What about entertainment?

Question 12036.

Every discussion about Christian entertainment eventually arrives at the same awkward moment, when someone asks whether a particular film, box set or video game is acceptable and everyone in the room quietly hopes the answer will land on their side of the line. I have been in that room many times. I have also been the one squirming.

So let me say at the outset that I am not going to hand you a list of approved titles. Scripture does not work that way, and neither will I. What Scripture does give us is something better, a way of thinking that travels with you into every new format the culture invents.

Why the Christian entertainment question is harder than it looks

The Bible never mentions cinema, streaming or consoles. That is not a gap in revelation, it is the ordinary situation of every believer in every age, because the written Word gives us principles that outlast technologies. The Christian entertainment conversation feels difficult precisely because we want a verse and we are given a mind instead, a mind being renewed by the Spirit.

Think about how quickly the ground shifts. Twenty years ago the argument was about which films to rent. Now the argument is about algorithms that decide what you will watch next before you have decided anything at all. A rulebook written for one medium is obsolete within a decade, which is why rules about Christian entertainment date so badly. A renewed conscience does not.

That is why I keep returning to Christian ethics as a discipleship matter rather than a compliance matter. The question is not simply whether I am allowed to watch this. The question is what kind of person I am becoming while I watch it.

What Scripture actually puts in our hands

Paul tells the Roman believers not to be conformed to this world but to be transformed by the renewal of their minds, Romans 12:2. The Greek behind that word for world in other passages, kosmos, describes a whole system of values organised without reference to God. Entertainment is one of the most efficient delivery systems that system has ever produced, because it teaches through delight rather than argument.

Then there is Philippians 4:8, where Paul directs our thinking towards what is true, honourable, just, pure, lovely and commendable. I have heard that verse used as a blunt instrument, as if any story containing wickedness is automatically off limits. That cannot be right, because Scripture itself contains adultery, genocide, incest and betrayal, told without flinching. The difference lies in how evil is framed. The Bible never invites you to enjoy sin. It shows you sin so that you will hate it.

Add to that the searching question of 1 Corinthians 10:31, whether we eat or drink or whatever we do, doing all to the glory of God. That verse sits in a passage about disputed practices, which is exactly where the Christian entertainment debate lives.

The heart of the matter is appetite

Jesus said that what defiles a person comes out of the heart, not into it from outside. Yet He also warned about the eye as the lamp of the body, Matthew 6:22-23. Both are true. Watching something does not automatically corrupt you, and pretending that what you watch has no formative power is naive. Appetite is trained, and Christian entertainment trains it quietly. It is trained by repetition, by pleasure, by familiarity.

I notice this in myself. Sit through enough drama in which adultery is portrayed as liberation and something in you stops flinching. Laugh often enough at cruelty dressed as comedy and your sympathy quietly narrows. Nobody decides to become coarse. People become coarse by degrees, and Christian entertainment is one of the most powerful engines of that gradual change.

There is also the reverse effect, which we speak about far less. A well made story can enlarge sympathy, expose self deception and make virtue attractive in a way a sermon cannot. I have been convicted by novels. I have been moved to pray by a film. Good art can serve the truth even when its maker had no such intention.

Romans 14 and the freedom to differ

Paul spends a whole chapter on believers who reached different conclusions about food and days, and his conclusion is remarkable. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind, Romans 14:5. He does not flatten the difference. He forbids contempt in both directions, the strong despising the weak and the weak judging the strong.

Apply that to Christian entertainment and a great deal of heat leaves the room. My conscience is not the standard for yours. If a brother cannot watch a particular series without being drawn back into an old sin, his abstinence is obedience, not legalism. If a sister watches it with a clear conscience and a discerning eye, my disapproval is opinion, not doctrine.

What Paul will not allow is indifference to one another. Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin, he says, and he charges the free believer not to trample the conscience of the weaker one. Freedom that wounds someone else has stopped being Christian liberty and become self indulgence with a theological alibi.

Questions I ask before I press play

Rather than a list of banned genres, I use a set of questions, and I ask them honestly. Does this pull me towards sin I am already fighting? For someone battling pornography, a series with explicit content is not a grey area, it is a trapdoor. Knowing your own weakness is not weakness, it is wisdom.

Can I watch this and still pray afterwards? That question has saved me more than once. If I find myself avoiding God for the rest of the evening, my conscience has already given its verdict and I am simply refusing to hear it. Paul talks about a conscience, and the way it gets seared is by being repeatedly overruled.

Would I be content for this to be the last thing I did? That sounds dramatic until you remember that we are told to redeem the time. I am not suggesting every hour must be productive. Rest is a gift and enjoyment is not sin. But there is a difference between rest and anaesthesia, and Christian entertainment often blurs it.

When rest turns into escape

Quantity matters as much as content. A programme that is harmless in itself can still be harmful in volume, because time is the one resource we cannot replenish. If the evening disappears without prayer, without conversation, without a book, without the people God has actually placed in my life, then the problem is not the programme, it is the pattern.

Escape is the honest word for a good deal of our viewing. Something in us wants to be somewhere else, someone else, free from the pressure of the week. That instinct is not wicked, but it can become a substitute for the only rest that reaches the soul. Jesus invites the weary to come to Him and find rest, Matthew 11:28, and no screen has ever kept that promise.

Ask any honest pastor about the spiritual health of the average congregation and you will hear less about heresy than about distraction. I would rather warn people about the slow erosion of attention than police their viewing habits.

Discernment is a skill, not a rulebook

Hebrews says that solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice, Hebrews 5:14. Trained. Practised. That is the language of a craft, learned over time, not a switch flipped at conversion, and it is the only approach to Christian entertainment that survives contact with real life. A mature believer can watch a story about sin and see it for what it is, and can also walk away when the story starts asking them to cheer for it.

This is why I would rather teach my congregation to think than to obey a list. Lists produce either scrupulosity or evasion, and both leave the mind untrained. A Christian entertainment ethic worth the name must be able to handle a medium that has not been invented yet.

It also means talking about what we watch. Some of the most useful conversations I have had with younger believers began with a film. Discernment grows in company. It withers in secret, which is one more reason why private viewing on a personal device deserves more scrutiny than family viewing in a shared room. See also how to tell whether something is sin on the wider question of holiness in ordinary decisions.

So, now what?

Start with your own heart rather than someone else’s viewing. Ask the Lord to show you where your appetites have been shaped by what you have consumed, and be prepared for an uncomfortable answer. Then make one concrete change this week, not a grand programme of reform that collapses by Thursday.

If something has a hold on you, cut it off, and do not apologise to anyone for the decision. If your conscience is clear, hold your freedom gently and watch how you speak about believers who differ. And if you are a parent, remember that your children will learn far more from what you watch than from what you forbid. The most persuasive argument for a healthy approach to Christian entertainment is a household where the screen is genuinely servant rather than master.

What would change in your week if you treated your viewing as worship rather than as time off from it?

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

Philippians 4:8, ESV