We Eat In Front Of The Television

Ten years of plates on knees.

Nobody decided it. That is the first thing and it is worth saying, because there is a version of this where a family sits down and chooses badly, and that is not what happened here.

What happened is that one evening something was on, and everybody was tired, and it was easier. And then the next week, and then it was just what the evenings are.

And it works. That is the honest part. Everybody is together, in one room, at the same time, which is more than a great many households manage. Nobody is upstairs. Nobody is on a phone, mostly, because the screen is doing that job already.

So there is nothing obviously wrong and you would struggle to explain the discomfort if anybody asked.

The nearest you have got to naming it is this: you could not tell anybody a single thing that was said in that room last week.

So let me say the first thing plainly, before anything practical.

Nothing here is going to be about screens.

There is no argument coming about television, or what it does to families, or how it used to be. That whole genre is written by people who have not sat in a room at the end of a long day with everybody finally in the same place. What follows is one evening and it is about a table rather than about a screen.

When thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way

There is an instruction in Deuteronomy about where talking happens, and the list of places in it is oddly specific.

And thou shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. (Deuteronomy 6:7, King James Version)

When thou sittest in thine house.

Four locations, and every one of them is ordinary. Sitting at home, walking somewhere, going to bed, getting up. There is no lesson in that list and no set time, and none of it happens anywhere special.

And the verb is talk. Not teach, not instruct. Talk of them, which is what happens between people when nothing else is claiming the room.

You are being pointed at ordinary talking rather than at anything formal, and a family in one room every evening has never once been the wrong raw material for it. Deuteronomy 6:7 lists four completely ordinary locations and asks for talk in them, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with a man who could not say what was said last week.

And notice the first one is sitting in the house.

That is the location the verse leads with. Not the road, not the bedtime. The hours at home, in a room, with the people who live there, which is precisely the hours your household already has together and is already spending in the same place.

The material is all there. The only thing the room does not have is the talking.

You have the four locations already and the talk missing from the first one, and a family in the same room has never once been far from what that verse describes. The Spirit of God is the one with a household that has been together every evening for ten years, and Deuteronomy 6:7 leads with sitting in the house rather than with anything arranged.

What the screen is actually doing

Here is the practical half, and it is one observation without a complaint in it.

The screen is not stealing anything. It is filling something, and it is filling it well, and that is why it has lasted ten years.

What it fills is the slightly uncomfortable business of a family being in a room with nothing scheduled. That is genuinely awkward, particularly with teenagers, and a screen removes the awkwardness instantly and completely.

So it is doing a real job. Nobody in that room is being robbed. And the cost of it is only visible in the negative, which is why it has never come up: nobody can name a conversation from last week, and an absence is a very hard thing to notice.

You were having something filled rather than something taken, and a screen doing a real job has never once been the villain in a room. Deuteronomy 6:7 asks for talk in ordinary hours rather than condemning anything, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a family that has been comfortable in one room for a decade.

And here is the second half, which is why a table is the answer rather than switching it off. A family sitting in a room with the screen off is a family staring at the thing that was being filled.

A table does something different. It gives everybody a job, which is eating, and a direction, which is facing each other, and a natural end, which is when the plates are empty. Those three together produce talk without anybody having to produce it, and that is the entire mechanism and it has worked for several thousand years.

You have a mechanism available rather than a discipline to impose, and a table has never once required anybody in a family to be good at conversation. The Spirit of God is the one in that house with somebody about to lay a table, and Deuteronomy 6:7 puts the talking in ordinary sitting rather than in a scheduled effort.

What tonight is, at that table

So here is the assignment. Lay the table tonight and eat one meal at it with whoever is in the house.

One evening. Not a new rule, not a policy, and do not announce it as the start of anything, because announcing it as a change makes it a thing to be resisted and a decade is long enough that it will be.

Lay it, call whoever is in, and if somebody asks why, say the food is hot and the table is laid. That is a complete answer and it does not invite a debate.

You are laying it for one evening rather than announcing a policy, and a table set without a speech has never once been something anybody had to argue with. Deuteronomy 6:7 asks for ordinary talk in ordinary hours rather than for a household reform, and the Holy Spirit is the one in that room with a man laying four places.

Then the part that does the work, and it is one instruction: expect the first ten minutes to be awkward. That is not a sign it is failing. That is the thing the screen has been filling, arriving on schedule, and it is exactly what it should feel like.

Do not rescue it. Do not fill the silence with questions about anybody's day, which land as an interrogation at a table nobody has sat at for ten years. Let it be quiet, eat, and wait, and somebody will say something unimportant, and that is where it starts.

You are letting it be awkward rather than rescuing it, and ten minutes of quiet at a table has never once been a failed evening. The Spirit of God is the one at that table while nobody says anything yet, and Deuteronomy 6:7 lists the ordinary hours without requiring anybody to perform in them.