How Should Christians Choose Their Entertainment?

To learn more about developing an informed Christian conscience, understanding Christian liberty and freedom, and about pleasing God in matters of individual choice, consider listening to the following sermons by Dr. Richard Caldwell:

   • The Importance of Joy - Romans 14:13-18  

In this episode of the Straight Truth Podcast Dr. Richard Caldwell and host, Dr. Josh Philpot respond to a series of questions about the believer and entertainment. Dr. Philpot talks about the fact that we have a constant barrage of entertainment choices to choose from. They come offered to us in many forms of media choices, places we can go to eat, and even music venues we can attend and take part in. We have an endless smorgasbord of all-day instant access to just about anything. The questions that arise when thinking about all these choices are serious questions. What forms of entertainment is okay for Christians to choose to take part in? How much entertainment is too much? What should the Christians process of thinking be about what is good and what is not?
Dr. Caldwell agrees there’s an endless barrage of entertainment choices, and thinks in some ways we are being entertained to death. What he sees in this constant draw to be entertained is it somewhat reveals the lack of satisfaction that we know in our lives and in our walk with God. This is especially the case when we think about it taking up hours and hours of our time. When we are doing this, we are looking for something, we are looking for some form of pleasure, enjoyment or satisfaction. He suggests if we find this to be the case in our life, we really need to examine what we have in our walk with God. We need to ask ourselves if our relationship with God real? Do we really know the Lord? If it is and we do, we then need to ask ourselves if we are pursuing Him. If we are, what does that pursuit look like in terms of reading the Word of God, meditating upon what we’ve read, praying, etc.? Dr. Caldwell believes that in many cases we would be ashamed if we compared the amount of time spent on spiritual things to the amount of time we spend on entertaining ourselves. He reminds us that the things of the world are temporal in nature and will all pass away, but our souls are eternal. What we do here and now is of real importance, it’s an actual investing in our souls and has eternal consequences. So we need to ask ourselves, what is the value of our soul? Entertainment and our choices regarding it speaks to our value system, our priority system.
Dr. Caldwell says there is a place for entertainment in our lives. He tells us that God has given us all things to richly enjoy and says emphatically, that God is not a killjoy God. However, we do have to be able to put these things in their proper place. Answering the question of what entertainment is appropriate for a Christian is difficult because no one can tell us what the standards are at every moment, in every instance, about every decision we have to make. We have to look to the Lord, we need a sensitive conscience that’s informed by the truth of God’s Word. We need to ask, does this please God, is it helpful to my soul? If it’s not pleasing to God and it’s not helpful in our walk with Him, then we need to be able to say “No” for the sake of our souls. We don’t want to let these kinds of things distract us, nor stand in the way of what the Lord is wanting to do in our lives. So then, as long as we keep what’s most important, important, it will help guide us in those things that are questionable in nature. We have liberty, but the liberty we have should never be used as an excuse to indulge the flesh. We are free to serve Christ and others, not to indulge our sinful flesh.
One other thing Dr. Caldwell asks us to consider regarding the time element involved with entertainment is the loss of real conversation. This is an area where we don’t want to think only about our relationship with God, but we also need to think about our relationship with others. Sure, we meet people, get to sort of know people, are familiar with them, even “friend”, “follow” and “like” many people in some of today’s media forms. But what we don’t have, are real conversations, communicating face to face with one another, getting to know each other on a personal level that’s not superficial. He says that sitting down with someone, across a table, maybe even having a cup of coffee with them allows you to have conversations that you can never have through these screen-based media applications, etc. We actually miss and lose out on some of the ways that God desires to richly bless us.
Lastly, he comments that whether we are talking about entertainment or the best use of today’s rapidly changing technology, whatever the case may be, if we prioritize the soul, if we prioritize our walk with God, if we think about our relationships with others, if we measure everything by the Word of God and ask does this please God—he believes we will find our way.