3.2 Protect Your Mind from Depravity

Do you watch those mystery documentaries where they take a crime and re-live it, then follow through to the capturing of the perpetrator, his/her trial and ultimate incarceration? We do.

One especially gory episode we started to watch featured a variety of hideous acts that led to the brutal deaths of a whole family . Before the story got too far along I grabbed the remote control and shot it toward the TV with great vigor, pressing the OFF button.

I turned to my wife, “I don’t think we need that kind of depravity to be described to us. It is polluting our minds and ruining our evening.” She agreed.

The television is only one of a variety of convenient ways to pollute your mind these days.

You can turn on some popular music. The lyrics of some popular songs are so vulgar they shock even the most liberal minded listeners. The “singers” glorify rape, murder, incest, homosexuality, bestiality and other perversions all in the name of art or freedom of speech or some other excuse to spread their polluting message.

You can watch pornography. It is easily accessible in print, video and on the internet. Sometimes it pops up in front of you uninvited. Recently I was searching on the internet for some humor and came across a website that had cute little riddles, the kind children enjoy. As I scrolled through the pages some vile and explicit pornographic images appeared that had nothing to do with the riddles.

There is a word for this kind of nasty mind withering wickedness: depravity. Now there is a word you don’t hear often these days. Depravity refers to the moral corruption of the heart and mind. If you would like a simpler definition, use the Bible one: sin. I know that people don’t like talking about sin, but I will because it has a particularly destructive impact on your mind.

Who can protect you from such pollution? There is only one person who can defend you against the debilitating impact of depraved ideas, images, actions and words; that person is YOU. You are singularly responsible for what you allow into your mind whether via your eyes or ears or out of your mouth via your tongue.

In a world so smudged with depravity, how do you keep your mind from being polluted?

The defense I propose: Stay in the Light. When your thoughts become perverted or evil, only you can change them to virtue and decency. When ideas (plot lines, humor, song lyrics, discussions, etc.) become immoral or depraved, only you can opt out and refocus your mind on goodness and propriety.

When you are tempted by smut and tawdry media, only you can hit the off button on the computer or TV and turn on clean, uplifting and life-giving messages.

When nasty obscene words began their journey from your heart to the ears of those around you, only you can choke them back.

Only you can replace depravity with goodness, maliciousness with kindness and the repulsive with the respectable. Only you.