The Sewage Pipe on the Living Room Wall

I don't wanna hear about how cringe and preachy Christian movies are ever again.

“We are discerning in our media choices.”

It is a pattern that I have seen again and again and again.

It is a pattern that I have lived.

At first, the media diet is very restrictive. Maybe it’s only educational movies with the occasional classic movie thrown in. The family listens to classical music and worship music, but nothing secular or overly contemporary.

Then mom and dad get bored, or they remember that movie or song they really liked as a kid. Maybe they have their drawer of films that are “just for them.”

Maybe that friend shares the cool song that isn’t really what they wanted their house to sound like… But man, that’s a catchy song.

Then the kids start getting older. Of course they have to introduce their 13 year-old to Star Wars, right? They don’t want him to be a troglodyte.

Now the 13-year-old has his mind blown and, of course, his siblings hear incessantly about how cool Star Wars is. Before too long, there’s a weekly family movie night. The films are still chosen carefully, but over the next few years the definition of “carefully” slides gradually.

Now, all the kids are teens or older. Nobody watches anything egregious, at least not by modern standards. But Hollywood and Nashville are thoroughly established as members of the household. Social media is a constant presence in the home. Screens have become the primary way that the family spends time together.

Nobody is watching Fifty Shades of Grey or Texas Chainsaw Massacre, though.

And there are good conversations about the worldview flaws in other popular entertainment.

So… They are still being “discerning” in their media consumption.

In completely unrelated news, the daughters of the family don’t really wear dresses anymore. They look and act more and more modern with every passing month. They’re much more interested in adventure and independence and vibing with friends than they are in service or sacrifice or submission.

The boys, meanwhile, spend large portions of their time and youthful energy playing video games. They have learned to think about women like consumers – they are not looking at p*rn, which is, statistically, a miracle, but even still they have learned what a beautiful woman is – and it is not a gentle, quiet, modest virgin. It’s a 95 pound vixen in 5 pounds of makeup and spandex.

CONTENT

Now pause. Step back and look. Extract yourself from the current cultural moment and assess the songs and the books and the films on their own merit. Let’s look at a few popular movies that our hypothetical family now has on their shelf:

The Hunger Games: a bunch of teenagers murder each other for the entertainment of dystopian overlords, while we watch a love triangle that includes teenagers kissing and sleeping together (but only because she was scared, and of course they had clothes on, and they had to kiss to get a sponsorship, so it’s all cool).

How to Train Your Dragon: a wimpy boy throws off the combined wisdom of all the older and manlier men based on his feels. The result is super fun (and, conveniently, does not involve the immolation of his entire town). Also he is infatuated with an extremely masculine, loud, bossy girl. She is SOOPER hawt.

Psych: a lazy, promiscuous con man makes his living by doing as little work as possible, while regularly disrespecting his dad and constantly pursuing illicit sexual pleasure. (This is the protagonist, not the villain.)

Star Wars: an exercise in pantheism where the heroes gain victory by becoming one with the divine spirit of the universe, seasoned in more recent years with thorough helpings of feminism and other leftist ideologies (which is not to suggest that Princess Leia was ever characterized by a gentle and quiet spirit).

Marvel: an entire fantastic universe of characters including pagan gods – who are actually aliens (which are actually demons IRL, but I digress), women with the attitude and attire of the Proverbs 7 woman and the occupation of a man, promiscuous playboy heroes, and endearing antiheroes like the sexy Loki or the demon-possessed Venom. The stories are full of miraculous signs and wonders, but none of them have anything to do with God – only with the gods of the MCU, in whom humanity places their hope.

K-pop Demon Hunters: do I even need to break this down in detail? And yet Christians have produced thoughtfully thinky think pieces about how this is an incredibly edifying film full of good messages.

Harry Potter: the Bible calls sorcery a killing offense, but Harry redefines sorcery a little bit and now it is super cool.

Tangled: mom is manipulative and bad. A cute, roguish stranger is trustworthy and good. It’s healthy and normal for a young teenage girl to go out into the world by herself and find her own way, and she will totally end up fine.

Moana: literal pagan pantheistic deities.

Enola Holmes: women are strong and mighty and powerful, and don’t need no man, and Henry Cavill – literally Superman – is intimidated by a little black lady with a teapot.

Hallmark movies: the man – or more likely the two remarkably hot men – are both created to be helpers suitable to our adorably spunky female protagonist, who is pursuing her life dream and getting some romance along the way. Homemaking and motherhood could not be further from her mind (though romance is always on her mind!), and any man that she marries will be the kind of man who respects her mission in life, not the kind of man who is looking for a helper in his.

None of this is to mention that most of the films that this family enjoys are thoroughly seasoned with the irreverent use of God’s Name, to the point where they aren’t even bothered by it anymore. The movies now regularly include sexual- and homosexual- innuendos. Violent content that would have turned their stomachs a decade ago they now enjoy while munching popcorn.

Our anecdotal family almost never sees a complete family unit living in harmony, and certainly never a wife who submits to and respects her husband as her lord, and is blissfully happy as a homemaker and mother with a gentle and quiet spirit. (Any woman like that in the film is either a victim or a cult member.)

