The Early Church on Entertainment

in this video we're going to work through how the church fathers and other early Christians viewed entertainment things like the Gladiator games and going to the theater and stuff like this and then draw implications for what this means for us this has been convicting I've been studying this but there's a measure of Hope in it as well I I thought it'd be only conviction but there is some some Grace and some help along the way as well I've been studying this because my friend Trevon put me onto this book from Chris Hall uh it's fascinating

to learn about the church father's views on social issues and uh I've done a video two other videos come came out of this one on persecution and one on pacifism you can see those this probably the last one maybe but there's so much to learn from church history who who knows maybe what next will come up because it's just endlessly fascinating all we can learn I want to make three arguments number one entertainment in the Roman culture of the early church has some fundamental similarities to what we're facing in the modern West it there's actually

a ton we can learn number two the church fathers were very insightful and Discerning about how entertainment can shape us and form us especially in negative ways and number three there's Grace and there's healing through the work of Christ and so ultimately this uh video will leave us with some hope and not just condemnation and so forth so first let's talk about entertainment in the Roman culture of the early church because it really does have similarities even though you know they don't have art technology they don't they didn't have social media of course and TV

and so forth there are some basic similarities where you you'll see as we get into this and this is important because it shows the relevance of this topic if there isn't a similarity then we don't have as much to learn from them but I think we have a lot to learn from them um in the Roman Empire there are entertainment was huge you have the Gladiator games uh which were so violent you have a lot of sexual immorality in the theater and this is serving as a source of Temptation for early Christians and they need

to think through how do we respond to this not always in Grand ways sometimes it's something simple like uh chrysostom you know we'll talk about him in the 380s having to accost some of his congregants for going to the theater rather than going to church by the way parenthetical comment if you're a pastor and you struggle with people leaving church early to get to watch the football game or maybe they left during covid and haven't come back don't take it too personally because it even happened to it even happened to the greatest preacher of the

early church helps a a little bit but that these kinds of things are going on in the early church you know sometimes we have a glamorized view of church history we forget there's the mundane aspects of it too and in the specific ways that it functioned entertainment in the in Roman culture had some similarities to things like the Super Bowl Saturday Night Live you know you think of uh you could think of the ancient mimes as kind of like today what Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel are uh when I was growing up it was David

Letterman and Jay Leno but um I'm a little dated now but you know there's similar Dynamics you even had celebrities you know you have some of the biggest Gladiators and charioteers of the ancient world were then like what movie stars and famous athletes and and musicians and so forth are today so you could buy lamps or bells or baby bottles with Gladiators stamped on them in the ancient world it's kind of fascinating right so you have this whole culture surrounding entertainment that we can definitely relate to today and it's a huge part of Roman culture

throughout the year there's all these festivals and games that are held in honor of the Gods some of these resemble how you might Envision like a modern fair or festival or something like this um and then you have the Olympic Games which are huge so the Coliseum in Rome which I'll put up a picture of hosts these Gladiator fights as well as animal huntings and executions of criminals and other things like this this is still the largest Ampitheater ever built it's absolutely massive if you ever get a chance to go it's worth seeing in Rome

and uh you know it's it's huge it's it can most people think it could hold more than 50,000 people some people think it can hold up to 70 or 880,000 people for the ancient world it's absolutely massive that's like the size of like a Taylor Swift concert today so that's a lot of people now by the 2 Century games and festivals are happening about 135 days out of the year so every couple of days there's these things going on and a lot of violence is going to be then constantly in view we'll talk about that

a little more also you have so much sexual immorality uh Kyle Harper wrote this book from shame to sin the Christian transformation of sexual morality and late Antiquity and he's basically saying how erotic art was ubiquitous in the culture uh this is a lot of times when you live in a prosperous Society what happens is basic moral boundaries start breaking down and this is happening in Rome as it is happening in our culture uh modern Western culture more generally I know not all my viewers are from the west but a lot are and Harper says

the inhabitant of the Roman Empire was constantly bombarded with visual allurements so moderation was a virtue called upon constantly to perform heroic Feats of restraint when I read that quote I thought people today can surely relate to this we don't have as much pornography like on in our architecture necessarily but definitely through TV and the internet it has made it so available and just like and by the way just like today in our world there's a link between um pornography and the trafficking of women and children so in the Roman World there was a link

