If you tire of modern media, I have great news for you: every four years, media will change. Not because anyone wants it to, but because it must. This is why I don’t buy into hype and, instead, I ride the bus and try to figure out where society is at the present moment. That is my ballpark.
If anyone asks me why I am a Christian, I say this:
I believe because God does not let our spirits rest. This is the nature of human life. We are restless creatures with restless spirits. We are constantly seeking, moving, and pressing forward into new things. And this restlessness is the mark of God upon us. It is the sign that we were made for change, for growth, for covenantal renewal.
If our spirits could rest in themselves, if we could be satisfied with what we have, then God would not be necessary. But the very fact that we cannot rest, that we are always searching, is proof that God is real. It is proof that we were made for Him, and that defying Him is insanity. To deny God is to deny the restless spirit within us and to pretend that our hunger for meaning and change can be satisfied by ourselves.
But it cannot. This is why things must change. Institutions cannot remain static. Media cannot remain static. Our lives cannot remain static. And so change must occur.
The restlessness of our spirits demands renewal. And when we resist this, when we try to hold on to the illusion of permanence, we fall into dysfunction. We scapegoat, we crucify, we sacrifice others to preserve our false stability. But the restless spirit will not be denied. God will not let us rest. He calls us forward, into the long obedience, into maturation and a covenant that alone can satisfy.
The insanity of defying God is the insanity of denying our own nature. It is the insanity of pretending that restlessness can be cured by spectacle, by scapegoating, by distraction. But the truth is deeper: our restlessness is holy. It is the proof of God. It is the summons to covenant. And until we heed it, until we embrace the restless spirit as His gift, we will remain trapped in cycles of dysfunction, endlessly sacrificing tributes, endlessly scapegoating, endlessly restless without renewal.
It has long been observed that institutions in America operate on a rhythm of premature crucifixion. Presidents, provosts, and chancellors are brought in with great fanfare, heralded as saviors, only to be cut down within four or five years. The biblical pattern of seven years (the time required for true maturation) is denied them. Instead, they are scapegoated at the halfway mark, three and a half years, forty-two months, the time of Elijah’s drought and the time of Christ’s own ministry cut short. This is not incidental; it is covenantal. It is the curse of being severed before fullness and the refusal of a people to endure the long obedience that genuine change requires.
Note, this is probably why Presidential terms are four years long.
The Restless Spirit
What is true of universities, and churches, and civic bodies is equally true of media. Media (movies, video games, books, comics) is itself an institution, though more volatile, more restless, more given to spectacle. It too operates on cycles of hope and crucifixion. A new medium arises (AI) and it is hailed as the dawn of a new age. For a brief honeymoon, it will seem to promise connection, renewal, and even salvation. But as soon as change begins to bite, as soon as the medium begins to alter the fabric of life, the backlash will come. Media, like any other university, cannot endure the long seven. It will not wait for maturation. It will cut off at three and a half years.
This is why media changes every so often. It has to. It is not merely technological innovation, though that is the surface. Modern media reflects a deeper covenantal refusal of our culture to endure the slow work of transformation. Each medium is scapegoated in turn. Radio was once the great corrupter, then television, then the internet, and now AI. Each is crucified, blamed for the anxieties of the age, and discarded. And with each crucifixion, the anxiety of the people is temporarily relieved. For a moment, normality is restored. But soon the dysfunction builds again, and another medium must be sacrificed.
Edwin Friedman, following Murray Bowen, taught us that systems are covenantal. Families, institutions, and nations are not collections of individuals but webs of relation. When covenant is absent, dysfunction reigns, and scapegoating becomes the ritual by which the system maintains itself. This is also why the release of the Epstein list has become one of the most charged spectacles of our time. On the surface, it is about accountability: exposing names, revealing connections, and demanding justice. But beneath the surface, it functions as ritual. It is the modern scapegoat mechanism at work. The names on the list will be paraded before the public, consumed by media spectacle, and blamed for the corruption of the age. Once we have scapegoated those individuals, society will feel better for a time and anxiety will dissipate.
But the covenantal failure remains untouched. The system does not change; it merely repeats the cycle. Without Christ, how does a culture manage its anxieties? Instead of covenantal renewal, we perform a ritual sacrifice.
In biblical terms, a scapegoat was sent into the wilderness bearing the sins of the people. The act was not about reforming the covenantal life of Israel; it was about discharging anxiety. Once the goat was gone, the people felt relief. But the deeper sickness remained.
In our time, media has become the most visible scapegoat. It is the top of the system, the place where anxiety is projected. We do not crucify the poor or the marginal anymore; we crucify the medium itself. We say, “It’s Hollywood” or “It’s social media” or “It’s Mainstream news.” And once we have said it, once we have sacrificed the medium. We feel better, for a time.
But the deeper truth is that nothing changes. The cycle repeats. The covenant is refused. The seven years are denied. And so media will continue to change, not because of progress, but because of dysfunction. It will continue to reflect the restless spirit of a people who cannot endure the long obedience, who cannot wait for maturation, who will not covenant with time. Until covenant is restored, until testimony and consequence are embraced, media will remain restless, volatile, and sacrificial.
Conclusion
The curse of premature severance was broken in Christ so that the cycle might end. His sacrifice was the final scapegoat, once for all. This is why the Kingdom is inevitable. The world may resist, institutions may refuse covenant, and media may distract with spectacle, but the restless spirit will not be denied. God’s Kingdom is at hand, and all that we see is a steady progression into that point. Every collapse of false stability, every exposure of corruption, every restless search for meaning is proof that the Kingdom is pressing in. The dysfunction is not the end; it is the labor pains of renewal.
To defy this is insanity, to pretend that restlessness can be cured by scapegoating or spectacle is to deny our own nature. But to embrace it, to see in every restless change the hand of God, is to live in covenant. It is to be ready for the Kingdom that is inevitable, the Kingdom that is already breaking in, the Kingdom that alone can satisfy the restless spirit.
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