Thank you Finny! I came to the same conclusions on my own as I was also raised my movies and television. For me it was the movies “Grease” and “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” from the 80s. I could recite both those movies by heart as a young girl (and probably still can). Needless to say, those movies (and others) gave me the values I carried into adulthood. (Didn’t matter what anyone else taught me.) Children value what they SEE, and visual media is a powerful force that lives deep in your psyche forever. I’m trying to undo the damage done to me by visual secular media (magazines and advertising too), but it’s extremely difficult. Thank you for this talk on this important topic.
Thank you for this teaching. I wish more Christians would take it to heart. I gradually got rid of almost all secular entertainment in the years after becoming a Christian. I simply did not fit with the Christian life. It's either a time waster or it actively promotes what is immoral. It focuses the heart on the flesh. We don't do television or radio in our home, but we will watch selected videos for learning purposes. The only thing I'd add is that literature should not get a free pass. It may be admired for its artistry, or be historically significant in some way, but most literature of the past century and a half at least is just preparing the West for Secularism and Humanism. Only a small amount is really godly or edifying for the Christian.
“What is highly exalted among men is abomination for God” wonderful sentence and reminder to avoid unwanted inputs via Media. Excellent and thought provoking message brother, praise be to God! Continue the good work.
Excellent message on a subject which is incredibly big in our culture. Very few see the dangers inherent in worldly entertainment and even fewer are sounding the alarm. This is just one more example as to why church attendance in the West is declining sharply. Stadiums are packed, theaters and concert halls are full, online entertainment of all types are everywhere while every year there are fewer and fewer Christians who bother to assemble together with other believers! Even conservative churches have fallen under the spell of Entertainment. A.W.Tozer wrote a booklet on religious movies years ago and I'm convinced it was the most unpopular and most controversial thing he ever wrote! Thank you for the warning.
Most "Christian" music is a deadly deception, when it comes to both lyrics and beats. This would be more tolerable: (not suggesting to listen to it tho) ruclips.net/video/7H3wwSNVDVw/видео.html
I have quit all professional sports, I wish I had done it earlier. I do still practice sport myself, because that is what sport is for, for your personal fitness, not to feed the masses.
Despite being an older message this was a challenge and a blessing to my soul, as everything is that provides clarity on an issue of struggle in the Christian life. Going to public school, I didn't like art class much, once it started teaching art theory and art history. Back then I said that I don't like modern art and that the idea there has to be a message in every painting ruins even those pictures I would otherwise find pleasant to look at. However even the classic Renaissance art seemed strange to me in some way. It just felt wrong. But there I could not deny that it's art. So what could I say to criticize it? Thank you for clearing up where the idea comes from even among Christians that "art" is untouchable. That misconception is how conservative Christians start making thriller movies, claiming that they are "stories that need to be told". Now I know why I need not feel bad not watching or supporting those movies. Those were just some examples.
I really disagree with this message. Let me explain why: Most of what he says are assertions that are not self-evidently true. Furthermore, he gives no evidence for his assertions, either from the Bible or from any other reliable or authoritative source. Tertullian is not Christ. “Spectacles” is not part of the Biblical canon. He wasn’t even a contemporary of the apostles. The scripture alone is authoritative on Christian living (sola scriptura). To the extent that the early church fathers teach accurately from the Bible, it can be helpful, only in the sense that any other pastor living today can be helpful. Keeping kids “pure” is a misnomer. His concept of purity (the same as my parents while we were growing up) denies the depravity of their wicked little human hearts. You can take away the movies and the music and any other potentially evil influence, and they will have plenty of impurity remaining on their own. Jesus said it is what comes out of a person that defiles him, not what goes into a person. Similarly, Aristotle defined virtue as a habit of rightdoing. Thoughts become acts, acts become habits, and habits form new desires. Acts are normative, being both the product of and the catalyst toward new desires. See Mark 7:20 and Proverbs 4:23. It is what we choose to do and choose to desire, not what we see and hear, that define us and shape our character. Those are influences, but we can see and hear plenty that we do not choose to embrace and act on-or we can choose to embrace and act on the opposite. We are not determined by our environment, as this man seems to suggest. See www.artofmanliness.com/articles/manvotional-habit/ The promise that kids’ “purity” will give them great “power,” more so than their impure parents, is dangerously flattering. I experienced this growing up. Bill Gothard’s motto was “Giving the world a ’new’ approach to life.” He used similar rhetoric