between the theater and prostitution rings and there were laws coercing women to perform on stage there's often a link between sexual immorality and exploitation of vulner of the vulnerable that's why we should always take sexual sin seriously because uh it harms people but point is just like the early church to be faithful to Christ in our context we're often going to be swimming Against the Grain in our approach to entertainment and there's a lot we can learn from the early church as we think about trying to take the difficult path of discipleship where we kind

of Steal ourselves to be pure and not be corrupted by these things bombarding us from every angle not just violence and sexual immorality but also just some of the greed and luxury and extravagance among the wealthy you know one of the concerns that come up uh from Clement of Alexandria is he's basically rebuking people for the the presence of these toilets made of silver and gold I won't read this whole quote it's kind of funny especially in uh English translation now but point is you can see how there's this over-the-top wealth among a few people

uh to the neglect of most people and in the United States where I live you know we live in an extremely wealthy time of history there is a lot of extravagance here as well that's not actually removed from us a lot of Christians have to think about what is self-indulgent you know we want to live in in line with scripture where you have 1 Timothy 68 if we have food and clothing with these we will be content or Proverbs 38 which says give me neither poverty nor riches it's convicting when you realize that compared to

Global and historical standards we in the United States are really wealthy you say how when do we violate Proverbs 38 you know what does that look like and the encouraging thing there is to know that our heavenly father as we're following Jesus will take care of our needs so we're not supposed to say if we have nothing we will be content and give me neither riches nor my basic needs nor does the Lord's Prayer say you know give us today nothing but spiritual Joy you know it's okay to pray for your needs it says give

us today our daily bread and those verses are talking about you know meet my needs but but the extravagance that that's around us you know self-indulgent extravagance overthe toop wealth it's around us as well so the point is given these similarities between Roman culture and our culture this kind of decadent wealth and sexual immorality and and violence as we'll talk about we can learn from the early church and how they face things let me second second section of the video here let's talk about the church fathers and not just the church fathers proper but early

Christians in general their discernment about the shaping influence that entertainment can have there's a lot we can learn this was so fascinating and I'll bring in a CS Lewis which really shocked me too the fundamental Insight is that entertainment is catechesis the word catechesis means teaching it's formative what we view that entertains us is not a neutral influence and we can be so naive about this we can just do whatever we feel like watching on TV at night and so forth but we and and social media oh my gosh how it's changed the world we

are being shaped and formed and catechized by our devices and the church fathers understood this CH uh Chris Hall says the unity of the father's perspective on this particular issue of entertainment is impressive they believe the choices Christians make concerning what they choose as entertainment whether through specific actions of their own or merely viewing the performance of actors or athletes are freighted with ethical significance for our lives as Christians and indeed for how we think and act in worship and devotion let's unpack that a little bit just as so we've noted in in in Roman

culture you had the violence of the Gladiator games and the sexual immorality of the theater one of the interesting lessons you can get is how e both of those things were opposed with equal indignation whereas a lot of times in our culture we think of violence as as the in the modern West tends to make harm everything but the early church fathers had this had other um a more full orbed kind of ethical sense about them so they understood how wrong it is when the good gift of sexuality is degraded in in the ways that

it was in that culture and increasingly is in ours let's just unpack that a little bit well starting with so we're talking about really both the the sixth and the seventh Commandments here murder and adultery and um basically what the church fathers understood is that the depiction of these things in the context of entertainment is not a morally neutral issue so with the Gladiator games for example you can find early Christians like cyprian condemning these as basically our participation in homicide this is actually pretty clear in all the early Christians you can't go to the

Gladiator games you can't go watch people getting slaughtered for the amusement of a bloodthirsty mob if you go if you participate in that you're actually participating in the homicide theophilos of Antioch in the 2 Century says Christians are forbidden so much as to witness shows of Gladiators lest we become partakers and ab betters of murderers you see those words partakers and ab betters he's saying you're in on the deal if you go you can't just say oh I'm just watching it by by participating by attending you are supporting that you're actually a part of the

murder in my video on uh pacifism I already quoted athenagoras who's saying to see a man put to death is much the same as killing him that's a strong statement now he's not saying if you accidentally are walking down the street and you witness a murder he's talking about the Gladiator games but still the concern here is so strong now someone might say well that's just because in that context the Gladiators were actually dying whereas today when we watch a movie a violent movie and we see a murder depicted upon it the actor it's it's

not real the actor doesn't actually die it's on a screen and it's being portrayed in that way but it's not actually no one actually dies but the concern of the early church was not just about that one guy out on the the sand in the Coliseum be having his life taken away important as that is it's also how it shapes the entire culture when murder is held up in this manner as a matter of entertainment and the the way that shapes everyone watching so uh viewing violence in this way is basically the one of the

