There’s a commercial I see often (which seems to be targeted towards kids and which also happens to air on a channel that mostly features cartoons).  Two kids are in a kitchen.  One laments that he’s hungry.  The other looks in the refrigerator and complains that there’s nothing to eat.  The announcer then interjects with a supposedly fun, exciting, and delicious way the kids can make and enjoy homemade ice cream (by shaking up a few ingredients in a specially-designed cup).  Basically, the announcer’s solution to the kids’ hunger is ice cream.

This scene should bother any responsible parent who’s paying attention.  It sends the rather silly message that ice cream (which is mostly sugar and fat) is normal food that is okay to eat on an empty stomach.  I hope most adults know that a dessert is not the first thing you reach for when you’re feeling hungry, but it concerns me that young kids will take this commercial literally, reinforcing the naive tendency they already have to focus on the taste of food rather than the negative effect it might have on their health.

I personally don’t eat ice cream (even as a dessert), but I can think of a few other types of food that I personally consider to be both healthy and enjoyable.  For instance, I would have liked a commercial for a homemade bread maker (that maybe accepts whole wheat flour and in effect produces healthy bread that’s free of the preservatives you get in most bread at the grocery store).  A commercial for a blender that makes all-natural, vitamin-rich mixed fruit drinks would have also been acceptable.  It could have even been a commercial for a special heated enclosure that quickly and easily cooks lean meat.  But dessert is the worst type of product to market to kids.  Having fun may be a part of life, but I wish society would stop equating fun with self-destruction.

This commercial is a reminder to me that the people behind TV programming are not necessarily looking out for our welfare (nor the welfare of kids).  They’re often just out to get money, by any means possible, even if it involves poisoning our minds (and in turn our bodies) in the process.  The illicit sex, the violence, and the exploitation of other people’s tragedy and misery as a source of entertainment may be what stands out, but the media promotes more subtle forms of evil as well, namely gluttony in this case.  — Materialism and greed are other examples. –  Evil has many forms, some more insidious than others.

Beware, parents.  Those “parental controls” on your cable box don’t filter everything.

We’d often go swimming in the summer.  Each time before we went swimming, we’d change (individually and in private) out of our normal clothes and into special clothing that was designed to get wet.  We boys (and their father) would simply change into a pair of shorts referred to as “swimming trunks”.  They were basically ordinary, loose-fitting shorts except that they were made out of a special fabric that dried quickly once you left the water.

The girl (and both her mother and my mother), on the other hand, would change into a skintight piece of fabric referred to as a “bathing suit”.  This was the standard “one-piece bathing suit” you are probably already familiar with, an item of clothing that is so tight and carefully tailored that it reveals almost every curve of the body and barely covers the genitals.  Of course, I wasn’t thinking about sex at such a young age (and obviously not with regard to family members), so to my mind this was just the standard uniform that females wore when they went swimming.  I never questioned why the females dressed differently nor why what they wore had a special name (considering that we were technically all going “bathing”).

But if you are someone who tries to understand the world around you, then the immediate question you should pose is why two different people of the same age who are participating in the same activity would consistently wear different clothing based solely on their genders (especially considering that one gender’s clothing is noticeably more revealing than the other’s), and after observing modern culture over the years I’ve come to a conclusion.  It’s because women are seen (and treated) like sex objects and even more disturbingly because girls are trained at a young age to think of themselves as sex objects (who will then grow up to continue the cycle with their daughters).

If you are a parent reading this, then I have a suggestion.  If you decide to take the family swimming, instead of dressing your daughters like contestants in a bikini contest, give them a pair of trunks or shorts to put on, the same as you do with your sons.  I don’t see why men and boys should be afforded the respect of covering their private areas while the details of women’s and girls’ bodies are placed on display for everyone to see.  (Also, if you really want to bring some respect to this corrupt world, you might also suggest to your men that they put on some type of shirt, instead of being shirtless, so that their exposed chests don’t distract the other women you encounter at the pool or beach either.)

Even more recently, I was watching a music video that featured a skinny young woman in unnecessarily tight and revealing clothing (in which the male singer proclaims how “sexy” this “girl” is), and it reminded me of the general problem with the way sex is viewed in the modern world.  Although the real purpose of sex is reproduction — sex is literally the creation of life — sex in the modern world is instead more about vain, selfish pleasure with complete disregard for that original goal.  More specifically:

• Sexual promiscuity and sex outside the context of marriage cause disease, low self-esteem, and unstable family relationships (I.e. damage life).
• Condoms and birth control inhibit conception (I.e. prevent life).
• Abortion stops conception when it does occur (I.e. also prevents life).
• Porn and homosexuality waste energy on activities that will never result in conception at all.
• Women in the media with skinny arms/legs and narrow hips are (ironically) often seen as more sexually attractive, but being frail actually makes it less likely a woman will be able to bear healthy children.
• Women in the media with breast implants are (also ironically) often represented as somehow more sexually attractive, but filling a woman’s chest with artificial gel packs does not make her breasts any better at their real purpose, which is to feed and nurture her children.
• People waste time obsessing over makeup, clothing, and hair maintenance in an attempt to appear more attractive to other people, but looking a certain way does not actually imply that a person will be a good wife/mother or husband/father.

If “God” is the propagation of life, then modern sexuality is in defiance of “God”.  To many people in modern times, instead of sex being about serving a higher purpose, it is more about how it makes them feel or about glorifying themselves in the eyes of other people.  Instead of worshiping the true God, they worship themselves as false gods.

I believe this is why certain religions (like Christianity) have always predicted that there would be widespread misuse of sex around the time when they believe the world will end.  On the surface, their belief may sound superstitious, but it has some basis in reason.  If “God” is life and sex is the creation of life, then when people misuse sex, they distort their relationship with “God”.  They poison their connection to the source of all life, and they die.

(Although I wouldn’t call it a “judgment” from “above”.  It’s more like spiritual suicide.)