The Dangers of Secular Entertainment for a Practicing Christian - Movies

If you consider yourself on fire for God, chances are, you are striving to be completely obedient to His word. If you are actively studying the Bible, and are meticulous in getting an accurate understanding of it, you are aware that it is quite difficult to be a true Christian.

For those “Christians” who claim to have accepted Christ years ago, and believe that they are a Christian when they continue to live in sin and do what they please (disobedience!), then delving in secular entertainment, such as books, movies, music and the like won’t affect their conscience. Chances are, their conscience isn’t effective anymore. Do you ever have that feeling, that “voice” poke at you when you do something you shouldn’t? Ignore that poking (your conscience) enough, and it won’t bother you anymore. And this is a bad thing.

Christians have a standard to live up to :  God’s standard. It’s an impossible standard to live up to on your own. Humans with a sinful nature cannot possibly live up to such a standard without God. But, we allow the Holy Spirit to work within us by avoiding certain lifestyles and worldly distractions.

One thing we can avoid, limit, or filter is secular entertainment. Movies is what I’ll talk about in this post.

I’m not saying all secular movies are bad. But, I am saying the majority of them are bad. And if you’re not filtering what’s coming into your home, your mind, your child’s mind, you would be surprised at how it is affecting your walk with God.

I’ll use dieting and fitness as an example, just to demonstrate what I’m trying to say. An overweight man, having eaten whatever he wanted over the course of his lifetime, decides he wants to change his lifestyle and get fit. In order to do that, he must change how he eats, and adjust how much activity he gets in a day. Little to no junk food, lots of exercise. It’s very difficult to keep eating junk food and lose weight. Cravings for more, high carbohydrate content, the “great taste” of the food just put stumbling blocks in the way of his ultimate goal. It makes his quest to get fit a lot harder than it has to be. If you put it in your mind to have none or very little junk food in your overall diet, and don’t look back, you’re set.

Same thing goes for a Christian. There are a lot of things that cause you to stumble in your walk. Secular entertainment is a huge thing. Take the majority of movies these days, how they are all full of swearing, nudity, and promotion of violence, lying, cheating, promiscuity, drugs, alcohol, breaking of rules, murdering, sex, and on, and on, and on, and on. Few of these movies have anything good to offer someone dead to their old self, on their way to becoming a hardcore Christian. And from what I’ve learned just from the Bible, God wants us to be hardcore Christians. On fire for Him. Him, and Him only.

“I’m an adult, though. I know what is right and wrong. I see no issue with watching a movie with swearing and stuff.”

We as Christians should be surrounding ourselves with encouragement and uplifting materials. You pick up things from everywhere. Watch enough movies with swearing and violence, you’d be surprised at how okay and normal you think a lot of the behaviors demonstrated are.  If you go long enough without watching movies full of swearing and excessive violence, you’ll see that when you go to watch a movie with such content, that you’re completely repulsed by it. Hearing the F-bomb just makes your stomach churn. Love scenes make you feel uncomfortable. The plots just go against your Christian morals.

Be careful, is all I’m trying to say. There is nothing good in seeing the latest and greatest Hollywood hit, for the most part. The last thing you want is to rent a movie, put it on the television screen in your home and have a naked woman walk by on the screen unexpectedly. Bad, you say? Yes, bad. People these days are so lax when it comes to these things, but sexual immorality is a huge stumbling block, so, having such an unexpected scene could cause your husband (or even you) to fall into sin. Just like that.

Let’s be honest, though. Most times, you are better off without watching a movie in the first place. This life is very short in comparison to eternity and watching a movie is, arguably, a huge waste of  time. We have goals to achieve in this life. Spread the Gospel (the true one! Not a false one…), grow spiritually, become an approved worker in the eyes of God…

Anyhow, if you feel the need to kick back and watch a movie, there are awesome resources and websites you can use to determine ratings and inappropriate content present in a movie. Focusonthefamily.ca is just one of them, I believe pluggedin is an app you can download for your iPhone. Keep your mind on Godly things.

Your sister in Christ.