about the power that us “pure” kids would have. It was all a lie. This power never materialized. Instead, our young hearts were lifted up in pride for our purity and our “new way of life.” Then, we were titillated by the things that we were not exposed to and still fell into “fleshly lusts,” including myself and many others I know of. See Col. 2:20-23. The efforts by our parents to shield us were well and good and needed up to a point, but then they failed to teach us and be there with us when we were exposed to the evil things of the world, so that we had to grapple with these in isolation. Sheltering your teens and young adults in this way just kicks the inevitable can down the road to a place where they will be alone when they have to confront evil for the first time. The assertion that what you see and hear always stays with you assumes that you can never forget. This is biologically untrue. You can forget, and you are not bound to take porn that you might see at a weak point to the marriage bed, as he presumes. There are memories of things I saw and did years ago that I would like to forget completely. Now and again something reminds me of them, but I’m also reminded of what Christ did to bring me out of that. The more I choose not to reinforce those memories with further decisions, the dimmer and more distant those memories become. If it were true that you couldn’t forget anything at all, your brain would be sick and you would literally go crazy. See www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5657245/ for just a sample of the scientific evidence of physical mechanisms for forgetting. Teaching from anecdote, such as his love for Rocky that he claims led to injuring his brother, is dangerous. You can’t verify personal anecdote, and one can find an anecdote to make literally any point you want. Humans are biased, confirmation bias is rampant, and this guy is no exception. Bill Gothard used to do the same thing. And by the way, he punched his brother in the face because he was a kid, not because he watched Rocky IV. As evidence, his brother didn’t hit back. They didn’t re-enact the Rocky vs. Drago fight right then and there. And I’ll bet you that was the last time he ever hit his brother like that. He confuses the essence of holiness with the product of holiness. It is who you are, not what you do, that makes you holy. See medium.com/@jhill9693/on-confusing-holiness-with-perfection-24ef1ef49094 Nowhere does he encourage Christians to fill their minds with the Bible, which is the only thing that can purify our minds from the wrong thinking that our flesh, the world, and Satan, encourages-and will encourage whether we watch TV or not. Nowhere does he mention the role of the Holy Spirit in dealing with temptation. He mistakes objectionable elements of media for inherent elements of media. It’s just as possible to make a good movie as it is to make a bad one. It’s also possible to watch a movie that has good and bad while embracing the good and discarding or ignoring the bad. It is logically fallacious to say, “1. Rocky IV is bad. 2. Rocky IV is a movie. 3. Therefore, movies are bad.” It is equally fallacious to say, “1. Rocky IV is bad. 2. Rocky IV is a movie made by Hollywood. 3. Therefore, all Hollywood movies are bad.” Those statements are neither true nor logical. He asserts that our first loyalty is to holiness, but the Scriptural evidence for this claim doesn’t bear it out. Our first loyalty is to Christ, not to conservative standards. The “greatest of these” is charity, not conservative standards. The Bible does not say, “thou shalt not watch movies made by Hollywood, such as Rocky IV.” So, well-meaning and God-fearing Christians who are loyal to Christ can and will differ on questions such as these, and no one can say that watching Rocky IV is absolutely a sin and that Christians should have absolutely nothing to do with any of the forms of entertainment available to us today. That would be unbiblical and false teaching. Now don’t get the wrong idea. There are good reasons to abstain from some or all Hollywood movies. Why didn't he talk about these reasons? - To avoid funding a corrupt and debauched industry. - Seeing sinners sin on the silver screen isn’t fun or appealing for the follower of Christ. Instead, it is painful. - You cannot see how doing so personally glorifies Christ (1 Cor. 10:31). - Not abstaining would violate your conscience (Rom. 14:5). - You have better things to do with your time (Eph. 5:16). - The worldview, values, and main message of the story is antithetical to the Gospel. It is “earthly, sensual, devilish” (James 3:15). - To avoid temptation in an area of personal weakness (Heb. 12:1) Likewise, here are some good reasons why we might not abstain from all Hollywood movies: - The consequences of sinful choices and of evil are clearly depicted. - Good and evil are accurately depicted, and good is upheld as superior to evil. - The story’s shape and message are metaphorically consistent with the Gospel. The story follows an archetypal form, what C.S. Lewis would term a “true myth.” - You are able to minimize the financial benefit to the Hollywood industry (such as by taking advantage of free rentals or borrowing rather than paying for theater tickets on opening day). - It is reasonably free from elements that would cause you personally to stumble in an area of weakness (Heb. 12:1, James 1:21). - It is beautiful-visually, musically, morally-according to a Christian aesthetic. - Doing so would not detract from higher priorities (Eph. 5:16). - Doing so would not cause a brother or sister in Christ to stumble (1 Cor. 8:13).
