Use the talents God has given you. And impact your world. We have talked about movies like 'Facing the Giants'. 'The Gospel' is another good example. If you have talent in the arts, be creative, and tell a good story.. Just like the stories in real life. Not like the stories on TV currently.

The Theology of the Couch Potato

There's an interesting study over at the Parents Television Council on the depiction of faith on television. Here are a few of the more salient factoids from the study:

• "CBS was the network with the highest percentage of pro-religious incidents, with 47% of its treatments of religion being positive. WB followed with 41.3% positive treatments and ABC with 37.7%. NBC (27.8%) and Fox (27.2%) nearly tied, while UPN (19.3%) had the lowest percentage of positive religious portrayals.
• "Fox had the highest percentage of anti-religious depictions, with 1 of every 2 depictions of religion – almost exactly half (49.7%) – being negative. NBC closely followed, with 39.3% of their depictions of religion being negative, while 35.4% of UPN depictions were negative. 30% of ABC’s portrayals were negative, followed by 29% of CBS’ and 21% of WB’s.
• "Program format was a heavy determinant of the portrayal which religion received. Of all negative treatments of religion, 95.5% occurred on scripted drama and comedy programs. Only 4.5% of such negative treatments occurred on reality programs. Furthermore, 57.8% of positive treatments of religion also occurred on reality programs, while only 42.2% of positive portrayals occurred on scripted programs. "

Tagging onto the last bullet point, it is interesting to see in their study how many positive depictions of faith came out in the unscripted shows, particularly reality shows like Extreme Home Makeover, Dancing with the Stars, and Amazing Race. It seems when you get Americans unscripted, you are more likely to get positive depictions of faith than when you have a scripted program.

If you want to get your ire up, read some of the negative depictions of faith. But I think we fail if we just get angry about culture. We have a creative mandate. Television is such a steady part of most Americans' diet, information like this makes me really hungry to see more Christians using their gifts to write, produce, and direct drama that is a quality, not over-sentimentalized depiction of real faith. That should make information like this a goad and a spur for us.