Trash Watching

Kudos to Tim Challies who has a great post today, Pictures Aren't Words, about Christians watching certain movies. There is a huge movement today among many evangelicals to persuade us in all ways to get to the movie theater quickly so we can relate to our non-Christian friends and neighbors. Forget the toll these movies might take on our soul and spirit.

Now Challies points out an interesting facet of this. He responds to a post by Greg Wright on the Resurgence blog. Wright uses as an example the story in Judges 20-21 which tells about rape, murder, pillage and other horrible things. Tim says pictures can be much more graphic than words. He also says that SEEING this on the movie screen, especially for teens as opposed to reading it in vague detail in the Bible is completely different and has a different impact.

Tim writes,
Like me, I'm sure you've heard people defend the violence and swearing and other ungodly behavior in film by saying, "The Bible has all of these elements!" And this is true. The Bible has many stories of violence and sexuality and just about every other manner of sin. But there is a difference. It is all well and good to suggest that a movie based on Judges 20-21 would receive the ominous NC-17 rating. It likely would and for good reason. Yet when we read it in the Bible it would not. Why? Because words convey the story far differently than images. With words we read only what we need to know and receive little detail. We know the broad outline of the story, but the details are blessedly hidden from us. This would not be the case if the story were told in images. As film, the details would be in full view. We would see rape and bloodlust and dismemberment. We would see the parts of the story that were kept from us. If we have a high view of the Bible we have to accept that God gave us only and exactly what He wants us to know.
Then he goes on to intimate that the Bible is inspired by God; a movie version may not be.
Amen to Tim Challies. I frankly am tired of the movie thrust. And since I live 20 minutes from Hollywood, we hear this drivel all the time here in the churches here, especially from nearby Fuller Seminary (15 minutes from me).
IN my day, when a Fuller student took me out on a date to a questionable movie, he would apologize later and say that we went to see the photography. Yea, right. Today the excuse is "to find some hidden Christian message so we can discuss it with our non-Christian neighbors and friends." Uh huh. I have an idea. Do what I do. I bet I can discuss almost any of the top 5 films out today, and in addition tell you what music is playing in the L.A. area in classical, jazz and rock/hip-hop venues. I can also tell you about art exhibits and plays in the area. Adding to those, I can tell you the most talked about TV shows and what they are about. Yet I don't have to attend or watch any of the events I've listed unless I want to and think it would be edifying. So, how do I do that?

I read the Arts and Entertainment section of my paper every day (the Los Angeles Times in my case since I live near L. A.