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What should we do when Hollywood produces movies we don’t agree with?

We Christians tend to be a fickle bunch. We don’t put our money where our mouths are and we’re living to regret it. Let me explain.

We say we don’t agree with a lot of things: like premarital sex and adultery and divorce and homosexuality. The list goes on. Yet for decades now we’ve bent the rules. We’ve ignored our own “should nots” and justified our decisions to pay big bucks to watch whatever sort of entertainment is thrown our way. Simply because we’ve wanted to. We’ve wanted to be entertained. We’ve wanted to be amused in a land of make believe even if that land goes against everything we say we believe.

Little by little, like the culture around us, we’ve become desensitized to sex on the big screen. We’ve become jaded about nudity. We’ve become amoral when it comes to our entertainment choices.

What used to shock us during prime time now makes the list of our favorite TV shows. What used to ruffle our feathers is now regular fodder for office chat.

When 50 shades of grey came out, many Christians spoke against it. Our sensibilities were offended. Yet in its opening 3 days, 50 shades gathered a nice $81.7 million in over 3000 locations. Then came Fifty Shades Darker, which didn’t live up to its prequel in numbers, but still had an official trailer with 114 million views in the first 24 hours of its release online. That’s huge. Were those clicks evangelical clicks? We’ll never know for sure, but it seems to me that many might have been.

You might think I’m being dramatic, if not a little bit judgmental. You would never ever watch 50 shades of grey, after all. You have your limits. Yet you, like me, have stacked your Netflix queues with shows that you would never want your pastor to see.

Your pastor who according to Barca research has the same issues with his entertainment choices that you do. Most pastors (57%) and youth pastors (64%) it turns out, admit they have struggled with porn, either currently or in the past with over 21 percent of youth pastors and 14 percent of pastors admitting they currently struggle with using porn.”

The struggle is real.  

Barna polls also show that 64 percent of Christian men and 15 percent of Christian women admitted to viewing pornography at least once a month, compared to 65 percent of men and 30 percent of women who identified as non-Christian and said they watched porn at the same rate.

When it comes to our viewing habits, we who call ourselves christians are not that different from the rest of the world.

Enter LeFou and Gaston and the most recent Hollywood morality debate. 

What should we do when Hollywood produces movies we don’t agree with?

To protest on the grounds of Biblical morality sounds ridiculous if not hypocritical. To say nothing sounds wimpy and “safe”. But I wonder if we who call ourselves Christians are simply living out the repercussions of our own bad decisions. Perhaps we who call ourselves Christians should consider showing the world what we believe by simply putting our money where our hearts are.

Perhaps instead of pointing our fingers judgmentally at our non-believing friends and accusing them of offending our morals we should use our fingers to point to what we do stand for. One single dollar at a time.

Which might mean skipping a movie, or two, or even an entire Netflix subscription in order to teach our kids that what we value the most is not on a big screen. It’s in the pages of a book called the Bible.

Perhaps it’s finally time we switched the channel.

I wonder how big our impact could be if all of us who call ourselves Christians were willing to stand for what our God stands for. I mean really stand for it risking ridicule and not fitting in. I mean at the expense of our popularity and our cultural relevance. I mean at the expense of our own addictions and desires.

I wonder how big a dent we could make if we took our God seriously.

Which begs the question: where is your heart in this matter? Is it tethered to Hollywood, or is tethered to God and His word? 

Hey have you heard of Covenant Eyes? It’s an internet accountability and filtering system. I’ll be telling you more about it in weeks to come, but check it out here and get the first 30 days free! If you’re serious about holiness, you’ll want to do this! 

Here’s a great resource on purity for you from the archives:

podcast-purity

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