Hollywood is Not the Friend of Christ

Blessed is the man
Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,
Nor stands in the path of sinners,
Nor sits in the seat of the scornful;
But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
And in His law he meditates day and night. (Psalm 1:1-2)

Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things. (Philippians 4:8)

Satan is a drug dealer. He knows that if he can get people, even God’s people, to consume a reasonable diet of his product, they will become addicted and enslaved to him.

Ancient Near Eastern pagan worship worked this way. The sexual immorality in the name of religion became so intoxicating that people—in the name of Baal—were not only willing to sacrifice their children but horrifically torture them as they burned them alive.

Carnal addictions became the sinful foundation that led to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

We have plenty of substance addiction in our culture—in our cities—today. Every day I witness it as I drive from my home to my office. There is another—maybe equally dangerous– problem that faces us though. And this problem is ubiquitous among professing Christians. We bow down to the idol of Hollywood. We are all now part of the TV generation. This is our world. We grew up with it.

Hollywood was once a bad word among believers of all sorts, and that is when its products were substantially tamer than what it creates today. I can remember when the term Hollywood was used as a synonym for the organized system of rebellion against God. A younger believer today would be mystified by that usage of the word.

Today Christians often speak adoringly of Hollywood. When I use the term Hollywood I am speaking of the entertainment culture. It is not that 100% of its product is satanic or that everyone in the industry is evil. There is not necessarily a problem with the genre of movies or video.

However many—dare I say most–believers have given themselves over to the entertainment world that overwhelmingly sends out not only extremely overtly sinful material but also propaganda intended to destroy our faith. We spoon-feed it to our children, and then we wonder why we are facing such a phenomenon as evangelical destruction.

Maybe we just need to take a step back for a moment and look.

But I only watch the good stuff.

Then you do not watch much. And of course, that begs the question—how do you define the good stuff? Start really looking. How much premarital and extramarital sex is in what you watch. Even cooking and real estate-based shows seem to be pushing an LBGTQ agenda. Maybe we should search the scriptures first to define what good stuff is and then model our behavior on those principles.

Even the good stuff can become a gateway drug to the not-so-good stuff. Entertainment practices become habits. For the family that sits down to watch movies together on Friday night, what do you do when you start running out of redeemable options? We become fans of a particular actor or actress and then follow that person into perdition. All the kids who grew up watching Hannah Montana know exactly what I am talking about. You might not follow them to where they go, but will your children?

It’s only entertainment. It’s not real.

Sin starts in the mind. Looking at something to commit sin in the mind is sin. It is also an abomination to take pleasure in the deviance of others. God not only hates immorality, he also hates, violence, murder, and injustice. This is why the horror genre is anti-Christian.

God cares about the imaginations of our hearts. Jesus was more concerned about the inner man than he was the outer one.

It doesn’t hurt me.

Satan’s big like is “just once won’t matter.”[i] It’s just a little thing and it cannot be that destructive.

We cannot help being in the world. There is a lot of sin that we cannot avoid seeing. Why would we purposefully watch it for fun? Even the things that seem fairly neutral morally can become distracting as entertainment drains away more and more of the precious time God has given us in this life.

I don’t worship it!

So how would you define worship then? What do you look to as your authority? Who do you allow to mold your thinking and values? To whom do you surrender your time and talents? To whom do you give your wealth? What system of ethics and morality do you support with your time and money?

We have to start being honest and looking harder.

We watch it because we like it.

We have to start asking what it is in us to which this entertainment appeals? Is it appealing to the spiritual part of me made alive by the presence of the Holy Spirit, or is it appealing to the sinful flesh associated with the person I used to be without Christ?

We have to ask what types of messages it is sending. Superhero movies are everywhere. I challenge you to actually think deeply about the messages being communicated on such things as moral ambivalence, gender, violence, anger, and more. It is impossible to watch these things, especially as uncritically as we do, without our thinking being impacted.

I am not addicted!

Ok. Prove it. Prove it to yourself, not to me. Go cold turkey for a week or a month. See how you do with that. Spend time in the Word and prayer instead. You don’t have to make it completely about piety. Go on walks with your wife, read a good book, play board games or just wrestle with the kids. Ask God to give you His eyes to see the world around you as He would desire you to see it. See where that goes.

My appeal is not that we start setting legalistic rules about entertainment choices in our churches. Adherence to a set of rules 40 and 50 years ago without understanding the principles behind those rules is one of the reasons that we are where we are now. What we must do is start thinking—thinking biblically and thinking spiritually—about our entertainment choices. That starts with surrendering the whole realm of entertainment to Christ. We have to start by determining we will do whatever Christ demands in this area of life, and then act according to His will as He reveals it to us.

I am preaching to myself here too. This is not about some type of spiritual superiority, it’s about spiritual survival.

Jesus is our only Lord. It is time to stop bowing down to the idol of Hollywood. Let’s think this through.

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[i] This is from Erwin Lutzer’s very helpful book, Winning the Inner War. He has published it under a number of titles including, How to Say No to a Stubborn Habit.