Because of the utter saturation of entertainment in our culture, I believe that it is important to explore this subject at more depth. We often leave these subjects unexamined, much to our spiritual detriment. If we love God, then we will want to look into our entertainments further as well. Do they honour God? How can we know? I will seek to give you a perspective of what goes on in the heart as we are entertained. Nothing is so designed to manipulate our will, desires, or emotions quite like our entertainments. Therefore, we must be all the more diligent in our approach to them.
For starters, what is the trajectory of entertainments? What is the milieu of its conversation, the aims of the character’s lives, and the morals/values that are being taught? Those being “entertained” are exposed to all of those things, with our entertainments even creating a hunger in its consumers to be like such and such a character, or to have such and such a power, or to live in such and such a place—things that so often go against holding God as supreme in their lives, and which go against being content with His providence. Imagine entertainment as power to the tires of a car, which have a predetermined destination. To which direction are these tires aimed in such entertainments? That is the direction the entertainment is leading hearts. So, does it lead to holding God above all, or does it drive one to some other thing? Even such things as may appear inert to us are often hostile towards God. Think of movies, for instance, that seek to remove God (perhaps His only mention is in an expletive form; i.e., swearing). By entertaining this, we are entertaining a worldly philosophy that thinks it can do without God—bringing secularism into our homes, and thereby teaching it to ourselves and to our family. What about stories of fantasy lands where God is not held as the supreme Creator, but some other deity? Or places where “magic” happens normally and is desirable for power—even allegedly for “good”? We see so-called super powers or magic being used towards particular values or morals that are desired in their world.
Why should we fantasize (or lust after) anything that does not come from God, or anything that goes beyond God’s allotment for us? Why should we lust after godless and demonic powers, whose source is some power other than God Himself? In giving ourselves over to these entertainments, we are: (1) building a lust for power and things apart from God; (2) putting our hearts into a certain trajectory away from God; (3) giving our affections to that which is anti-God; (4) diminishing our contentment in God’s providence and our desires for Christ (replacing those with worldliness); and (5) normalizing worldly lusts and desires. Anything that does not have God as its primary aim and trajectory, leading us to serve Him whole-heartedly, necessarily leads our hearts astray when being “entertained” by them. This is because, the aim of entertainment is to captivate the heart in its stories, morals, and values. All such captivation of the heart away from singularity to God is evil. Is it no wonder then, that societies that are steeped in entertainments are those also steeped in wickedness? Such has been the stance of the church from its earliest times until now. As Christians, though, how can we stand to be entertained by that which diminishes God, or teaches morals or values apart from God, or seeks justification and power apart from God? Such things are idolatrous to their cores, and are therefore by no means fit for a Christian. No, such things should be abhorred, and we ought to seek that which is pleasing to God: that which holds what God desires and is above all. Such is that which exhorts and encourages us to serve God. Such helps to put us onto a trajectory towards godliness rather than immorality and idolatry.
I am not only referring to the evil and vain philosophies and morals that are taught in entertainments, but also us giving our hearts over to these things by allowing ourselves to be entertained by them. Remember that our heart is our will, desires, and decision-making—the whole inner-man. Whenever we watch entertainments, we almost invariably allow our hearts to will what we see, to desire wrongful aims by captivation, and to crave more entertainment. What is the object of the will, desires, and decisions in engaging in such entertainments? That is what we must be concerned with. For, even if we know it is fiction, or are unconvinced of its morals of philosophy, yet we yield our hearts to be captivated to pursue more of the same when we allow ourselves to be entertained by it. In effect, our entertainments become sessions of worship; worshipping whatever we are being entertained by—giving our hearts over to whatever we are entertained by. The question is, are our hearts being driven to God, or pulled into vain or even overtly wicked things? We become a partaker in those things whenever we are entertained by them.
Please reflect on what sorts of entertainments you consume, whether novels, movies, video games, social media, or other such things. We so often hardly even begin to realize just how captivated our hearts are by these things until we seek to go off of them for a while and seriously reflect on their value before God.
Next time, we will be looking at some concrete examples of how our hearts can be sinfully captivated by our entertainments.