The "biblical canon" in your opening remarks that you use to exclude and dismiss the church leader Tertullian (200 AD) was decided in 390 AD. 🤔 Sola scriptura is based on a later not early church Fathers' endeavor... just saying. Jesus taught in Matthew 5:27-30 whatever causes you to sin, pluck it out of your life, else 🔥 Moreover, Sola scriptura does not say, as you did, that children are depraved, but NeoGnostic protestant theology says that.
Hello. While I would say it is not the worst sin whatever you watch and listen to will influence you. I cannot say what it is, but like Brett said, whatever it is that affects you in a negative way, better cut it out.
"Tertullian is not Christ. “Spectacles” is not part of the Biblical canon. He wasn’t even a contemporary of the apostles." One of the few points I agree with, I wonder why we do not question those so called sources, since there are many so called Mark Twain quotes that are not his. We do not know what happened, perhaps writings may have been lost, and indeed some of the Anabaptists may abuse it for propaganda against Christians who rightfully support death penalty (Rom. 1:28-31). But could THIS quote or Tertullian not match up with the Bible? See 1 John 2:15, sorry. "The scripture alone is authoritative on Christian living (sola scriptura)" God is the main authority, but that does not mean God did not spoke outside the scripture. Also, God's moral standards should be realized quickly when looking at our culture. While pedophilia is not per se adressed in the Bible, we can still see it is wrong. "Keeping kids “pure” is a misnomer. His concept of purity (the same as my parents while we were growing up) denies the depravity of their wicked little human hearts." Says who? Honestly, why do you even have to suck your kids into that garbage? "You can take away the movies and the music and any other potentially evil influence, and they will have plenty of impurity remaining on their own." Yawn. Would it really be a loss for them? When I was that age, we used to prefer going outside and playing there over watching some stupid movies. As an adult you can do it if you like, but also make sure yourself what you consume. "Jesus said it is what comes out of a person that defiles him, not what goes into a person" Talking about food, not movies. "Nowhere does he encourage Christians to fill their minds with the Bible, which is the only thing that can purify our minds from the wrong thinking that our flesh, the world, and Satan, encourages-and will encourage whether we watch TV or not." Uhm... what type of argument is that? "Nowhere does he mention the role of the Holy Spirit in dealing with temptation." Duh. Using excuses, eh? Even an Atheist knows better than you that his actions have consequences. You have no excuses. "The Bible does not say, “thou shalt not watch movies made by Hollywood, such as Rocky IV.”" Aw, I love those strawmen. The Bible also does not literally say not to have an abortion, but according to what we read in context, that IS what the Bible is saying. "It is beautiful-visually, musically, morally-according to a Christian aesthetic." Many pieces of art and music indeed are, Even many more however are the exact opposite. Remember that i am a deist rather than a Christian, BUT I can clearly see that most of your arguments are purely emotional. No thanks. We don't need that crap. And if you wanna be a good Christian, never argue in favor of something that is not profitable in your relationship with God. (Not meaning you per se can't do it, but why do you think you needed it?) Neither do I. Especially not since 99 % of hollywood movies are filled with propaganda. That filth is to be boycotted
Thank you Finny! I came to the same conclusions on my own as I was also raised my movies and television. For me it was the movies “Grease” and “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” from the 80s. I could recite both those movies by heart as a young girl (and probably still can). Needless to say, those movies (and others) gave me the values I carried into adulthood. (Didn’t matter what anyone else taught me.) Children value what they SEE, and visual media is a powerful force that lives deep in your psyche forever. I’m trying to undo the damage done to me by visual secular media (magazines and advertising too), but it’s extremely difficult. Thank you for this talk on this important topic.
