The entertainment we choose says a lot about who we really are – not only as person, but also as a Christian. At the risk of stepping on millions of toes, I ask you to consider what it took decades to discover for me, personally, when choosing which songs, movies, books, jokes, video clips, forwarded e-mails, etc. I allow to come into my mind through my eyes and ears.
In fact, when evaluating the entertainment we choose there are three (3) questions we need to ask ourselves:
1) What is my entertainment?
2) What affect does the entertainment I choose have on my life?
3) Is that (affect) okay?
So..what ARE we choosing for our entertainment? You can’t say that it doesn’t matter, because it DOES. The the world is watching. Your friends are watching. Your children are watching. And the question is: What are YOU watching? What songs are you listening to? What books are you reading? What movies are you allowing to permeate your eyes and ears?
The next question is: What affect does my entertainment having on my life? Notice I didn’t say “spiritual life”. The word is “life”.
It’s too easy to draw a line and say, “Okay, THIS is spiritual and this over here is secular.” We like to put things in little boxes or draw circles or squares around things…or compartmentalize every activity in our life. That makes it easier to rationalize. We go to church… of course, it is wrong to watch a “bad” television show at church because…well…that’s church! We should only do “spiritual” things in church like sing or listen to a sermon or something “spiritual”.
But when we get home…that’s a different story. We’re tired. It’s easy to sit in front of the television or on an internet video website and remain immovable as we watch programs or clips laced with profanity, that poke fun at families, fatherhood and faith. But, truth be known, our entertainment DOES affect us. It affects our mind and our mind affects our spirits.
The last question is: “Is the affect that my entertainment has on me okay?” For example, if a certain song or movie elicits a certain feeling, is that a good thing? What if a movie deeply stirred us and made us take a certain action that was good, that is one thing, but what if a movie gave you feelings of anxiety – maybe a horror movie caused you to live in fear or a certain song aroused feelings of lust or anger? Then, wouldn’t it have been better if you didn’t participate in that type of entertainment?
Now, I’m not a purist in the respect that every single song we sing or movie that we watch has to be “Christian”. That would mean we couldn’t even sing the song “Happy Birthday” because it didn’t have “Jesus” somewhere in it. But the line between entertainment and Christianity is not as blurred as we think.
To willingly participate in forms of entertainment that are ungodly and harmful to our mind says a lot about who we really are. We can’t have it both ways (Luke 12:34; Matthew 6:21).
Yes, it’s easy to rationalize our entertainment by saying it’s just “part of our culture” and “that’s how I have fun”, but there really is one more question that begs to be asked in addition to the three originally outlined at the top, and that question is…”Is God happy with my entertainment?” Yes, it’s a tough question to ask…and in my case I have found that many times the answer I received was something I did not want to hear.
