This s a Tough One

I was in church today and the subject of media came up, but it quickly turned to movies. Basically the question was “What movies should we as Christians watch?” It’s a valid question and a tough one to answer, especially because God doesn’t exactly give us a list to follow. What we do have though is His law and Jesus’ word. Looking at my list of my favorite movies you’d probably notice I love comedy movies, especially ones from the 80’s. While extremely funny there are also a few scenes that aren’t appropriate so how do I reconcile that with what God says in the Bible? Jesus says in Matthew that a “tree is recognized by its fruit” 12:33. And in Mark that “your eye is the lamp of your body…see to it then that the light within you is not darkness” 11:34-35. When we view things and hear things that aren’t godly they ruin us on the inside and after enough time it shows on the outside. While it is impossible to “see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil” in our modern world it is not impossible to guard ourselves from it to a degree. Does this mean I shun every movie and stick to cartoon Disney classics? No, (while I don’t mind a few) Jesus calls us to be “as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves” Matt. 10:16, in other words we live in a fallen world and we need to discern right from wrong and not be tainted by the badness around us. I cannot escape the ungodliness in the media but I can do my best to ensure that it doesn’t affect me. I can choose not to watch a movie based on its content, if there is foul language or lots of inappropriate content I don’t have to watch it, but if there is one scene in one movie I can also skip over it (which is what I usually do). It is a gray area, it makes no sense to shun the world but at the same time we need to watch what goes in because it affects what comes out. C.S. Lewis writes that morality is like a big fleet of ships in an ocean, if one of the ships is going in the wrong direction it will crash into another ship and thus needs the correct course (morality) but if the ship starts in the right course but gradually rots in the inside then it will eventually steer into the wrong direction. It’s a gray area but remember it is a slow and gradual change that we hardly notice until it is too late.