Everything that exists was made by someone. Obvious, I know. This pen has a maker. Every book has a writer, an illustrator, and a printer. My lunch has a farmer, a rancher, a processor, and a distributor. Each person that works on my sandwich shapes it according to their desires and purposes. If I study the packaging, I can see what they put into the bread or the sliced ham and cheese. When I look at and taste my sandwich I experience what they believed a sandwich should be. I am tasting the product of their morality.
Entertainment is no different than physical objects. The creators of movies, TV, video games, social media, and other experiences work for years to bring about each project. All of them leave their unique fingerprints on what they have created. They have certain reasons for making it. When I watch their final product I can see what they believed a show should be. I am watching their morality. We call it bias, agenda, or maybe propaganda depending on how forcefully the messages are placed.
Of greatest concern, in our search for wolves, is the creator’s desire to insert his/her value system in the work they create. I do it. They do it. Everyone shapes their creation in their image. For me, that means I might slip in a Bible verse. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16 NIV Oops! I did it again. It just leaks out of me because, above all else, I see life through a Christ-centered perspective. It colors all of my views just like a set of colored glasses.
It is the same with every person. What do they believe and value? What is their great crusade? You will find it embedded in the work they create. For example, if a person believes a mother should have the right to murder her unborn child, you will find messages in their show that positively spin abortion. Usually, that doesn’t involve the word murder or baby or any morally sticky imagery. They put a nice slogan on it, like “ a mother’s right to choose,” or something like that. This feels to me like relabeling the USSR’s Gulags or Nazi concentration camps as “Stalin and Hitler’s right to choose.” My red flags go up when I see messaging that goes contrary to the Bible!
We must learn to identify the bias and agenda behind the entertainment we are consuming. Anyone who can’t see the bias tends to just absorb the messages passively. After a person has heard a hundred messages repeating that a mother’s right to choose is sacred, they will assume it as their own. That is how propaganda works. Subtly molding the mind with a barrage of impressions called nudges.
