TOTAL DEVOTION 2006-2007 | THE CROSS: HIS GLORY, OUR HOPE.

What do you think about reaching the community by having a film/TV night in church and then having a God-centered dialogue about it afterwards?

(Due to the lengthy nature of this dialogue, we've broken the dialogue into different questions on the website. What follows is the preamble to a dialogue. This preamble actually is an answer to the issue of bringing the world in the church.)

Hey!

Thanks for the unexpected but very welcome email. We're glad to hear of your latest goings on!

Well, we're glad that you're plugging in to what seems like a great church over there. We pray for purity, faithfulness, and fruitfulness.

I did go on your church's website a couple of months back - just to check out where you are going; once a counselor/big brother, always one I guess - and I did notice that film/TV night program that you wrote of. As I was then, I am still ambivalent. I see, admire, and applaud the intent; however, knowing the deceptiveness of the human heart (and Satan) and its ability to work its wily ways to get what it wants, I am apprehensive.

I guess I've never been a big fan of bringing the world's diet and ways into the church (though bringing the church into the world is certainly our mandate!). One important but often overlooked aspect of the church is that it is a haven of rest in God, a temporary refuge in Him from the world. After being in the world all week, wrestling with its worldviews, resisting its pressures, navigating through its snares and its allurements, trying to capitalize on strategic opportunities for spiritual conversation and evangelism, etc., sometimes we need a break, a "pit stop" for refueling, refreshment, refocus, and just plain communion with God in a corporate setting; a place where we can let our guard down just a little and "catch our breath." That's why Sundays and Fridays are feasts for me, and why I jealously guard its sanctity. It's where I rejoice in God's word being read and taught, God's music being played and sung, and God's people loving and edifying one another.

That's why I have a more difficult time listening to sermons in church that utilize illustrations from movies, TV, commercials, (stuff that's not even real), etc. to illustrate biblical truth. I feel that we get enough of that Monday - Friday; on Sunday morning, just give me the Word! Let the Bible illustrate itself. I'll make the application.

Of course, I'm not advocating monastic measures or anything, but I am saying that the church, first, is for God and His "needs" before it is for the world and its needs. Being comes before doing; who we are comes before what we do (even if we're doing good things, like engaging the culture).

It's kind of like marriage (which is His analogy for our relationship with Him): we must first take care of our relationship with our beloved before we offer our help to the world. If I'm not right at home first, I'm not right in the world. How do I stay "right" at home? Undistracted time and devotion to and with my beloved, and my family. That's one reason why Sandra hates the TV just being on. For instance, when I get a chance to watch Lakers games, she feels that we just invited the whole Staples Center into our family room. Why don't we have real guests over instead?

Even though we love to have guests over and our doors are open to anyone who wants to come over, there are guidelines to it. I won't let them bring porn over or things that desecrate God's holiness and hurt His people. People are welcome into my house any time, but my house is a holy place too; I won't entertain things here that offend the Master of the house or contribute to the demise of His people.

That's also why I don't want to let unwholesome thoughts/images/people into my soul (God's temple) via the media. Movies/TV often give us a voyeuristic opportunity that real life doesn't. Let me illustrate this with an example from Randy Alcorn's The Purity Principle.

Suppose I said to you, "There's a great looking girl down the street. Let's go look through her window and watch her undress, then pose for us naked, from the waist up. Then this girl and her boyfriend will get in a car and have sex - let's listen and watch the windows steam up!" What would you think? You'd think I was a pervert, right?

But suppose instead I said, "Hey, come on over. Let's watch Titanic." Or worse yet, "Let's show Titanic at church and then have a discussion afterward."

As I understand it, that movie contains precisely these same scenes. Can I ask you what Alcorn asks? How does something shocking and shameful somehow become acceptable because we watch it through a television or movie screen instead of a window? And, in terms of the lasting effects on our minds and morality, what's the difference?

Alcorn writes, "Every day Christians across the country, including many church leaders, watch people undress through the window of television. We peek on people committing fornication and adultery, which our God calls an abomination. We've become voyeurs, Peeping Toms, entertained by sin ........ The enemy's strategy is to normalize evil."

Even the process of getting that kind of imagery to the big screen is wrong. Two people have to get naked and have sex in front of people so they can video it? What ends justifies those means?

That's precisely the reason I told you that I could differ with (your pastor's) assessment of viewing a romantic scene in a movie. Even just thinking about a romantic scene gets my blood pumping.

So, to have discussion groups that talk about and evaluate the themes in movies is one thing, but to show the movie in the church is another, especially if it's PG or R-rated (with its language, coarseness, immorality, etc). On a side note, if John MacArthur won't even go to a theater, lest people see him and use him for their justification, imagine what he'd think of bringing the movie in his church?

When it boils down to it, honestly, what we watch for our entertainment, we celebrate (I acknowledge that one may possibly watch something for some educational purpose). With the power of the visual, when we lay down to sleep at night, it's not the propositions that were discussed that will be left imbedded in our subconsciousness, but the images (usually sinful) and its gravitational pull toward my baser instincts. How many people do you think could actually stumble over what they just watched at church if a church showed a typical Hollywood movie? 1? 2? More?

Well, that actually just my pre-amble. I'll attempt to comment on your points below.

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