God and R-rated movies.

 

In the Bible, it is clear that God has a certain lifestyle He planned for us.  We are meant to be good people, to have strong morals and to keep the mind abundant with God’s word.  However, the opposition to God’s word is ubiquitous.  Advertisers and marketers want us to deny ourselves for their product, which is what many people do.  They deny themselves for a product or lifestyle they think will make them better or better liked.  In fact, everybody does this at some point in his or her life and it’s a sorry replacement for the acceptance of God.  Denying oneself for God makes one begin to see how silly all the things in our lives are and how at the moment we buy something that we’ve wanted for sometime, our minds are so fickle and earthly that they immediately move to the next thing on the list.  Worldly validation will never last; God’s validation is everlasting.

            There is something else that people use for validation, it is better intentioned and executed with God in mind, but it is still a petty substitution for a Godly ideology.  It is an attempt to measure God by worldly customs.  A good example is a church that nigh enforces its members to wear a suit and tie or a nice dress when they come to church.  One has to wonder why exactly something like this would matter.  An argument that could be made is the very one that is being made in this article except in a different context.  A person may be worried that the inclusion of casual wear such as t-shirts and jeans may lend to a person’s mind a worldly demeanor.  However, if somebody comes into church with his or her mind focused on the world and not on God, which many people do, it isn’t going to matter if somebody is wearing a Volcom shirt or a suit coat. 

            When you think about it, the need for a suit and tie seems really silly.  Jesus didn’t a wear suit and tie, they didn’t even exist back then, a collar is just a thick topper to your shirt and a tie is just a piece of cloth that dangles from your neck.  This is supposed to please God how?  Now, this isn’t to say that a suit and tie is a bad thing, but it is a pedantic notion to have it be required apparel.  God invites His people to come as they are to Him, why should church be any different?

            Another strong measurement by earthly means is the speaking out against R-Rated movies.  Many Christians simply say R-Rated movies should be avoided at all costs with no exceptions.  This is the mother of all short strung measurements to an endless thread of string.  Anybody who says that R-Rated movies should be avoided at all costs for one’s spiritual integrity needs to be educated on how the ratings system works.  First, it is a monopoly of censorship in which all movies in hopes of being distributed to theaters nationwide (almost all theaters won’t show movies that don’t have an MPAA rating) must go through.  Second, the people who fund the ratings board are the big movie studios themselves, so there is a strong bias in situations like a movie that will make more money with a PG-13 rating than an R.  Have you ever found yourself watching a PG-13 and saying to yourself “Wow, this should be rated R,” or found yourself watching an R-rated movie and thought: “Wow, this should be PG-13.”  Well, there’s origin to your suspicions.  For example, the first Transformers movie was slapped with an R, but the rating was changed to a PG-13 after a simple call from Steven Spielberg asking them to change it.  Another example involves a Utah-based film called Saints and Soldiers, a WW2 movie made on a meager budget; therefore it was independent and without a large studio backing it.  The filmmakers made the movie based on PG-13 war movies like Behind Enemy Lines, in fact they even made it a point to make it less violent just in case, but they were slapped with an R-rating regardless.  They had to undergo editing in order to secure the PG-13 rating whereas if a studio supported them, it would have been rated PG-13 with no questions asked because the MPAA would have had money banking on the project.  Does that seem like a reliable tool to relate with your spiritual integrity?

            Thirdly, there aren’t any rules to what makes a rating.  None.  It’s just a few people, whom do not undergo any training, that screen the film to decide the rating.  Fourthly, slapping a movie with an R-Rating entails that Into The Wild is at the same level of questionable material as Superbad, or Schindler’s List to American Pie.  The same stigmatized word (RESTRICTED) labeled to completely different stories with entirely different premises and content.

            The idea that one’s spiritual resonation is going to be in adherence with an extremely flawed and inconsistent rating system is ludicrous.  People need to look at the content of the movie itself, look at what it’s about and make a decision based on that.  It all matters on the intention of a movie.  A PG movie can be much worse than an R movie if its intention is to tell a story with sinister ulterior motives.  Movies with strong spiritual substance can be very realistic which causes them to be rated R, but a PG-13 movie about some dude who goes crazy and kills a bunch of people (without showing the ramifications and bloody outcome) is much more damaging. 

            We need to stop trying to put a worldly label on God’s gospel.  It simply will not work and will be fluid and interchangeable as the times pass.  Always turn to the Bible, you won’t see anything about suit coats and ties or instructions to listen to a small group of people’s decision when it comes to deciding what movie to see on a Saturday night.

If you enjoyed this article please subscribe!

-CSL