Dads who try to speak with authority are either buffoons to be mocked, or they are jerks to be thwarted, or they are well-intentioned and they will come around in the end to realize that they need to let go of their children and let them go follow their heart off the nearest cliff.

I could go on. I’ve probably offended enough people for now. And we haven’t even considered books or music choices.

I would simply conclude with this question: how bad does it have to get? Try to objectively assess the media that fills your home. Think about what it contains. Not only the “content,” but the messages and the worldview.

Ask yourself, what would it take for something to be bad enough that I would actually stop watching?

Ask yourself if the answer to that question has changed over the last few years.

And ask yourself how your answer to that question stacks up against what Scripture tells us to be thinking about:

“Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.” - Philippians 4:8 NASB

COMPANY

So often, the conversation about media is discussed simply in terms of the content – 19 bad words, a sex scene, and some blood and gore.

And it is good to be aware of those things. Frankly, if we had not been so desensitized by the slow drip, those things would oftentimes be enough in themselves to make us take a hatchet to our TV.

But somehow, we got this idea that the “content” is the only concern. Perhaps if we could get a filtering service to cut out the bad words and the nudity, then the rest of the film would be fine.

But this is a foolish way of looking at the world. Scripture has much to say about the company that we keep, and it’s not simply because we might hear an occasional bad word from them.

Scripture says that the companion of fools suffers harm (Pr. 13:20). The famous opening lines of Psalm 1 pronounce that the man is blessed who does not “walk in the counsel of the wicked, or stand in the path of sinners, or sit in the seat of scoffers.” After presenting this as the negative, it continues on to say that this blessed man delights in God’s law and meditates on it day and night.

We do not give nearly enough weight to Scripture’s warnings about the company that we keep, or the meditations that we ruminate upon.

On the contrary, we import the company of some of the most immoral and degenerate humans on the planet directly to our living room wall. And somehow we think that if we cut out a couple of bad words, we will not be affected.

You cannot let your kids go hang out with the cool kids for three hours every afternoon and then expect to have a 15 minute conversation at the end of every week explaining why those kids are bad. You will lose.

Somehow, we understand this when it comes to letting our daughter go to prom – wait, no, we are far enough gone that that example doesn’t work.

OK, we understand this when it comes to letting our 10-year-old go hang out with the druggies in the back alley downtown.

Yet somehow, we think that this reality vanishes when we put in a DVD.

So ask yourself- who is your family keeping company with?

Would you let a flamboyant sexual deviant come into your house and make up a story for your children’s entertainment?

Think carefully about that question.

You probably already do.

CULTURE

Our affections are shaped by the stories that we love.

And you cannot out-argue the affections.

You can dismantle feminist propositions with extreme logical accuracy all day long, but if your daughters think that Black Widow is cool, you are losing the battle.

You can praise the glories of the Pr. 31 wife all day long, but if your sons think that Black Widow is hot, you are losing the battle.

(If *you* think Black Widow is hot, you are losing the battle.)

Home and childhood are not simply propositions. They are feelings and affections and habits. Our children grow up to be flavored by the sauces in which they marinate for their first couple of decades.

We need to choose those sauces wisely.

The movies we watch, the music we listen to, the stories that we read, the way we spend time together as a family, the way that we relax – these things fundamentally affect who we are.

We have a huge opportunity to help our children live in reality. To be unplugged people. People who relax by playing a game with their family. People who are not bored by the real world. People who are not addicted to the dopamine drip of social media or the constant high of something new to watch.

What if we raised the kind of children who could go play in the backyard by themselves with a football for hours?

What if we expected our children to actually learn self-control and the ability to entertain themselves quietly instead of sticking them in front of a screen so that they would behave?

Do our children see us turn to Christ and to prayer in times of stress? Do they see us when we are tired deciding to read a book together and then go to bed at a good time? Or are we setting the example that the best way to deal with stress and tiredness is to zone out in front of a screen? Is that really what we want our children to learn from us?

Is it really better to turn to Netflix to relax and unwind then it is to turn to a bottle of beer?

What if we didn’t assume that the way that modern Americans live is the correct way to live?

What if we stubbornly insisted on actual intelligence instead of artificial intelligence?

In a world like ours that is so saturated with screens, it is amazing how ubiquitous a culture of noise becomes. Going out to eat? Check your phone. Family time? YouTube. Going to the bathroom? Surf social media.

We spend so much time discussing whether or not these things are inherently bad that we forgot to ask whether they are actually good. We’ve been so busy asserting that we may that we failed to ask if we should.

That is a really important point. I’m not advocating here for unilateral legalism. I’m not saying Christians are not allowed to have televisions or enjoy movies. I’m asking us to reconsider why we love what we love. I’m asking us to make sure that our view of normal is more shaped by Scripture than it is by a culture that is completely unhinged.

You are going to stand before Jesus for your media choices. You’re not going to stand before me.

But you are going to stand before Jesus! And that is worth giving some thought.

