THIS...is American Idol

So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, "Get rid of the foreign gods you have with you, and purify yourselves and change your clothes." Gen. 35:2

So we got rid of cable a few months ago. We did not do it for any noble reason, like cutting television out of our lives and focusing on what is important. Nope, we just couldn't afford the $200 monthly cable bill with me in school/studying for the bar exam/not working very much.

It was terrible. It still is terrible! I miss my DVR. We got a digital converter box - like the OLD PEOPLE had to do with the digital conversion! (See how judgmental I am? That was mean. I almost deleted it, too, but it was my honest thought at the time. Literally, the only people I knew at the time that didn't have cable were old people, or hippies. We were neither of those, therefore - I judged.)

So, we spent the end of the Spring television season watching network shows. And it was a difficult change. We would have to always make sure to be home in time to watch a show. We dug out the old VCR to tape shows that were on at the same time. It was like living in the dark ages. But something happened over the course of the last few months. Our house got quieter.

No longer was the television constantly on in the background (that is because there is NOTHING TO WATCH on broadcast t.v.). We got an old Muppet video for Ophelia at Goodwill for her to watch (over and over and over and over again). We turned on the news in the morning instead of music videos. If we missed a show on t.v. because we were out doing something else, we might try to catch it online. But it turns out we weren't as addicted as we thought, and not watching shows is generally preferable to watching them on the computer. The digital antenna didn't like American Idol very much. The picture froze a lot, the sound skipped. So we stopped watching it.

We are still getting used to it. Our lives were still extra busy because I was studying every night. It's only been in the last month, when none of us has had something else to do, that we've been able to appreciate the benefits of not having 200 channels to surf. We rarely turn on the t.v. (except to watch Muppets) before Ophelia goes to bed. And we usually turn it off by 9.

We got rid of one of our idols, those things in our lives that stand between us and God. Our house is cleaner, our food is healthier. I was able to finally see that all that noise, the constant television watching, was getting in the way of my spending time in God's word. So instead of watching a dating show or a cooking show for an hour in the evening, I am trying to spend that hour reading the Bible.

But I still miss cable.