Difficult indeed. Impossible? No way! Don't give up the fight!
Thank you for this teaching. I wish more Christians would take it to heart. I gradually got rid of almost all secular entertainment in the years after becoming a Christian. I simply did not fit with the Christian life. It's either a time waster or it actively promotes what is immoral. It focuses the heart on the flesh. We don't do television or radio in our home, but we will watch selected videos for learning purposes.
The only thing I'd add is that literature should not get a free pass. It may be admired for its artistry, or be historically significant in some way, but most literature of the past century and a half at least is just preparing the West for Secularism and Humanism. Only a small amount is really godly or edifying for the Christian.
Thanks for this. Very much agreed!
@@allthingsthroughhim3856 You're welcome. Bless you.
@@holinessofthebride1935 bless you too!
Amazing!
“What is highly exalted among men is abomination for God” wonderful sentence and reminder to avoid unwanted inputs via Media. Excellent and thought provoking message brother, praise be to God! Continue the good work.
I honestly could not imagine anything greater than not having a TV.
Excellent message on a subject which is incredibly big in our culture. Very few see the dangers inherent in worldly entertainment and even fewer are sounding the alarm. This is just one more example as to why church attendance in the West is declining sharply. Stadiums are packed, theaters and concert halls are full, online entertainment of all types are everywhere while every year there are fewer and fewer Christians who bother to assemble together with other believers! Even conservative churches have fallen under the spell of Entertainment.
A.W.Tozer wrote a booklet on religious movies years ago and I'm convinced it was the most unpopular and most controversial thing he ever wrote!
Thank you for the warning.
Most "Christian" music is a deadly deception, when it comes to both lyrics and beats. This would be more tolerable: (not suggesting to listen to it tho)
ruclips.net/video/7H3wwSNVDVw/видео.html
I have quit all professional sports, I wish I had done it earlier. I do still practice sport myself, because that is what sport is for, for your personal fitness, not to feed the masses.
GREAT TEACHING
Despite being an older message this was a challenge and a blessing to my soul, as everything is that provides clarity on an issue of struggle in the Christian life. Going to public school, I didn't like art class much, once it started teaching art theory and art history. Back then I said that I don't like modern art and that the idea there has to be a message in every painting ruins even those pictures I would otherwise find pleasant to look at. However even the classic Renaissance art seemed strange to me in some way. It just felt wrong. But there I could not deny that it's art. So what could I say to criticize it? Thank you for clearing up where the idea comes from even among Christians that "art" is untouchable. That misconception is how conservative Christians start making thriller movies, claiming that they are "stories that need to be told". Now I know why I need not feel bad not watching or supporting those movies. Those were just some examples.
Thank you. football just go away.
Well said. Sports should be practiced (not professionally), not watched
good teaching!!
I really disagree with this message. Let me explain why:
Most of what he says are assertions that are not self-evidently true. Furthermore, he gives no evidence for his assertions, either from the Bible or from any other reliable or authoritative source.
Tertullian is not Christ. “Spectacles” is not part of the Biblical canon. He wasn’t even a contemporary of the apostles. The scripture alone is authoritative on Christian living (sola scriptura). To the extent that the early church fathers teach accurately from the Bible, it can be helpful, only in the sense that any other pastor living today can be helpful.
Keeping kids “pure” is a misnomer. His concept of purity (the same as my parents while we were growing up) denies the depravity of their wicked little human hearts. You can take away the movies and the music and any other potentially evil influence, and they will have plenty of impurity remaining on their own.