HIGH PLACES

We need to tear down the high places, not only for ourselves, but for our children, and one of the great high places of America is the mausoleum of media.

You can be pro-life. You can speak out against transgenderism. You can argue for mass deportations.

But don’t touch Taylor Swift. Don’t question my enjoyment of Game of Thrones – besides, I skipped those scenes! Don’t say I shouldn’t be reading the Steamy Ballad of the Wizard Vampire Love Triangle – there’s nothing explicit in it!

Not only is this poisonous for us, but if we leave these high places up, I fear deeply for our children.

I want my children’s understanding of what a beautiful woman is to be more shaped by their mother than by Hollywood starlets. I want their idea of a good time to be running around in the backyard, not playing video games. I want them to see a clip of a movie where someone is blaspheming the Name of Jesus Christ and have a visceral reaction of disgust. I want them to come across the next vampire romance story or Marvel boss babe and feel nauseated.

I want them to be so accustomed to feeling real money that when they feel the counterfeit, they can tell that something is wrong.

This is not something that I can accomplish through any set of rules. It is a work that God must do in the hearts of my children. However, He also does expect me as the head of my house to teach them in the way they should go and to keep them from the company of the wicked.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable, therefore, to refuse to allow the wicked a direct portal into my living room.

I know this is seen as crazy these days. Legalistic, backwards, out of touch, radical.

But look around. We live in a world that is unclear on the definition of male and female. A world that thinks that women belong in combat and men belong at home in the kitchen. A world that puts women in the pulpit. A world that says that a baby magically develops the right to life as it passes through the birth canal. A world that thinks that our ancestors that were monkeys.

I want that kind of world to think that I am crazy.

Perhaps we are asking the wrong question. Perhaps we as Christians should be asking why we think that this crazy world is normal.

Someone might object by saying that if we do not expose our children to media while they are with us at home, then they will go off the deep end when they turn 18 and have no media discernment whatsoever.

But we don’t think this way about p*rnography. We don’t feel the need to watch Fifty Shades of Grey with our kids because “they are going to do it anyway.” We don’t ensure that our child’s first experience with crystal meth is one that they share with their parents. We don’t go booze it up at the bar every Friday night so that our kids will not be attracted to alcohol.

To be sure, relying on legalism to protect the hearts of our children from the world is a false hope, and there can be wisdom in measured exposure to things like alcohol and media. But the fundamental assumption that it is necessary to introduce our children to a significant dosage of the masterpieces of Sodom Studios is an assumption that is very much worth questioning.

Why do we feel like we need this stuff so badly? Why are we so desperate to be entertained? Why is it so hard to get up and walk out of a theater when the man on the screen is treating my Savior’s Name like mud? Why do we fight so hard to justify our dependence on this stuff?

Could it be that we have a high place in our hearts? An idol that needs to be torn down?

Is it really that incredibly unbearable to play a board game with our family, or to listen to a symphony, or to go to a park, or to do any of the other things that humans have been doing for thousands of years for entertainment?

Why can’t a candlelight dinner, a game of checkers, and some dancing make for a good date night? Our culture tells the parents of a large family that they should do what…? Yep. “Get a TV.”

Maybe that’s exactly backwards. Maybe date nights should involve a lot less TV and a lot more baby making.

Is the crazy person in the room the person who is looking at this hypothetical shelf full of films and wondering why Christian families would be putting this in their heads?

Or is the crazy person the person who thinks that it is necessary to be hooked up to a constant IV drip of sewage serum?

There is a real danger in being so on guard against legalism that we render ourselves unable to pursue holiness and righteousness. “Legalism” becomes no longer an actual threat- it’s a bogeyman, an easy excuse, an inoculation against conviction.

It is actually good to lay aside encumbrances and distractions that do not edify us. It actually is good to set no unclean thing before our eyes. It actually is good to meditate on God‘s Word day and night…

Which is a lot less boring if you aren’t used to being constantly stimulated day and night.

STOP AND SMELL THE ROSES

Brothers and sisters, please prayerfully consider this. Please don’t let your children become accidental disciples of the devil.

Stories have power, and we must choose the stories that we feed our children wisely.

Not only this, but how the stories are told matters. It has been said that more is caught than taught. Do not content yourself to simply analyze content. Consider what the actual medium itself is doing to its audience.

P*rn ruins real sex. Junk food destroys our appreciation for vegetables. TikTok makes rational, linear thought harder. And a steady intake of media renders the real world boring.

But God‘s real world is beautiful. It is better than the fake stuff. And if we slow down and learn to enjoy how good it is, we might cancel some of our subscriptions that are subsidizing professional inventors of evil, and stare into the eyes of our children more.

We might learn to actually stop and smell the literal roses, instead of just planting virtual ones.

We might get out onto God’s green earth and discover all of the sights and smells and sounds and flavors and feelings that He designed for us, which are far more beautiful than the virtual substitute could ever be.

We might begin to be able to see clearly without the fog of the modern Zeitgeist.

We might realize just how accustomed to the smell of sewage we had become.

We might fall in love with real life again.

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