Engaging with Culture - Media
“so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God,”
- COLOSSIANS 1:10
Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash
I’m sure I’m not the only one who, at the end of the day, loves nothing more than sitting on the sofa, putting on the TV and just relaxing. God knows that we all need rest, and He has blessed us with many ways to take this rest, and TV and movies can capture the beauty of His creation, the joy of laughter, or point us towards needs in our world and ways we can act to help. But, with so many different shows and films out there, what can we do to make sure that what we watch helps us “live a life worthy of the Lord and please Him in every way” (Colossians 1:10)? Naturally, as society’s morals, lifestyles and viewpoints move away from Christian values, the content we see on our screens does too. So, should we only watch, read and listen to overtly Christian content, created by Christians with solid theological backgrounds that has been vetted by the church and found to be all good? You could argue yes, but instead I believe there are three things we can think about to help us engage positively with a range of media.
Firstly, do your research. Bridgeton to me seemed like it would be a show right up my street. I love a bit of a period drama - the costumes, the formal ways of speaking and the fact that even in romantic period pieces, there’s generally no scenes which I would feel awkward watching with my parents. However, before watching it, I noticed reviews about how “steamy” it was, and a quick google showed me that this was actually not the chaste “Pride and Prejudice” I anticipated, so despite missing out on all the chat that was happening about it, I chose to not watch it. I can’t make a judgement call for you on what decisions you make on various shows after your research, but I encourage you to consider whether this show will be helpful to you (will it build you up and strengthen you in your faith?) or whether it could be harmful (normalise the world’s viewpoints and stir up emotions of lust, anger, envy?). You need to prayerfully figure out where the line is for you and then with your research you can assess what’s okay, or not, for you. This is not a one-time decision; your line may change as you grow as a Christian, so keep coming back and assessing what is edifying for you.
Secondly, be an active watcher. Don’t worry, I’m not about to advise you do star jumps while watching TV, but even when we’re using it as rest, we don’t want to be so switched off that we let it just wash over us and accept it as fact. We want to be assessing what we’re watching and reacting to it appropriately. Maybe a TV show is promoting doing everything you can to get to the top through wealth and status, so you need to react by reminding yourself of biblical truths like our worth coming from God not the world. On the other hand, maybe the latest series is showing something wonderful and great that reminds you of the goodness of God, the wonders of His creation, the ways He is merciful to us, and you can react by praising God, thanking Him, rejoicing in all He has done for us. Being an active watcher may take a little more work but it’s right to view everything through the eyes of faith, and it might lead to some fruitful conversations with your non-Christian friends.
“Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.”
- COLOSSIANS 3:2
Finally, we should balance our consumption. I am a pretty big consumer of media. I subscribe not just to Netflix, but to Prime Video and Disney+ and in 2020 I read 93 books on my Kindle. If our bible reading and prayer time could show similar stats, I would definitely be ashamed at how low they are - join me in working to improve this! Why is this important? If we look a bit further in Colossians it reads “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.” (Colossians 3:2). If we keep reading our bibles, praying, coming along to church, small group, youth group, CU etc., then we are building our relationship with Jesus who, by His Spirit will strengthen us resist the worldview that is portrayed all around us. By consciously investing our time in our walk with God, we are reminding ourselves of Bible truths that we can use to react to media, helping us to make those judgement calls on what would be helpful or harmful for us to watch, and setting our sights on what really matters and where our rest truly comes from.