerful.

In fact. The media not only has the power to shape thought. It also has the power to effectively bury true though all together.

I recently read a book on modern media written by Neil Postman. His book, Amusing Ourselves to Death was first published in 1985, one year after 1984, the year popularized as the title of George Orwell's futuristic novel, with its dark vision of a society controlled by fear. In Orwell's novel Big Brother rules everything with a ruthless iron fist. But Postman reminds us that there was another novel written slightly earlier with an equally chilling but quite different vision of the future: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. In Huxley's novel there is no need for Big Brother, because people have come to love the technologies that strip away their capacities to think:

Postman writes "What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture. As Huxley remarked in his Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for diversions."

It is now estimated that the average American will spend between 50,000 and 75,000 hours watching the television in a lifetime. Compare that with about 15,000 or less hours in school, and you see the difference. We invest a huge proportion of our time in TV What is the return on that massive investment? Are we becoming a nation of superior individuals? Has it ever occurred to you after watching three hours of football, two hours of basketball, and four hours of game shows on TV -- there's a every good reason why they show the commercial that says "a mind is a terrible thing to waste?"

Be aware of the modern media’s ability to create passivity. This passivity comes because we are constantly being presented with information that seems to demand a response. We get instantaneous news about atrocities in Bosnia, or civil war in the Congo, or a financial meltdown in Brazil or Indonesia. But there is nothing for us to do about what we think we know.

The whole world is brought by the media into our own living rooms in living color. Because of the mass media we know a little about a lot of stuff. One Sunday edition of the LA Times contains more information -- more raw data -- about our world than George Washington received in his entire lifetime. But there is a difference. Washington expected to act on what he knew. We expect not to act. We are perpetual spectators. The sheer volume, of information we receive numbs us. We become passive even when we are faced with situations where we can make a difference.

Stanford University researcher Paul Kaufman writes: "What television basically teaches is passivity. It creates the illusion of having been somewhere and done something and seen something, when in fact you've been sitting at home." "New York times" writer Joyce Maynard, a perceptive member of the first TV generation, concludes: "we grew up to be observers, not participants, to respond to action, not initiate it."

We also need to be aware of the spiritual message of the media. Is the life depicted on television really the way life is? Is it how we want life to be? Are those the values we accept?

One Christian writer perceptively observes: "Television's power to cultivate an entire view of reality is a challenge that most Christians have not reckoned with. The danger is that while holding the correct set of beliefs about God and His Word, we may be allowing something quite different to shape our minds. When we spend time with television, we are casually and rather passively exposing our minds to a world that, simply, ignores God."

It is easy to point out the sexually exploitative shows. It's not hard to complain about TV's morals or about the stuff which is passed off to us as entertainment.

However, with these complaints, we may be missing the most pervasive problem with TV: God is largely missing. There has been improvement in recent years but there is still a long ways to go.

The realities of the Christian revelation, which in the scriptural view tower over the landscape like gigantic monuments, are all but invisible to television's nearsighted eye. Just try to find God at work on TV. He is conveniently left out of almost all segments of television -- fiction and non-fiction. And when something religious does appear, it is often the bizarre or the unusual. As Hugh Hewitt of PBS’s "Nightline" observed when he spoke at the men’s breakfast last week, the media tends to present Christians as ‘weirdoes who handle snakes." Lyn Cryderman, news editor of Christianity Today." writes: "some journalists are biased against all matters of faith and, no doubt, the Christian faith. A lot of them don't understand religion, so it becomes easier to ignore it."

So, for the most part, the world on television--the world most real to so many people -- is a godless realm. God did not disappear from the fabric of television society by accident. He was left out. He is excluded on purpose by people who think He died out with the dawning of the age of Aquarius.

That’s the kind of world we live in. That’s the kind of media that would shape our lives and which does shape our lives. In such a world, we need to be careful of where we allow our minds to focus. The Bible says that we are to let our minds dwell on the things that are "right, lovely, and worthy of praise."

For some that may mean turning off the TV. For all it means monitoring our television viewing carefully. The time we spend, the quality of shows we watch, the images we shower ourselves with are of concern. Let's be discriminating in the guest we invite into our homes over the air.

