Self-deception is a real and present danger for believers. Many convince themselves that watching “soft porn” (because that is precisely the secular classification that many of the scenes in television shows today would have received 20 years ago) in the opening episodes on a television show isn’t that bad because “while there is intense violence and sexual scenes in the opening episodes, the show mellows out in later seasons.” That, it seems to me, is equivalent to us saying, “I can indulge in a little fleshly desire because it is not as bad as it could be” or “I only engaged in this sin or that sin for a little while because it didn’t last that long.”
Kevin DeYoung kicked the proverbial hornet’s nest when he wrote a post titled, “I Don’t Understand Christians Watching Game of Thrones.” That post was swiftly met with a tirade of social media attacks, such as, “The Bible has many, many more violent and lewd scenes than Game of Thrones…know your Bible, Kevin,” “[you] shouldn’t expect consciences to be the same” and “Bad idea denouncing what you have no experience with…” Honestly, it was painful to read through the emotionally charged, biblically weak and grammatically poor responses to DeYoung’s encouragement for professing believers to pursue holiness in regard to what we set before our eyes on television.
Before saying anything else, I want to confess that, over the years, I have watched television shows and movies that I ought not to have watched–entertainment that I did not watch to the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31). While I have not watched Game of Thrones, I have watched a litany of other shows that are subject to similar criticisms as those raised by Piper and DeYoung. Those which I have watched have had enough sexual content and innuendos in them to fall into a category similar to that of Game of Thrones. While I have fast forwarded through as many of those scenes as I could whenever they appeared, I now confess that I should not have watched the show in the first place. I am no more like Christ and no more fruitful in the work of His Kingdom for having watched them. I have asked the Lord to forgive me for having watched things that I shouldn’t have watched and that I did not watch to His glory. I say this to confess my own sinfulness at the outset.
What are we to do, then, when it comes to fixing a limit on what a Christian should and should not watch? Is drawing such a line tantamount to fundamentalism? Are we to simply chalk everything up to a case of personal liberty of conscience? Is it legitimate to compare the sex in the Bible to the sex in a show like Game of Thrones? We must ask and answer these and related questions, if we are to get to the bottom of a Christian ethic regarding what we watch and what we are to abstain from watching.
To be absolutely clear, I would defend liberty of conscience–as set out in our Protestant confessions–to the grave. As the Westminster Confession of Faith (ch. 20.2) states:
“God alone is Lord of the conscience, and has left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men, which are, in any thing, contrary to His Word; or beside it, if matters of faith, or worship. So that, to believe such doctrines, or to obey such commands, out of conscience, is to betray true liberty of conscience: and the requiring of an implicit faith, and an absolute and blind obedience, is to destroy liberty of conscience, and reason also.”
This means that we must be exceedingly guarded against listening to the commandments of men or binding others to the commandments of men. To be sure, Fundamentalism has been largely built on the sinking foundation of the doctrine and commandments of men. When men and women suggest that a Christian should not drink or watch movies they are falling into the snare of what the Apostle Paul writes in Colossians 2:
