Question: “Hi Tim. What are we to make of 1st Corinthians 10:31? I’m trying to live as a biblical Christian and follow God with all my being, however I love going to see movies and I’m quite aware of the garbage in a lot of today’s movies, but there are some good ones out there. For example, the movie Defiance.” I don’t know this movie guys, I don’t even know if I’ve ever heard of it. But he says, the movie Defiance is a good story. Now he identifies the movie so I’m just going based on what he says here. He says, “the movie Defiance is a good story through and through it does however, have sex scenes, a few swears. But overall it fills you with excitement and passion to do the right thing. However, is it right for me to watch such a movie if there is a one minute sex scene or two, or three swears. How far do you go with 1st Corinthians 10:31?” By the way let me read 1st Corinthians 10:31: “So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” And so he says, “how far do you go with that verse? Because to take that passage to the extreme you can become paranoid of dishonoring God and eventually just end up living in your closet. Thanks, Dave.”
Discussion:
Tim: Dave, I’m going to be real straight up with you. If I took a little bit of dog poop and put it in your plate at dinner time, are you going to eat it and say: “Ah! It’s just a little bit!” Dave, I don’t know if you’re married or not. If your wife just slept with another man once in a while, just a little bit, is that ok? You would admit that such thoughts are defiling to the whole. The Scripture says that a little leaven leavens the whole lump.
I guess what I would say here is… Dave, you’re creating a scenario that just isn’t even true, you’re justifying your sin by creating a strawman. You say that “to take a passage to the extreme you could become paranoid of dishonoring God and eventually just end up living in your closet, thanks Dave.” Let me tell you something. The early church, the Apostles, the Apostle Paul, he didn’t have Internet, he didn’t have movies, he didn’t have TV shows, he didn’t have all that. And those men, those women did not have to live in a closet. For one, if you did live in closet, you would dishonor God. God never told us to live in monasteries, He never told us to go into isolation. He never told us to live outside this world. The apostle Paul says: if you got a brother or sister that claim to be Christians and they are running around in all sorts of sin, he says, don’t eat with them. But he says I’m not saying that about the whole world. Obviously we can eat with the adulterers and adulteresses and idolaters and swindlers, and thieves, and homosexuals and sexually immoral in this world in order to be light. But that doesn’t mean we partake of it. There’s a big difference between me living in this world and being light and salt in this world and happening to drive down the road and come across a billboard with some obscene scene on it that I happen to glance at and then I turn away from versus actually going and taking a serving of a movie that I willingly pay for, and I willingly allow thrown on my plate.
It’s one thing if you eat and there’s garbage in your food and you didn’t know it was there. Or by accident, or something just happens to be thrown there in the providence of God. It’s a whole other thing if you determine, and you actually order your life in such a way that you partake of such things. I tell you this, in the Old Testament if they blasphemed the name of God they put men and women to death for that. Is that a serious thing with God and are you going to allow yourself, just willingly to have His name run through the mud? And to write that off as being extreme in seeking the glory of God?
Sex scenes! What does the Scripture say? It says flee fornication. Are you running from it if you sit down and willingly allow it to come across there and defile your mind? The Scripture says the Apostle Paul in 2nd Corinthians 7:1, “Let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit… bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.”
Dave let me tell you something: God says through the Old Testament prophet Isaiah: “To this man I will look.” Do you know who that man is? It’s the man that God says trembles at His Word. Dave you say I’m trying to live as a biblical Christian and follow God with all my being. You’re not following God with all your being, if you’re allowing the very things into your life that God hates and God detests. Enough said there.