Jesus said it is what comes out of a person that defiles him, not what goes into a person. Similarly, Aristotle defined virtue as a habit of rightdoing. Thoughts become acts, acts become habits, and habits form new desires. Acts are normative, being both the product of and the catalyst toward new desires. See Mark 7:20 and Proverbs 4:23. It is what we choose to do and choose to desire, not what we see and hear, that define us and shape our character. Those are influences, but we can see and hear plenty that we do not choose to embrace and act on-or we can choose to embrace and act on the opposite. We are not determined by our environment, as this man seems to suggest. See www.artofmanliness.com/articles/manvotional-habit/
The promise that kids’ “purity” will give them great “power,” more so than their impure parents, is dangerously flattering. I experienced this growing up. Bill Gothard’s motto was “Giving the world a ’new’ approach to life.” He used similar rhetoric about the power that us “pure” kids would have. It was all a lie. This power never materialized. Instead, our young hearts were lifted up in pride for our purity and our “new way of life.” Then, we were titillated by the things that we were not exposed to and still fell into “fleshly lusts,” including myself and many others I know of. See Col. 2:20-23. The efforts by our parents to shield us were well and good and needed up to a point, but then they failed to teach us and be there with us when we were exposed to the evil things of the world, so that we had to grapple with these in isolation. Sheltering your teens and young adults in this way just kicks the inevitable can down the road to a place where they will be alone when they have to confront evil for the first time.
The assertion that what you see and hear always stays with you assumes that you can never forget. This is biologically untrue. You can forget, and you are not bound to take porn that you might see at a weak point to the marriage bed, as he presumes. There are memories of things I saw and did years ago that I would like to forget completely. Now and again something reminds me of them, but I’m also reminded of what Christ did to bring me out of that. The more I choose not to reinforce those memories with further decisions, the dimmer and more distant those memories become. If it were true that you couldn’t forget anything at all, your brain would be sick and you would literally go crazy. See www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5657245/ for just a sample of the scientific evidence of physical mechanisms for forgetting.
Teaching from anecdote, such as his love for Rocky that he claims led to injuring his brother, is dangerous. You can’t verify personal anecdote, and one can find an anecdote to make literally any point you want. Humans are biased, confirmation bias is rampant, and this guy is no exception. Bill Gothard used to do the same thing. And by the way, he punched his brother in the face because he was a kid, not because he watched Rocky IV. As evidence, his brother didn’t hit back. They didn’t re-enact the Rocky vs. Drago fight right then and there. And I’ll bet you that was the last time he ever hit his brother like that.
He confuses the essence of holiness with the product of holiness. It is who you are, not what you do, that makes you holy. See medium.com/@jhill9693/on-confusing-holiness-with-perfection-24ef1ef49094
Nowhere does he encourage Christians to fill their minds with the Bible, which is the only thing that can purify our minds from the wrong thinking that our flesh, the world, and Satan, encourages-and will encourage whether we watch TV or not.
Nowhere does he mention the role of the Holy Spirit in dealing with temptation.
He mistakes objectionable elements of media for inherent elements of media. It’s just as possible to make a good movie as it is to make a bad one. It’s also possible to watch a movie that has good and bad while embracing the good and discarding or ignoring the bad. It is logically fallacious to say, “1. Rocky IV is bad. 2. Rocky IV is a movie. 3. Therefore, movies are bad.” It is equally fallacious to say, “1. Rocky IV is bad. 2. Rocky IV is a movie made by Hollywood. 3. Therefore, all Hollywood movies are bad.” Those statements are neither true nor logical.
He asserts that our first loyalty is to holiness, but the Scriptural evidence for this claim doesn’t bear it out. Our first loyalty is to Christ, not to conservative standards. The “greatest of these” is charity, not conservative standards.
The Bible does not say, “thou shalt not watch movies made by Hollywood, such as Rocky IV.” So, well-meaning and God-fearing Christians who are loyal to Christ can and will differ on questions such as these, and no one can say that watching Rocky IV is absolutely a sin and that Christians should have absolutely nothing to do with any of the forms of entertainment available to us today. That would be unbiblical and false teaching.
Now don’t get the wrong idea. There are good reasons to abstain from some or all Hollywood movies. Why didn't he talk about these reasons?
- To avoid funding a corrupt and debauched industry.
- Seeing sinners sin on the silver screen isn’t fun or appealing for the follower of Christ. Instead, it is painful.
- You cannot see how doing so personally glorifies Christ (1 Cor. 10:31).
- Not abstaining would violate your conscience (Rom. 14:5).
- You have better things to do with your time (Eph. 5:16).
- The worldview, values, and main message of the story is antithetical to the Gospel. It is “earthly, sensual, devilish” (James 3:15).
