Thoughts While Waiting for the Book to Be Released
My book is about to be
released by eLectio Publishers. This leaves me feeling both anxious and
excited. I wonder what is going to happen just around the next corner. At the
same time, life seems to be going on. My family still has needs, cars need
repairing, and work beckons each of us every day. Wars haven’t ceased. The poor
still need to be helped. And I
am trying to do all that I can to get ready for my book's release, including letting
people know about it—and what it is about.
I’ve been thinking
about some of the things in it. I’ve regretted one or
two scenes that are going to be there when the book is published. But by and
large, I am happy with it.
One idea that might
catch on with some readers is the idea of what TV does to people and to messages. One
of the themes in a book titled Apocalypse TV is, obviously, TV. One of the
characters in my novel has his life upset and unbalanced by appearing on a
TV reality show. His marriage is imperiled. Of course, he gets some fame, but what is that? On TV, we objectify human beings. We turn them into symbols of our
own instabilities. We make them tell our stories of our woes, our fears, our
own insecurities. We don’t like people who are too successful. We like to have
people to look down on. TV pretty much is just a magnifier. If you want to be
known on a pretty superficial level by millions of people, go on TV.
It is perhaps pretty much
the same with messages. We turn them into our top forty slogans and street signs. What happens when people with an important message go
on TV? For example, the general claims Christians make (“The truth will set you
free,” “Seek and you will find,” “He who believes in me, though he were dead,
yet he shall live”) amazingly can miss the target. When people hear these,
they stop listening because the statements are not tied to anything concrete. The same is not true where individual acts of charity are concerned, when people do things that can break in on awareness.
This suggests to me that the messages on TV are pretty much flat ones. They cling to us like a form of neon lint, but they just sort of add to the noise and dust of our setting, clogging up some of our thinking.
My main character, as
he is interviewing for a position on a reality show, says something about the
desires people have about going on TV, and about being famous. He notes that
most people see it as their big chance. Of course, he ends up trying it
himself.
I wonder if we think we
will have the greatest influence with a big Twitter feed, with a TV or radio
show, or with a big church. The truth may be simply the effect I have as a
person on others.
At the end of the day,
it may not be ratings or reviews but relationships that matter the most and
that have the greatest influence on others around us. St. Paul said as much
when he referred to the believers he was writing to as letters. You are letters
from God, he said.
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