concerns is this teaches people how to be violent and that's a very insightful point and this is a theme that I'm going to keep belaboring here is that entertainment is a form of catechesis it normalizes certain things and and behaviors it teaches certain things it models it sort of teaches us what to admire you know and what is normal human behavior it shapes culture and so it you can't just say well because an an actual murder isn't taking place therefore it's morally neutral and this is what cyprian's point is basically he's saying crime is not

only committed but taught in the Gladiator games what can be more inhuman what more repulsive it is a training that one may be able to kill and that he kills is a glory you see what he's saying there it's like it's teaching you that killing is cool that's what's going on that's the concern and we need to be mindful of that today when we're watching TV movies social media Etc the whole intake it's all around us it's bombarding us so you can see why this topic is so convicting and why I've been wrestling with it

so much you have to think about the impact that all it's it's all around us you have to think about this the way this is happening and the impact it's having upon us with cyprian though it's not just murder it's also adultery and incest and these horrific things that are happening in the theaters and he is the same concern here adultery is learned as it is seen how great a collapse of morals what a stimulus to base Deeds what a nourishing of vices to be polluted by the gestures of actors ask now whether he who

looks upon this can be healthy-minded or chased ah can I say the you know this is these these videos on these social issues often turn into sermons even though they're not on the scripture but nonetheless ethical exhortations or something like that do we today have the same you you feel the indignation right do we have that do we have the same indignation as the church fathers you can't even look upon that this sense you think of those words a nourishing ofces it's a lot of our social media a nourishing ofic yes TV by the way

whenever we're talking about this this is what I try to do it's always helpful to start with our own heart because otherwise we're just going to be blasting away at others but we got to start with ourselves we can be polluted that verb polluted assumes that entertainment can be a contaminant okay it's like the way you feel when you're in a room with a bunch of sick people and you're like you're like covering your and you wash your hands right after and you're like you know very wary and so forth this is how cyprien is

saying we need to think about entertainment it's easy to be contaminated again we we we need to we can we can benefit from the sense of vigilance that they had now what what's helpful about this too is they're not just using that for murder but also for adultery from commandment 6 to commandment 7 he's saying the same thing whether it's a bloodthirsty slaughtering or whether it's scandalous lenus sexual immorality the indignation is basically the same in fact lactantius in his Divine institutes he's going on about child exposure and violence in the Gladiator games and saying

how terrible this is but then he talks about the corrupting influence of the stage or the theater is even worse if then it is in no way permitted to commit homicide it is not allowed us to be present at all lest any Bloodshed should overspread the conscience since that blood is offered for the gratification of the people and I am inclined to think that the corrupting influence of the stage is still more contaminating for the subject of comedies are the dishonoring of virgins or the loves of harlots and the more eloquent they are who have

composed the accounts of these disgraceful actions the more do they persuade by the Elegance of their sentiments and it goes on and on I'll put up the second part of this passage if you want to read it it's um helpful to to take in and again you feel the indignation as you're reading so the same concern is here is that the um influence upon the viewer of the entertainment it it what he's saying in this quote is it it's teaching you something it's normalizing C and he also speaks of it as a contaminant as well

so uh this is sober you know you we need to re we need to wrestle with this of what we can learn from this so for in the early church for the cumans by the way if you were going to be baptized um you couldn't remain a gladiator you couldn't remain a public official who is concerned with the Gladiator Gladiator games and you couldn't remain an actor in the theater now I'm going to say this again at the end and I'll put out this from the Apostolic tradition to see that I'm going to say this

again at the end but let me say it now I don't think this means it's wrong to be an actor in any context I have friends who are actors I think that that can be a very Noble profession depending on how it's done you know you can do Shakespeare plays and it's going to be wonderful and so forth but in that context the theater was rif with immorality and we've talked about the exploitation of women and so forth we'll talk about that a little more so just footnote there nonetheless it's very clear the early Church's

rigid opposition to the immorality around them here's another example last example I'll give on this this is from this is the best part of the video probably for what I'm going to quote from chram and CS Lewis so don't tune out quite yet if you're about to click off at least wait till these two happen then click off chrum is rebuking members of his congregation for going to the theater instead of church like we talked about um and he brings up concerns about the theater for things that are obviously bad like the water mimes these

would be women who would swim naked at the theater so that's the kind of thing it's like we're not surprised that he's opposing that but here's what's interesting is his concerns about comedy and how it's functioning so he quotes Ephesians 5:4 about crude joking and filthiness and so forth and he says what is yet more Grievous than these things is the subject of the laughter for when they that act those absurd things utter any word of blasphemy or filthiness then among many the more thoughtless laugh and are pleased applauding in them what they ought to

