I'm NotSirius Anymore

Dateline: 25 November 2013

I’ve been hooked up to Sirius satellite radio for five years. I got it so I would have a variety of listening options as I worked in my workshop or Planet Whizbang mail-order packing room. I  mostly listened to Fox news, the Patriot channel and NPR. Occasionally I would listen to BBC radio. 

I would much rather listen to people talking than music—to ideas and information being expressed, even if I disagree with the ideas (which I often do on mainstream media). There is very little in the way of music that I like to listen to for very long. I have no interest at all in sports. 

I don’t have cable television, and have not watched television for many years. I know virtually nothing about any Hollywood personality or pop singer who has come along in the past 10 to 15 years. They mean nothing to me.

A few months ago I decided to stop listening to the satellite radio. I had had my fill of Fox (the sensational, tabloid-like reporting in particular) and everything else on the satellite radio. 

I came to the conclusion that I did not want to submit to them anymore; I did not want them deciding every day what my thoughts would dwell on, and the pictures that would play in the “theatre of my mind.”  Too often, the discussion was inane, or foolish, or perverse. 

When I need some talk to listen to I can now choose from a variety no-cost, independently-produced, decentralized-media options on the internet. I simply plug a speaker into my laptop computer and I can hear fine while working at things that I need to get done.

This last week I finally got around to calling Sirius to discontinue my satellite service. It took around 15 minutes. They offered me a year’s service for half price (a considerable savings). I didn’t bite. I’m done.

The money I would have paid Sirius for another year of listening will be donated to Generations With Vision. Two guys in a basement in the eastern plains of Colorado produce a daily Generations internet-radio program that, in my opinion, far surpasses anything the mainstream media puts out. They've been doing it for a lot of years. I’ve mentioned this program on this blog before. I’ll probably mention it again.

Kevin Swanson and Dave Buehner host the Generations With Vision radio broadcast. Both men are pastors. I believe they are Reformed Presbyterians. What I like about these men is that they are biblical worldview warriors. They fearlessly take on cultural issues that many mainstream preachers shy away from. They not only provide cultural analysis on the decline of Western civilization from a biblical worldview, they also monitor the growing Christian apostasy. But more than that, they present biblical solutions to the problems that they see.

The solutions they offer begin with the fear of God, and the recognition that sin is the fundamental problem of mankind. God’s law/word, as found in the Bible is looked to as the blueprint for personal and cultural reformation. This reformation begins with individual Christians and Christian families who get a vision for thinking and living that is contra mundum, which means against the world (see Romans 12:2). 

I often use the term, "contra-industrial" to define my writings on this blog. Contra industrial and contra mundum are pretty much the exact same thing in my Christian-agrarian mind. 

When Kevin and Dave talk, they sound like Christian-agrarians to me. They encourage their listeners to not be dependent on government handout-schemes, government schooling-schemes, government medical-schemes, and political promises. They say that Christians should provide for their own needs and the needs of their families apart from government. They promote the biblical concept of self-government and personal responsibility. They identify cities as ungodly places. They encourage entrepreneurship and the development of family economies. They think multi-generationally. They refuse to bow to the cultural demands of people who would redefine marriage and the family as something totally contrary to what God designed it to be. 

As the economic and social structures of our industrialized, Babylonian world system are crumbling, Kevin and Dave offer a vision to their Christian listeners of "islands of freedom" where God-fearing families live lives of obedience, wisdom, and Biblical responsibility, set apart to God, for His glory.  

When I listen to Generations radio I am presented with ideas and biblical worldview opinions that I never hear from the mainstream media and, frankly, that I rarely hear discussed in church. 

I encourage those of you who read this blog, and are believers in Jesus Christ, to listen to the daily Generations Radio internet broadcasts. There is certainly nothing like it on the mainstream media, and I've yet to find a more insightful and biblically pertinent program anywhere else on the internet.