Don't get your stewardship twisted by advertising, don't let it shape your priorities.

Do not debase what God calls holy. Don't demean women by buying tapes or C.D’.s with exploitative lyrics. Don't enrich pornographers either by buying their pornography or by buying their other products.

On the other hand, make a point of financially supporting what is good in the mass media -- and there is good. There will be even more good as sponsors and producers learn that there is a market for thoughtful shows.

Imagine inviting two guests to your home for dinner. The first is flashy, entertaining, loud, and very secular. It is the television. The second guest is Jesus Christ. At the dinner table a meaningful conversation is impossible. Every time Jesus tries to get in a word of encouragement or instruction, the TV just barges in to dominate the conversation. It juggles the silverware, tells a few off-color stories, sings lusty songs, and shows you pictures of its most recent exploits. Meanwhile Jesus eats his dinner waiting for an opportunity to embrace you with His love. But the time never comes, for the family is captivated by the TV with all its tricks. Does this sound at all familiar?

Who has the most sway in your household? What most influences your perspective on life? With what are you filling you time and your mind? Does Jesus stand out on top, or does that bright illuminated rectangle hold you in its sway? Is TV watching keeping us from regular Bible study and prayer? Is it getting in the way of family relationships? Then cut out much of the time spent on the TV.

Educators like Dr. Benjamin Bloom, of the University of Chicago, maintain that by the time a child reaches the age of 5, he or she has undergone as much intellectual growth as will occur over the next thirteen years. According to Nielsen, children under 5 watch an average of 23.5 hours of TV a week. That may be less than the weekly video diet of adults (about 44 hours), but its effects are potentially enormous. Multiplied out over seventeen years, that rate of viewing means that by his or her high school graduation today's typical teenager will have logged at least 15,000 hours before the small screen -- more time than on any other activity except sleep. And at present levels of marketing and mayhem, he or she will have been exposed to 350,000 commercials and vicariously participated in 18,000 murders.

Every day you and your children are being told that if you use the right deodorant, the right shampoo, wear the right jeans, drink the right beer -- if you do all those things, life is glorious. You're being brainwashed that happiness, joy, and fulfillment are going to come with what you have on your face or in your stomach. Now that's a lie if there ever was one! Some of the most miserable people in the world and some of the most prominent suicides are people who had it all. They wore the right jeans and deodorant and perfume and shampoo and whatever, yet their lives were a tragedy.

What do the sit-coms, the movies, and the dramas in the media tell us? They tell us that extramarital sex is natural. You won’t be too surprised to discover exactly how "Stella Gets her Groove Back." The stories tell us that no two people ever get together without breaking out the drinks. They're telling us in a dramatic form (which is far more compelling than most sermons, unfortunately) that all these things are good, and viewers, especially kids, take it for granted.

Your need to protect your children as stewards for their lives before God. Parents have a great responsibility for the television viewing of their children.

Some parents say that they just can't control the television. Somehow those same parents seem able to keep their kids from eating poison or from running in the street. Parents have the authority to control the TV and they must exercise it for the sake of their children. There is too much at stake in these young lives to leave it wholly to the discretion of the child.

Modern media has tremendous power for good or evil. It can uplift and enlighten.. It can also imprison and debase. The bottom line is simply this -- think biblically. In the words of Paul, "don't be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind."

That's what the old Apostle John is talking about. He said, "my little children (he is giving them a serious warning out of the richness of his experience) love not the world. The world spirit is your enemy, not your friend. Don't love it. The tragedy of the Stockholm syndrome is that fear is gradually replaced with love for the very enemy that enslaves us and may well kill us. "The world is passing away," John says. "Only he that does the will of God abides forever."

John is saying in these verses, "you can live effectively, successfully, and triumphantly in the world. The trouble comes when you take the world into you -- or when you let the very powerful media of our modern age bring the world into you -- when you let the things that characterize the world -- the lust of the eye and the flesh and the pride of life -- characterize you. You can live in the world and not be of it until you take the world into your own heart." Then you're sunk.

Break clean -- even if it means turning off the tube. Break clean and come out into the glorious liberty of the children of God.