Stop, Drop, and Eject

The other night I watched a movie. I don’t watch many R-rated movies anymore. I wasn’t always like that. I suppose as soon as I was allowed to buy an R-rated movie ticket, I jumped at the chance…just because I could. At some point in college (it’s hard to say when it was exactly, what with my having spent nine years there) I met someone who didn’t like to watch R-rated movies. No, come to think of it, I had three friends who refused to see them. Their argument was the old “I don’t want that rubbing off on me.” I didn’t get it. I mean, it’s just a movie. It’s harmless. It’s not like I’m going to go kill somebody just because I saw it in a movie, right?

Well, I haven’t killed anybody, so don’t panic. I have, however, come around to their way of thinking. It’s a very gradual thing, the effect of movies. One becomes desensitized to hearing all the bad language, or seeing the way anger affects the characters, or seeing how people treat each other badly. It hardens our hearts, essentially. It reminds me of Pharaoh. He said he’d let the Israelites go numerous times, but he reneged on the promise, just because he could. He hardened his heart.

This movie I watched the other night was a movie I thought would be cute, after seeing the previews. At least two of my co-workers raved about the movie. So I rented it. After all, it was PG-13. What’s the big deal? Well, I’ll tell you the big deal: in this movie, there are no less than 29 times that the S word is used. TWENTY-NINE! That’s not a typo! And that’s not all. Some form of the Lord’s name being used in vain was used at least 35 times in the movie. (My thanks to the people at www.screenit.com who actually keep track of this so I don’t have to do it; if only I had checked prior to the Blockbuster trip.)

Working at a bookstore, I’ve finally learned that if I start reading a book and I don’t like it, I don’t have to finish it. The same thing goes for movies or anything else we put into our minds. If it isn’t good for us, we should hit the stop button then and there. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be looking at my life five, ten, twenty-five, or even fifty years from now and wondering what happened. I don’t want to have my heart hardened like Pharaoh.

“Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me.” Psalm 51:10 (NKJV)