T.D. Jakes, popular author/pastor has produced a new movie "Sparkle," rife with sexual promiscuity, nudity, domestic abuse, and drugs. How does Jakes justify such sensuality as entertainment? His feeble attempt to emphasize love, faith and perseverance is over-shadowed by the film's underlying values: deceit, jealousy, strife, greed.
“It has been asked whether certain kinds of entertainment are appropriate for Christians. When entertainment is crude or off-color, the answer seems too obvious. When actions we would never allow in our daily life are part of entertainment, something is wrong. Much of the content of popular entertainment contains elements the Bible expressly forbids. Somehow, when it comes in the form of entertainment, we find it less offensive. In reality it is all the more dangerous. We often let our guard down when engaging in entertainment. I fear we have ben conditioned to accept such things in much the same way that a frog learns to accept ever-warming water, until eventually it is boiled to death. Such is the influence of the entertainment industry in our time.”
The above quote is an excerpt from “Real Christianity” written by William Wilberforce in 1797. I am sure he never imagined anything like what we call entertainment today!
You know you are living in extraordinary times when school soda vending machines are out, but condom dispensers are in. Putting nutrition labels on frozen pizzas may express appropriate concern for our youth, but what does it say when the same government provides birth control, morning-after pills, and abortions to them? Do those come with warnings too?
Of course the issue isn't nutrition or sex. It's moral ambiguity, the post-modern version of “everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25). Isaiah told of a future time when standards and behavioral attitudes would be reversed, “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil, who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness, who substitute bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” (Is. 5:20).
When Jesus spoke of the days of judgment, His disciples asked “when shall these things be, and what shall be the sign of your coming?” Jesus said it would be a time of great deception (Mat. 24:4). One might argue that human beings have always blurred the lines between right and wrong. But we are not seeing lines blurred; we are seeing them erased. Jesus’ return must be really close.
With the passing of Dick Clark, people my age are reminiscing over his popular dance show “American Bandstand.” I was not allowed to watch it. Dancing was sinful. But it wasn’t just Baptist fundamentalists that feared gyrating rock ‘n rollers; many conservative people resisted it. But Dick Clark made it acceptable by bringing a clean-cut, non-threatening image into American living rooms; girls on the show couldn't wear slacks or tight sweaters, and boys had to wear jackets and ties.
Dick Clark knew how to change a culture: it's called normalizing the abnormal. Traditionalists are threatened by new ideas. Just look at the resistance in countries under Islamic Law—Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan.
In our society, on the other hand, "change" is normal. Unfortunately, all too many believers are ignorant or ambivalent about the impact of change. Things once considered immoral are being normalized. Couples cohabitating, even having children, without marriage, “hooking up”—the new phrase for promiscuity, and same-sex relationships are the norm. Looking back, dancing doesn't seem so bad after all. God forbid we should ever reach the point where we say that about today's cultural changes!