Stone them for so the concern here is in the context of Comedy it's really easy to cause you to be flippant about something about which you should be serious you may have seen this happen before when you're watching a comedian or something like this they're making people laugh and you're sort of accustomed to laughing and so then all of a sudden a joke gets thrown out about something that's actually kind of Blasphemous or disgraceful or disgusting and people are accustomed so uncritical people in the audience are just still laughing and you're like that's really a

problem CS Lewis talks about the way humor can be misused to create flippancy like this in the screw tape letters he says humor is the all excusing Grace of Life hence it is invaluable as a means of destroying shame he's speaking from the perspective of a devil here if a man simply lets others pay for him he is mean if he boasts of it in a jocular Manner and twits his fellows with having been scored off he is no longer mean but a comical fellow mere cowardice is shameful cowardice boast of with humorous exaggerations and

grotesque gestures can be passed off as funny cruelty is shameful unless the cruel man can present it as a practical joke but flippancy is the best of all only a clever human can make a real joke about virtue or indeed about anything else anyone any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny among flippant people the joke is always assumed to have been made no one actually makes it but every serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it if prolonged the

habit of flippancy builds up around a man the finest armor plating against the enemy that's God that I know and it is quite free from the dangers inherent in the other sources of laughter it is a thousand miles away from Joy it deadens instead of sharpening the intellect and it excites no affection between those who practice it I like this Lewis passage because if you read it in context uh he's showing that the concern is not with humor or laughter itself Lewis had a lot to say about the goodness of humor and he's saying it

can be done unto the glory of God it can be used to inculcate charity between people it can be good for relaxation you know he says he even says humor can be good for inducing courage which is interesting so he's not against humor but the bad usage of humor to create flippancy can be deadening and takes you away from Joy you know this attitude where like basically anything Noble becomes um treated as if it were funny you see this in extreme forms of sarcasm this is really not healthy and this is something to watch out

for in our appropriation of entertainment it's really easy to start drinking that in but here's what I want to finish with as much as I was challenged and convicted what surprised me was also to see a measure of Grace and help from the church fathers and so let me get to the third Point here to finish with continuing on with what I quoted from John costum in his homilies on Matthew a little bit and we're going to talk about how there's healing and Grace for us where we've been contaminated by entertainment through the gospel of

Christ as much as you get conviction from the fathers you do also get a reminder of the Gospel John describes a woman in one of his sermons named pelagia this was a famous Fourth Century actress and prostitute in Antioch who becomes a Christian he describes her as holding pride of place in the theater and her name was famous everywhere not just in our city Kyle Harper notes she was famous throughout the Mediterranean world so think of like a famous actress today except pelagia is also a prostitute and then she becomes a Christian she comes to

Christ John uses her as as an example to show the power of the grace of God quote she ended her life having washed off all through Grace and after her baptism having shown great self-restraint for not even a mere sight of herself did she allow to those who were once her lovers let no one then who lives in Vice despair by the way when there's a genuine conversion it results in a complete change of life so it's not just a flipping thing but so we got to say that but then we can say happy news

I want to say this may the Holy Spirit Drive these words home into the heart of somebody out there no matter who you are no matter what you've done you are not beyond the grace of God as chrysostom says let no one who lives in Vice despair those words washing off through Grace that's it that's the gospel no matter how contaminated you might feel maybe you've you've watched things on TV and your computer and on your phone that are so filthy you feel completely uh apart from God and unloved by him here's what Satan does

to really destroy us he first tempts us to the sin but then he throws despair at us and that is where you become irredeemable you know if you just give in and just never and you think no I can't I I I'm beyond hope you know a lot of people feel like that and believe it or not everything else that I do on my YouTube channel is driven by this fundamental passion that I want people to experience the grace of God I want people to know and that's a magical thing when it happens and it's

only through the Holy Spirit when it comes on your heart when you stop thinking yeah Jesus is out there you say no he's the most personal thing in all the universe to me because he can forgive me and uh that's what I want people to understand no matter where you're coming from on this issue there's that washing of of and cleansing that Christ offers through the gospel is available to you why not accept it why not reform your life with a thorough repentance and if you need to literally drive a nail through your phone if

you need to but be free of it and accept you know when the when the gospel is communicated in the scripture the imagery of clothing is used being clothed cled in white garments that's what Jesus wants to give to you he can actually give us our Purity back no matter how contaminated we've been through what he did on the cross we can be washed white and that's a happy thought so summing up how do we move forward you know what what what are some lessons to take away does this mean that we should never watch

