We live in the most awesome entertainment age ever. Let’s be honest – the amount of good quality content available to us is unprecedented. From television shows to YouTube channels, we can now access shows and music that could literally consume our lives if we allowed it.
In the age of excellence, where more people than ever are able to have a professional voice that expresses and communicates, I believe it is important that we stay aware of what we are encountering. You can live life imagining that everything you watch is not affecting you, but we are definitely products of what we subject ourselves to.
Jose Mujica, formerly known as the poorest president in the world, said something that has stuck with me: “When you use money, you are paying with valued time”. Now, I am very aware that there are a lot of people who don’t pay for their entertainment these days, but you will always be “paying” with your time. So this begs the question, is what you are watching worth your time? Or rather, how much do you value your time?
I do believe it is important that we as Christians do engage with modern culture in all forms. These days whole friendships are built around phrases from television series and pop culture terms. To be relevant in life, you need to be able to share something. An easy way to do so is to know what’s going on in the entertainment world. Basically, enjoying good entertainment makes us relatable. But how we enjoy it needs to be different.
People use entertainment for different reasons: escapism, identification, education, curiosity, and even living vicariously. All of these, as much as they can be justified, are also extremely dangerous. The artists creating the content that is being engaged with globally are slowly pulling audiences into their worlds and perspectives. It is a subtle form of propaganda that is unavoidable.
Music, film, and other productions are slowly shaping how people think and react to the world. But this is not some fatalistic doomsday warning. I think it is one of the greatest opportunities ever! We just need some people creating content that draws people into positive change instead of negative digression or inconsequential stagnation.
I recently watched the remake of the most awarded film of all time: Ben Hur. As much as I could appreciate some of the modernisation of the storyline and the quality of production (the CGI was on point), I left with a nagging sense that the film was focussed too much on the Christian market – or at least towards people that had watched the original.
To fill you in, the story includes aspects of Jesus’ life – but it is not the focus of the film. In the end, it was an epic narrative with the crucifixion and healing ability of Jesus tagged onto the end – as if people knew about it and had context to apply it to the characters. I don’t doubt God could still use it, but as much as we need films about Jesus, we also need all types of content that has the inherent conviction of Jesus lying throughout it. We need to present worlds that line up with the Kingdom of God, but don’t blatantly have the “sheen” of “Christian” production.
Even Hollywood has recognised that the “Christian market” is extremely profitable. But we don’t need a separate category for entertainment that is godly. It needs to be a permeating perspective that reaches and influences every art form and identifies with more than those who have heard of Jesus before.
So engage with all media! Look for the God-story in everything. As humans, when we create it has to reflect God in some way because we are all made in his image. So there is redemptive purpose and themes in everything created. And if you are a creative person, let’s be intentional about our creativity – that we create from a place of godly inspiration with the effective skills to communicate it to the widest audience possible!