ENTERTAINMENT
Over the
epitaph of this generation it will say ENTERTAINED TO DEATH.
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.
Blaise Pascal
Pensees,1660.
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.
Why do we
find it so easy to be amused by behavior that God hates and that Jesus Christ
died to save us from?
John A. Younts
Everyday Talk, Talking Freely and Naturally about God
with Your Children, Shepherd Press, 2004, p. 108, Used by Permission.
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).
Author
Unknown