Satan knows that if he can get us to laugh at things we believe we would never do, our defenses will fall.
We are not encouraged to forsake our sin by having our senses amused or our preferences coddled. The Gospel is inherently and irreducibly confrontational. It cuts against our perceived righteousness and self-sufficiency, demanding that we forsake cherished sin and trust in someone else to justify us. Entertainment is therefore a problematic medium for communicating the Gospel, because it nearly always obscures the most difficult aspects of it – the cost of repentance, the cross of discipleship, the narrowness of the Way. Some will disagree, arguing that drama can give unbelievers a helpful visual image of the Gospel. But we have already been given such visual images. They are the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper and the transformed lives of our Christian brothers and sisters (Mark Dever and Paul Alexander).
Doing Responsible Evangelism, taken from The Deliberate Church, © 2005, Crossway Books, a division of Good News Publishers, Wheaton Illinois 60187, p. 55, www.crosswaybooks.org.
All great amusements are dangerous to the Christian life; but among all those which the world has invented there is none more to be feared than the theatre.
Pensees,1660.
Even Christians who refuse to indulge personally in sinful sexual activity often watch movies and shows, read books and articles, and visit Internet sites that highlight, display, promote, or make light of sexual immorality. It’s as if we’ve said to the world, “We’re not going to do what you do, but we will gladly entertain ourselves by watching you.” It’s sick, isn’t it, this tendency that brings delight to us when we observe others in sexual sin?
Taken from Counter Culture, Copyright © 2015 by David Platt. Used by permission. Website: Radical.net. Page 164.
After consuming a quantity of junk food, we have no appetite for healthy food. In the same manner, after feeding our souls on Satan’s sinful, sour, salacious cesspool, (media) we have no desire for God’s spiritual food (Bible).
Why do we find it so easy to be amused by behavior that God hates and that Jesus Christ died to save us from?
Everyday Talk, Talking Freely and Naturally about God with Your Children, Shepherd Press, 2004, p. 108, Used by Permission. Get this book!
