Now I'd like to talk for about 15 minutes about the topic I mentioned this morning.

Quantitative hopelessness and the immeasurable moment.

And I hope that that'll make sense

before we're done.

I've heard often the contrast made between spending an hour in Sunday school once a week

and watching television about 20 hours a week.

And the implication or the point that's usually made

is that there's scarcely any hope that in this one hour on Sunday morning we can

counteract the fairly secularist, humanist viewpoint that is whether overtly or covertly

ministered through the television set.

That sort of observation creates what I call quantitative

hopelessness. It gives the impression that life-changing impact and influence is directly proportionate to the quantity of time spent under a particular influence.

And I think that this way of assessing the value of influences on our young people,

as well as ourselves as adults is wrong for two reasons.

I think it's wrong first because it obscures the problem with evil.

And then secondly, I think it's wrong because it obscures the power of a holy moment.

And I'll try to explain what I mean by each of those two mistakes.

First of all, it obscures this quantitative way of thinking obscures the problem with evil in the world. It gives the misleading impression that the approach to take towards harmful influences, say on television, is to balance them

with good influences. That seems to be the approach.

And so it assumes that the best or the only way to counteract the hours which we spend

being entertained by the world and being taught to love the world is to spend a

corresponding quantity of time being entertained or taught by God or God's people so as to balance out the

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