TV does it mean we should never watch movies does it mean we should never watch a YouTube video like this one if that's truly what it meant I would happily give up my YouTube channel in a day I I'm not in this cuz I have to be I really am not but I would say I don't think that is the lesson I think the the the more that's actually in some ways easier to do the hardest and the most important thing to do is discernment of the influence that it is having on us and so

I think for most of us that means a strict observance to make sure we're not engaging too much and then to look at the influence it's having upon us we want to be the kind of people who are not deadened to Holiness but are very acutely sensitive to it so that when we see the sixth or the seventh commandment being you know violently betrayed in an entertainment context we're not flippant about it but we're grieved about it as I was studying this topic I was reminded of the Neil Postman quote from his old book amusing

ourselves to death Christianity is a demanding and serious religion when it is delivered as easy and amusing it is another kind of religion all together so basically I I'd have two suggestions and then one caution to finish off here suggestion one is we should give some consideration to where we can reduce our overall time engaging entertainment especially entertainment in the form of a screen this is something I'm trying to do lately you know it's easy to just watch TV at night it's so easy because it's such a passive thing when you're tired so I've just

been trying to even you know just simple things just sit and reflect just go into a different room that has no screen I have certain rooms of my house where I don't never bring any screen whatsoever like my phone just never goes in there I pretend there's like an invisible barrier that my phone can't go there so I know when I go there and it's calming actually you kind of just realize okay now I'm just going to be engaging elsewhere go there with a friend or with your spouse or with somebody and just talk have

conversation it's amazing the joy of conversation reading at night I know my brain is tired at night but if it's a novel you know try to get into new novels trying to read through the book contact again remember that old novel because I watched the movie the other day and it was good um go on bike rides I've been doing bike rides you look at the stars you know find something that that is nourishing for your soul that isn't constantly I think that the real danger is when when we fill up every bit of Spare

Time by looking at a screen that is so unhelpful and then the second piece of this is not just reduce the amount of time but discernment about about its catechetical nature note the influence it's having upon you and then just I will just say here's another encouragement not only can God wash you and forgive you but by the power of the Holy Spirit he can help you change and so what you do is you lean upon him just as much as you're leaning upon him for your salvation just as much as when you come to

judgment day you'll say nothing I've done lord it's all your work on my behalf with that same heart posture you say now help me in the meantime to obey you and to root these things out of my life as we all know where they're making inroads against us but here's the caution we also need to be careful about having I think an overly scrupulous conscience conscience about this topic because a lot of my viewers have obsessive compulsive Tendencies and I want to give some pastoral help here too I think it's very easy to go too

far where we have so low a view of common Grace that we think we we can't enjoy or learn anything from the world I don't think that's actually the pathway of Holiness either just that kind of complete abstinence and just kind of running the other direction I think it's a little more complicated we need discernment you know even with the church fathers they're not infallible they they there is some odity we can learn a lot I mean believe me I think they're better than us but they're not infallible I mean there's some Oddities you know

like Augustine's view of sexuality is is kind of O weird it's overly negative it's out of step with 1 Corinthians 7 I would say in some ways I love Augustine but Jerome is another example of this uh you know he had this whole episode where he's racked with guilt about how much he likes Cicero and he has this dream where he's before the Judgment seat of Christ and Christ says to him you are a ciceronian not a Christian and so he promises never to read Pagan literature again and so forth now I would say look

if reading cisero is caus is drawing you away from Christ then I'll by all means give up Cicero forever but I can easily imagine people watching this video going too far with this and so just three dangers I'll throw up here at the very end even as the overall tilt of this video is a caution and um you know for me I experienced this as a conviction as like okay I need to keep my barriers up really well nonetheless some ways we can go too far number one is a rejection of art art is not

bad art can be done for the glory of God and uh I think there is actually in a lot of quarters of the church I think there's too low a view of art where um and just a too much of a sacred secular distinction where we have a too low a view of vocation in general and this is something I've thought said a lot of my pastoral work is just that Christians need to invade these spheres of culture like you know being a painter being a novelist um being an actor all kinds of things Genesis

