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Should Christians or Pastors Attend or View
Hi, my name is Jan Owen. I am a woman following, loving, seeking and worshiping Jesus. These writings are my thoughts as I journey through both the pains and joys of life.
After serving as a worship pastor for 15 years, I am now a worship missionary, serving as the President of the Give Worship Project, Inc., a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization to help equip indigenous church leaders, particularly in the area of worship. You can donate by using the DONATE button below. All your gifts are taxdeductible and very appreciated. Thanks!
The biggest movie that has come out is, without a doubt, "Slum Dog Millionaire". And yes, it is rated R. I seen tons of Twitter chatter from Christians that I both trust and respect talking about what a fantastic movie this is and what a great message it has. According to my research there is no nudity or sex, but it is a hard movie that shows some difficult circumstances and domestic violence.
After all of my research I would love to see this movie. But I am torn.
Here is my admission (and I don intend for this to sound in any way selfrighteous): I have only seen one Rrated movie in the theatre in my entire adult life and that was "The Passion of the Christ"! I rented few watch at home such as: "Schindler List" and "Glory". Any others I seen were tv versions that had been a bit cleaned up. In fact I watched "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" a dozen times without knowing that certain "famous" scenes even existed!
Part of this is a conviction of mine that I don want to fill my mind with things that are ungodly. I don want to see sex scenes, etc. For this reason I will avoid certain movies. Part of this has been that I felt a responsibility as a believer and even more so as a minister to set an example and I would hate for someone to see me going into an Rrated movie and have their faith somehow weakened as a result. Yet some Rrated movies are so worthy of viewing. For example, I would say that all adults SHOULD SEE "Schindler List" in their lifetime. And of course "The Passion of the Christ" is one that I took my son to see before he was 17! I understand that the question is not always clearcut.
So here is my question for the day.
Should Christians attend or even view RRated movies?
Note that I not asking for anyone permission to go see "Slum Dog", I just want to open up a discussion about this sometimes confusing issue!
What do you think?
If life had an average rating, I think it would be rated R. I know several Christians who abstain from Rrated movies. In my opinion, they are missing out on some of the best films ever made. Of course they are missing out on a lot of filth. But does a rating of PG13 make a movie any more clean? Are primetime TV shows and news reports occasionally Rrated?
It not the rating that really matters. It the content. With modern movie reviews, we can avoid certain situations in our movie viewing experience. I don think you should let movie critics determine if you are going to watch a movie. I think you should decide if you want to be exposed to certain visuals in your viewing experience.
Jan: have seen your name on Lifechurch and I believe Candid Chatter but saw this title on Without Wax and thought I would take a peek. You raise an interesting point. My wife and I happen to like action movies (Bourne, Indy, etc.) but have stopped short of many because of what the previews seem to imply. I have also used PluggedIn to review movies. Good thing for us is that our finances are so tight we are not often tempted to go to movies. My personal feelings are that I believe we should be careful what we do go see but have to be extra careful not to impose our belief system on someone else. The whole my freedom vs. your freedom thing. I know it probably doesn answer your question but those are my thoughts.
I think it depends totally on content. I seen PG13 movies with language so bad it really pushed the envelope of what was considered PG13. "Eagle Eye" comes to mind. I seen action and content so strong that it was problematic. "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" comes to mind here. Where is the magic line? 4 words that begin with get you a PG13 but 5 gets you an R? 3 murders get you a PG13, but 4 get you an R? That why we must ask for and then rely on God wisdom.
Plugged In Online is always a good source just from their perspective alone. If anything they come down more cautious than they need to be, but in things like this, too cautious is better than too permissive.
Having at one point in life been one who avoided Rrated movies and Pokemon and Halloween and Harry Potter and everything else under the sun because my religious culture said it would corrupt me, I migrated to the other side of the fence, if there is one. Or, perhaps,[url=http://nikefree.mobilejeti.com]nike free run[/url], in my life, I torn the fence down. Seems to me that I got terribly legalistic, dividing everything in life into bad/good, Christian/nonChristian, etc. I know that there are basic, fundamental truths especially about our faith, the divinity of Jesus, etc. but when it comes to humanity, it impossible to not enter the gray area from time to time.
I rambling, I know but my point is this: I am NOT going to trust the movie rating system to tell me what appropriate I don care if it rated or whatever. I going to use my brain. You know I raved about "Slumdog", and I tell you this: I intend to let my 9year old son watch this rated movie, with me alongside to explain it (and hiding his eyes during the one intense torture scene). There is a redemptive quality and enough truth in "Slumdog" to make it something I would like him to learn from. However, there are plenty of PG13 movies that I will NOT let him watch (although, unfortunately, he seen plenty while at his father house.)
I gave up trying to hide myself behind labels (not that you doing that, Jan but it what I did): "Oh, I good because I don see R movies. I a good Christian because I don drink. I am good because my kids don dress up for Halloween." I followed the roles but my soul was a whitewashed piece of junk.
These days, I live according to God leading, and make darn sure that I leaning into relationships and trying to let His light shine. That how it worked for me.
Forgive me, but one more thing (just to show how differently God has wired us): I did NOT see "The Passion of the Christ" on principle, because I do not what my interpretation of the life of my Savior impacted by a movie. I am so visually impacted that I knew once I watched the movie, I would forever picture those scenes when I read the gospels. I am not comfortable with that (or at least I wasn I thinking of watching it this year before Easter.) So my hangup is with an Rrated movie, but for a completely different reason.