- To avoid temptation in an area of personal weakness (Heb. 12:1)
Likewise, here are some good reasons why we might not abstain from all Hollywood movies:
- The consequences of sinful choices and of evil are clearly depicted.
- Good and evil are accurately depicted, and good is upheld as superior to evil.
- The story’s shape and message are metaphorically consistent with the Gospel. The story follows an archetypal form, what C.S. Lewis would term a “true myth.”
- You are able to minimize the financial benefit to the Hollywood industry (such as by taking advantage of free rentals or borrowing rather than paying for theater tickets on opening day).
- It is reasonably free from elements that would cause you personally to stumble in an area of weakness (Heb. 12:1, James 1:21).
- It is beautiful-visually, musically, morally-according to a Christian aesthetic.
- Doing so would not detract from higher priorities (Eph. 5:16).
- Doing so would not cause a brother or sister in Christ to stumble (1 Cor. 8:13).
The "biblical canon" in your opening remarks that you use to exclude and dismiss the church leader Tertullian (200 AD) was decided in 390 AD. 🤔
Sola scriptura is based on a later not early church Fathers' endeavor... just saying.
Jesus taught in Matthew 5:27-30 whatever causes you to sin, pluck it out of your life, else 🔥
Moreover, Sola scriptura does not say, as you did, that children are depraved, but NeoGnostic protestant theology says that.
Hello. While I would say it is not the worst sin whatever you watch and listen to will influence you. I cannot say what it is, but like Brett said, whatever it is that affects you in a negative way, better cut it out.
it is your choice. Be fed with garbage and become garbage
"Tertullian is not Christ. “Spectacles” is not part of the Biblical canon. He wasn’t even a contemporary of the apostles." One of the few points I agree with, I wonder why we do not question those so called sources, since there are many so called Mark Twain quotes that are not his. We do not know what happened, perhaps writings may have been lost, and indeed some of the Anabaptists may abuse it for propaganda against Christians who rightfully support death penalty (Rom. 1:28-31). But could THIS quote or Tertullian not match up with the Bible? See 1 John 2:15, sorry.
"The scripture alone is authoritative on Christian living (sola scriptura)"
God is the main authority, but that does not mean God did not spoke outside the scripture. Also, God's moral standards should be realized quickly when looking at our culture. While pedophilia is not per se adressed in the Bible, we can still see it is wrong.
"Keeping kids “pure” is a misnomer. His concept of purity (the same as my parents while we were growing up) denies the depravity of their wicked little human hearts." Says who? Honestly, why do you even have to suck your kids into that garbage?
"You can take away the movies and the music and any other potentially evil influence, and they will have plenty of impurity remaining on their own." Yawn. Would it really be a loss for them? When I was that age, we used to prefer going outside and playing there over watching some stupid movies. As an adult you can do it if you like, but also make sure yourself what you consume.
"Jesus said it is what comes out of a person that defiles him, not what goes into a person" Talking about food, not movies.
"Nowhere does he encourage Christians to fill their minds with the Bible, which is the only thing that can purify our minds from the wrong thinking that our flesh, the world, and Satan, encourages-and will encourage whether we watch TV or not."
Uhm... what type of argument is that?
"Nowhere does he mention the role of the Holy Spirit in dealing with temptation."
Duh. Using excuses, eh? Even an Atheist knows better than you that his actions have consequences. You have no excuses.
"The Bible does not say, “thou shalt not watch movies made by Hollywood, such as Rocky IV.”"
Aw, I love those strawmen. The Bible also does not literally say not to have an abortion, but according to what we read in context, that IS what the Bible is saying.
"It is beautiful-visually, musically, morally-according to a Christian aesthetic."
Many pieces of art and music indeed are, Even many more however are the exact opposite.
Remember that i am a deist rather than a Christian, BUT I can clearly see that most of your arguments are purely emotional. No thanks. We don't need that crap.
And if you wanna be a good Christian, never argue in favor of something that is not profitable in your relationship with God. (Not meaning you per se can't do it, but why do you think you needed it?) Neither do I. Especially not since 99 % of hollywood movies are filled with propaganda. That filth is to be boycotted
@@jesusstudentbrett well said