1 says the whole world is good there's common Grace like I talked about in my video responding to John MacArthur a few weeks back there there's there's easily ways we can go too far with this the concern is about Sin the problem is not anything God has made or any culture per se it's evil and sin and fallenness that invades it so that's a a danger we need to be alert to a second thing a second possible danger that could come in here is an overly negative view of sex I think that is one thing

you see in the church fathers like Augustine so one of the ideas you see sometimes is that sex is only really pure and holy if it's for the intention of and to the end of procreation and that's where I would have a departure just because I think Paul is pretty clear in 1 Corinthians seven that's not the only purpose that within marriage um it is Holy within marriage and actually Chom has a little more balanced view on that I think but I I guess I just wanted to speak to this because I think a lot

of people experience a topic like this especially young people as like only restrictive and I think this is another one of the lies of Satan is that basically God's Commandments and God's restrictions and the pathway of discipleship following Christ is this really cramped and narrow thing that wants to take away joy and make life less exciting nothing could be further from the truth There Is No Greater Joy than following Christ the Commandments of God like the seventh commandment in the Bible not that we'll even get into much detail here but just to say this much

that's for your flourishing and good think of it as fatherly counsel from a father who loves you um and I I'll just leave it that Mo most of my people watching this probably have some sense of that already that's more in the realm of encouragement I suppose so last thing I'll say is another possible danger as we're trying to be vigilant about seeking holiness but aware it can go off into some unhealthy terrain is just the danger of legalism and how we apply this you know so if you say like I can imagine Christians thinking

okay so based upon what we're saying about the church fathers and this you know entertainment is a form of catechesis it's like poisoning us it's a contaminant therefore it's a sin to watch a rated R movie and I would say no it you know basically um jerem bars my old professor in seminary has helped me so much think about this that basically what you do is you emphasize the law of God and that way you don't need to add on a bunch of fences around the law and this just such a helpful pastoral advice so

you know there's no verse in the Bible that says Thou shalt not watch a rated R movie but there are verses that say thou shalt not commit adultery th shalt not commit murder so in other words you emphasize the law and then you leave room for individual consciences around the more disputed questions of what that will look like now some things are obvious you know know some things it's like it's it's obvious that's going to lead to you know a violation of the God's laws um but like on the question of violence this is tricky

can you ever watch a movie I'm trying to I'm trying to actually address the Practical questions that might come up from a topic like this someone might say can you ever watch a movie that has lots of violence in it without sin and I would say it really depends upon how the violence is being cast I I would say because for example I make a big distinction between what is glorifying violence or sometimes it's hard for me to articulate what it is about it but like the way in a horror movie it's portrayed sometimes it

just it does feel like it's creating flippancy about it versus there are some historical dramas that are very violent but it's kind of just depicting War realistically and those are the kinds of things where I think we can be uh we I think we can make a distinction there and I'm trying to create a little bit of wiggle room for people to wrestle with this in their own conscience but I think it's wise for us to be slow to judge other people on these very particular points and the last thing I will say is this

because when we experience the topic like this we're thinking about the church Fathers as kind of a challenge to us I I do want to emphasize at the end here that the Christian Life is full of joy and these hard aspects of discipleship where we will be swimming Against the Grain and we will be having to steal ourselves against the pressures and temptations all around us and I do want us to remember that that is ultimately for the pathway of joy and flourishing the problem with entertainment is not that it has too much joy in

it but that it deadens Joy so the reason we need to be vigilant about the impact it's having upon us is because it's for our own good I mean that's why I'm so passionate about this topic is think about like the impact of social media it is not you know being addicted to your phone is not joyful it's not fun it actually leads to a lot of anxiety so so the um the pathway of discipleship is hard but it's for our good and I'm very concerned about the way entertainment is affecting people and even when

it is hard walking with Christ can alleviate the difficulty and he's with you every step along the way I'll leave you with this quote from Samuel Rutherford if your lord calls you to suffering be not dismayed there shall be a new allowance of the king for you when you come to it one of the softest pillows Christ has is laid under his witness's head though often they must be set down their bare feet among Thorns Old English language but I love that that basically what I'm trying to say with that to finish off here is

even when it's really difficult Christ is with you and that will alleviate some of the pain and some of the pressure all right let me know what you think about this topic uh did I miss anything this is not something I'm an expert on it's more just something I'm wrestling with and thinking about and you know trying to offer pastoral Counsel on the basis of so let me know what you think if I missed anything or if there's other quotes or other topics in this uh that that you think are helpful thanks for watching everybody

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