{"id":1150,"date":"2009-01-30T09:27:39","date_gmt":"2009-01-30T14:27:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/?p=1150"},"modified":"2009-01-30T09:27:39","modified_gmt":"2009-01-30T14:27:39","slug":"worship-at-the-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/worship-at-the-movies","title":{"rendered":"Worship at the Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

This excerpt from a chapter titled “God, My Heart, and Media” by Craig Cabaniss in C. J. Mahaney’s Worldliness<\/em> got me to thinking about how my son and I watch movies:<\/p>\n

All too often, we think about neither what we watch nor how much.\u00a0 Our watching is just inevitable. We watch by habit. We watch because we\u2019re bored. We unwatchingly watch as the TV stays on for background noise. We watch alone or with others. We gather with friends on Friday night and rent a DVD because there\u2019s nothing else to do\u2026<\/p>\n

Please don\u2019t misunderstand. I\u2019m not saying it\u2019s wrong to watch television, rent a DVD, surf the Internet, or spend an evening at the cinema. The hazard is\u00a0thoughtless\u00a0<\/em>watching. Glorifying God is an intentional pursuit. We don\u2019t accidentally drift into holiness; rather, we mature gradually and purposefully, one choice at a time.\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Is it possible to glorify God by watching movies and television shows that really have no overt references to God? I think so. But I haven’t always thought so.<\/p>\n

My thought process on movie-watching has evolved thanks to my son, Joel. He’s taught me to think about what the movie is before<\/em> we see it, so rarely are we seeing a movie merely for entertainment purposes only (but certainly we are entertained). Immediately after we see a movie there is often a debriefing about the philosophical\/theological implications of the message we have just received.<\/p>\n

We’ve had these kinds of engaging discussions after seeing\u00a0There Will Be Blood, I’m Not There,\u00a0Synecdoche, New York, Doubt, The Dark Knight<\/em>, and most every movie we see. They aren’t long discussions. Normally they take place in the car as we drive home from the theatre. But because most movies we see would be labeled by some Christians as “inappropriate” (not because of nudity or profanity, but because there is no overt presentation of the gospel vis-a-vis the name of Jesus being mentioned throughout), they are thoughtful<\/em> discussions. We are digging together to find truth. Sometimes we don’t agree on what we’ve seen. But we seem to always agree that we are glad we saw whatever movie we saw even if we take different things away from it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cabaniss says above, “Glorifying God is an intentional pursuit.” I would also add, in keeping with the thought he is expressing, that glorifying God is an intellectual pursuit. Loving God with our minds is something I have had to work at intentionally. The heart part (emotion) is often the default part of our worship. Critically thinking about art (movies, music, et al) is how we sanctify the ordinary as we offer it back to the God who gives us every good gift. This is the head part (intellect) of worship, which is more rarely used by Christians in their adoration of God.<\/p>\n

When God’s word is used to sift through what we are seeing, movie-going becomes an act of worship as our hearts are moved and our heads are engaged to think critically rather than merely being moved emotionally.\u00a0<\/p>\n

HT: Stephen Altrogge<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This excerpt from a chapter titled “God, My Heart, and Media” by Craig Cabaniss in C. J. Mahaney’s Worldliness got me to thinking about how my son and I watch movies: All too often, we think about neither what we … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1150"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1151,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1150\/revisions\/1151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}