Summer Movies - Keeping Your Soul Pure by Protecting Your Eyes
During the summer, the sun isn’t the only thing that can ruin the eyes. As children and adults alike take time off from school and work, an influx of new movies also floods theaters. Some movies are beneficial to the heart and soul, providing uplifting entertainment and inspiring stories to freshen the everyday life. However, with the number of movies debuting in theaters during the peak of its industry, a guarantee that the content is anything edifying to the Christian spirit is highly unlikely.
There is a need to be highly selective of the movies that you watch. It is said that the eyes are the windows to the soul. Matthew 6 says ",The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”
So, watching a good movie may give you even a deeper perspective on an event or snapshot in life that you would have never imagined on your own. It may even evoke wonderfully pleasant emotions that warm your heart or touch you in an impressive way.
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There are many movies, while are not publicized as Christian, may carry Christian-based themes such as self-sacrificial love, forgiveness, faith, and hope.
Just like distinguishing the bad barley from the good before the harvest, movies that defile your spirit are sometimes hard to distinguish but carry damaging consequences. These are movies romanticize or glorify themes such as violence and impurity and by watching them, you may inadvertently be defiling your eyes and therefore, defiling your heart.
The best advice way to ensure your spirit remains pure and holy in the eyes of God is that you protect your eyes, which is the passageway where the seed of sin enters.
Jesus did not just focus stopping the physical act of sin but taught his disciples to eliminate the root where sin starts—the heart.
“But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart,” Jesus said during his Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5.
He gives a similar teaching for murder. Though murder in itself is sin, preventing it requires a deeper inspection at the hatred one holds against his brother. If not eradicated, hatred can prompt a person to commit murder.
Jesus always looked at the essence of sin.
In much of the same way, Christians must have keen eyes to see the root of sin. Much of our actions come from what we have witnessed—seen, touched, heard—from our Lord Jesus Christ and the Apostles. We have developed good traditions and culture through following the life of Jesus as seen in the Bible.
Although as firm Christians, we may over-confidently believe we can resist the Satanic propaganda in some movies, but as children of God who are walking the path of sanctification, we cannot afford one bullet of temptation to enter us. It only takes one bullet to kill.
Even though we have citzenship in heaven, we are beings living in a fallen world awaiting complete restoration. There are impure elements that surround and tempt us. We should be able to set our hearts on the desires of the Holy Spirit rather than the lust of our flesh.
What may be acceptable in the secular world and considered PG-13, may not always be acceptable in the Christian lifestyle where we are holy temples housing the spirit of God.
What’s important is having a strict standard and exercising the wisdom you have gained from the Word to distinguish what movies to watch and not to watch regardless of how mainstream and popular they may be. By doing so, you will succeed where Abraham didn’t by not cutting the dove, a symbolism of purity.
Protect the eyes, the heart, the spirit from sin and may the grace of God’s Holy Spirit follow you all the days of your life.
