Joyful Recommendations: Entertainment and Media

So often, for the sake of desiring to be entertained, people (this of course includes myself) watch things that they know aren't right, but make excuses...like, "well, it's just this one scene," or, "I would never do those things," or, "I'm old enough," "everyone else watches it," etc.

Romans 1:32 says, "Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them." For the Christian, we often know (whether through the Word or the conviction of the Holy Spirit) when something isn't quite right with what we are watching, but many times because we either are too proud to think we'll be affected or don't have enough courage or don't believe God, we keep watching.

In the book of Psalms David scribes this prayer,

"I will set before my eyes
no vile thing.
The deeds of faithless men I hate;
they will not cling to me." (Psalm 101:3).

Granted we can't remove ourselves from every wicked thing in this world, and God doesn't even want us to be out of the world, He does want us to avoid putting ourselves in places where we are being tempted to sin - especially when we are paying $7/8 to do so.

I'd like to have the gumption of David and be courageous enough to stop rationalizing and have the faith to be obedient to God's Word and flee the temporary pleasures of sin (in this case, being entertained) to have the eternal pleasure of glorifying Him and growing in holiness.

There are times, however, when we ignorantly step into a movie theatre or put one in our DVD player without expecting it to be bad and then WAM-OOOOO...a totally raunchy, unexpected image pops up onto the screen and now resides in our minds. While our minds can be renewed, these things aren't helpful. I can STILL recall images from a movie I watched in sixth grade that I would rather not.

So onto joyful recommendation #2 which is a FREE recommendation that can help you avoid situations like mentioned above....

http://www.screenit.com

or

http://www.pluggedinonline.com

Both of these websites allow you to see a general synopsis of movies and then break the movies into categories like language, violence, sexual content, etc and list the instances of those things in the movie. While pluggedinonline.org is run by Focus on the Family, is easier to navigate, doesn't have advertisements, and gives a concluding remark regarding whether or not the movie (in the author's opinion) is worth seeing, I tend to prefer Screenit's site for the sole reason that instead of having to read the instances of language, violence, sexual content, etc contained in the movie, you can just view their table at the top which says whether the language content is "none", "mild", "moderate", "heavy," or "extreme." That way you can often make a decision without even having to read what the exact scenes are which can also sometimes effect our minds and therefore our hearts. PS - you don't have to "join now", you can scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and hit, "No thanks" and see movie reviews for free.

I'll leave you with a closing encouragement to "watch" what you watch :)

"Above all else, guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life." Proverbs 4:23