Episode 155: Christians and Entertainment

I am a huge popular culture fan! Today let’s talk about Christians in the entertainment industry and how we participate with the entertainment industry in a healthy way. If you Google: “Christians in entertainment,” you will get 25 “guard your heart, watch your eyes” articles. You hear what “not to do” but don’t hear “what to do.”  

The average christian in America spends 1-6 minutes in prayer each day BUT spends 6.5 hours on screen time especially around entertainment.  This shows us there is an imbalance, but can the two go together? Can we merge some of our entertainment and spiritual life with the right boundaries? Let’s talk about it!

God first revealed Himself to us as Creator in Genesis 1, which tells us He loves creativity! It’s a big deal in the Bible.  All through the Bible it’s part of who God is and how He reveals Himself. 

Entertainment is birthed out of creativity. God Himself and a relationship with Him should be entertaining. Entertainment is not the goal, but it is one of the benefits we have living and participating in this world…but in balance. I love entertainment but I also have a holy and healthy relationship where my connection to God is my most important priority and entertainment becomes a form of rest, not a primary way I spent my time. We need to have balance and know what we are using entertainment for. 

Entertainment or anything that touches our soul and heart can change our value & belief system. An example of this is during the time of Hitler.  We need to learn how to ground ourselves in spiritual truth through the Bible and surround ourselves with this spiritual truth. If you are not surrounding yourself with spiritual truth, you will be surrounding yourself with some other kind of truth and who is the filter of that truth. If you don’t have balance….you will have imbalance! 

If you are no longer hearing from God or seeing visions, watch your entertainment intake and see if you have allowed a substitute to happen.  God uses entertainment all the time to speak to people and cause them to grow. Each one of us has our own personal relationship to art and will see it through a different filter than others see it.  Every good and perfect gift comes from God. He created entertainment!